Beijing-backed media welcome US cuts to media in Asia, amid warnings of information 'black holes'
By the Asia-Pacific Newsroom
Topic:Media Industry
15m ago15 minutes agoTue 18 Mar 2025 at 4:30am
The Radio Free Asia logo on a wall behind an empty desk.
Radio Free Asia employs more than 300 staff and is headquartered in Washington. (Reuters: Staff)
Beijing-backed media are celebrating cuts to US media agencies broadcasting into Asia, as activists and analysts warn the closures will create information "black holes" that could be filled by Russian or Chinese services.
News of the funding slash emerged over the weekend after US President Donald Trump signed an order on Friday that reduced the function of several government agencies to the minimum required by law.
That included the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) which funded Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio Free Europe and Radio Marti.
USAGM subsequently terminated grant agreements with those organisations, originally set up to increase US influence and combat authoritarianism in countries with limited or no free press, in a move one network head described as a "massive gift to America's enemies".
Nearly 1,300 VOA staff have been placed on "leave", but 300-plus Washington-based RFA staff were still working on Monday, after RFA president and chief executive Bay Fang said in a statement released on Saturday that RFA planned to "challenge this short-sighted order".
VOA was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and now reaches 350 million people weekly with domestic news translated into nearly 50 languages.
RFA, which provides news to an audience of nearly 60 million people across China, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, did not respond to the ABC's request for further comment.
On Monday, Chinese state media the Global Times published an editorial welcoming the cuts to VOA, describing the organisation as a "lie factory".
"Clearly, VOA has never been a 'fair and impartial' media outlet, but rather a thoroughly biased 'propaganda poison'," the piece stated.
In a post on Weibo, a former Global Times editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, said the VOA closure was a "delightful" moment, as it has long been a symbol of the "US ideological infiltration into China".
"VOA has always been Washington's propaganda vanguard for hegemony, playing the same role as Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe," he wrote.
Another critic of democratic media in Asia, former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, also celebrated the closures in a post on Facebook, where he thanked US President Donald Trump for the cuts.
"This is a major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions, incitement and chaos around the world, coming from the propaganda machine that President Trump has stopped funding," Hun Sen, who was succeeded as prime minister by his son Hun Manet in 2023, wrote in the post.
RFA staff at 'grave risk'
A woman sitting in a chair appears to look into the crowd and gesture with her hand.
US-based RFA journalist Gulchehra Hoja's family in China's Xinjiang region were detained because of her work. (Reuters: Brendan McDermid)
Many of the journalists who work at RFA are from the countries they cover, like award-winning Uyghur journalist Gulchehra Hoja, who now lives in the US.
Her world-first reporting on human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Autonomous Province led to the incarceration of her entire extended family in China.
Without RFA journalists like Hoja, who have local knowledge and connections in places like Xinjiang, those areas "will become information black holes", cautioned Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch.
"We will know even less what's going on in there, just as the Chinese government … wanted," said Ms Wang.
While other RFA staff declined to comment or did not respond to the ABC, RFA investigations director Boer Deng said on X it had been a "tumultuous" time for RFA staff.
"The most harrowing thing is that many of my colleagues at Radio Free Asia who risk their lives and have sat in prison for daring to report on authoritarian regimes are at grave risk," she wrote.
RFA also began working with BenarNews about a year ago, a small operation broadcasting in five languages and into the Pacific.
BenarNews did not respond to a request for comment.
Former VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara issued a statement on her LinkedIn profile, highlighting how the VOA charter required all VOA journalists to adhere to accurate and independent reporting free from external influence.
Another ex-VOA reporter, Liam Scott, said he was saddened, angered and disappointed at the cuts.
"I've covered press freedom for a long time and I've never seen something like what's happened in the US over the past couple of months," he said on LinkedIn.
'Huge own goal' for the US
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Speaking on the ABC's The World on Monday, Aleksandra Bielakowska from Reporters Without Borders said the cuts "threaten press freedom worldwide" and were a "gigantic gift" for authoritarian regimes in Beijing and Moscow.
"I am really sure they are now celebrating as democracies are weakened by [the US's] own self-destructive actions," Ms Bielakowska said.
The cuts will limit people's access to independent information in Asia, and less news from the region will make it to the rest of the world, she added.
It will also be difficult for other media groups to fill the gap left by VOA and RFA, and support staff whose visas relied on their employers, Ms Bielakowska said.
A woman looks at the camera smiling.
Susannah Patton says Voice of America was the number one foreign broadcaster in many Asian countries. (Supplied: Lowy Institute)
VOA was the number one foreign radio broadcaster in most countries in Asia, noted Susannah Patton, director of the South-East Asia Program at the Lowy Institute.
"This announcement to cut VOA and RFA is a huge own goal for the United States because these were very successful news agencies and broadcasters that had real reach into many countries in Asia," she said.
Ms Patton said other news agencies could look to fill the void left by VOA.
"From our analysis at the Lowy we can see that the second- and third-most-popular broadcasters in many Asian countries are from China and Russia," she said.
"If they are able to fill that gap, it will definitely be to the detriment of US standing and influence in Asia," she added.
While the US cuts did not directly impact Australia, she said Australia "has an interest" in the US having a deep and engaged presence in Asia.
Posted15m ago15 minutes agoTue 18 Mar 2025 at 4:30am
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