Following President Trump’s executive order terminating grants awarded through the US Agency for Global Media , ARTICLE 19 urges governments and regional and international institutions to support the outlets affected by the funding cuts.
The outlets affected are Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Liberty, Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. All of these outlets now urgently need support to protect independent media for a global audience of hundreds of millions of people, with little to no access to independent news.
International press freedom and journalism organisations warned that the safety of the journalists working for these outlets that have been ‘defunded’ will be put at risk. In particular, it has sparked fears for the safety of US Agency for Gobal Media staff currently detained abroad in countries openly hostile to press freedom and freedom of expression: Belarus, Cambodia, China, North Korea, Laos, Russia, and Vietnam.
Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, Quinn McKew said, ‘Solidarity and support is vital at a time when threats to independent media and violence and intimidation against journalists are on the rise. We need to create a stronger independent media ecosystem as a cornerstone of democracy, and it is our duty, and the duty of our elected leaders, to protect it.’
Advocates for press freedom, including a group of European parliamentarians who have committed to collectively working to bolster democratic institutions and support the rule of law, as well as reform European institutions, have called for the European Union to take ‘immediate action’ to support RFE/Rl. Support, they say, ‘could involve direct funding, facilitating partnerships, or integrating these entities into existing EU frameworks dedicated to promoting media pluralism and freedom’.
The Czech Republic’s Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský urged the European Union to help maintain the operations of RFE/RL, which are headquartered in Prague. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called Radio Free Europe ‘a beacon of democracy’.
The Association for International Broadcasting also warned that China, Russia and Iran would likely seize the shortwave frequencies that the US-funded broadcasters had used for their transmissions and said that the transmissions of other international broadcasters who use VOA transmitting stations are likely to face restrictions.
On Friday 14 March, US President Donald Trump signed the executive order instructing the US Agency for Global Media to terminate multiple grants to outlets delivering news and information in print, radio, internet, and television services in at least 50 languages. For decades, those outlets have been delivering independent reporting, leading the pushback against censorship, and countering information manipulation from China, Russia, Belarus, and other countries.
The move will effectively hand power to authoritarian regimes that seek to control the information ecosystem and disseminate content that rejects fundamental human rights and the rule of law.
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