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As part of his ongoing mission to , United States President Donald Trump recently announced major cuts to US foreign broadcasters.
The White House announced last week it was terminating the federal grants that sustain the operations of Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
Rights activists say the outlets — from which thousands have now been sent on leave — have long served as a rare source of reliable news in authoritarian countries like Russia, China and North Korea.
A White House spokesperson cited the US government’s debt burden in explaining the move and said Trump was “committed to making our government more efficient”.
“We are confident our reorganisation efforts will strengthen American diplomatic efforts abroad,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said.
In a post on his X platform last month, Billionaire and Trump aide Elon Musk, who has been overseeing the , said the outlets were “just radical left crazy people talking to themselves”.
US politicians and media commentators have said the move is a body blow to US soft power overseas and would lead to Russian and Chinese government-sponsored outlets expanding their influence to fill the gap.
An opportunity for Australia
In terms of reach and popularity, VOA was ranked as Asia’s most powerful foreign radio broadcaster by a significant margin in the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index last year.
Index author Susannah Patton told SBS News the next most influential broadcasters were Russian and they would likely benefit from US withdrawal.
Patton, who is also director of the foreign policy think tank’s South-East Asia program, said Australia was in a good position to expand its broadcasting influence in Asia and particularly the Pacific, if there was political will to do so.
“I would argue, absolutely, Australia has big advantages in terms of our media, the fact that we have high-quality, trusted sources of news, and the fact that we’re publishing in English means that we’re really well placed to actually have greater impact in terms of broadcasting and dissemination of news and other media content throughout both Asia and the Pacific.
“Unfortunately, a lot of those initiatives have been really underfunded for a long time, and also they’ve kind of been on-again, off-again. And so, in some cases, it has prevented Australian content from really building a strong following,” Patton said.
But she cautioned that, given Australia’s position far lower down on the media power index, it should “be realistic” about the fact it wouldn’t be “able to immediately come in and plug the gap”.
The federal government has committed $68 million over five years to deliver its Indo-Pacific broadcasting strategy, which will largely involve extra funding for ABC broadcasting in the region.
Some Chinese state media has praised Trump’s funding cuts to the US broadcasters, with China’s Global Times calling VOA a “lie factory”.
“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multi-dimensional China, the demonising narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughing stock,” it said in an editorial published on Monday.
Hu Xijin, who was the Global Times’ former editor-in-chief, wrote: “Voice of America has been paralysed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which has been as vicious to China. This is such great news.”
Patton said Chinese broadcasters publish “a real mix” of pro-China stories as well as neutral and local reporting, “but when it does come to an issue that’s a foreign policy priority for China, they’ve got the tools there ready to go to wheel out their preferred narratives”.
What does losing Voice of America mean for the world?
Since its inception to combat Nazi propaganda at the height of World War Two, VOA has grown to become an international media broadcaster, operating in more than 40 languages online, on radio and television, spreading US news narratives into countries lacking a free press.
Rights activists have said the multilingual reporters of both VOA and Radio Free Asia have for decades shone a light onto abuses by China and other authoritarian countries, raising awareness about the plight of oppressed minorities such as China’s Uyghur Muslims.
The National Press Club, a leading representative group for US journalists, said the order “undermines America’s long-standing commitment to a free and independent press”.
Mon Mon Myat, a Burmese journalist, remembers when she first heard a VOA broadcast during the 2021 coup in Myanmar, when the government shut down the internet. It “felt like a light had been switched on” in the darkness, she told Reuters.
“These programs were created to provide information to people living under dictatorships. Shutting them down only helps dictatorship and junta regimes grow,” she said.
Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, said the moves against VOA and other broadcasters would “severely weaken the US’ ability to compete” with China’s ruling party and “ultimately make us less safe”.
Patton said that, although times have changed and people don’t sit around the radio every night to consume news, the recent cuts would still leave a significant gap.
“Radio Free Asia and VOA in particular really did cover stories that no one else was looking at — about human rights defenders, about illegal and corrupt activities taking place in authoritarian and repressive regimes,” she said.
“So it also helped bring some of those stories and issues to life, but in a way that I don’t see any other outlet actually doing.”
With additional reporting by Reuters.
