The administration of President Donald Trump on Sunday began mass layoffs in Voice of America and other means financed by the United States, making clear its intention of the intestinal exits seen for a long time as criticism for US influence.
Just one day after all employees were left as a license, the staff who worked contractual received an email that notified them that they were fired at the end of March.
Email, confirmed to AFP For several employees, they told contractors that “you must stop working immediately and you are not allowed to access any building or system of agencies.”
Contractors constitute much of VoaThe workforce and dominate staff in language services that are not English, although recent figures were not immediately available.
Many contractors are not American citizens, which means that they probably depend on their work that will soon dissipate so that the visas remain in the United States.
Most full time Voa The personnel, who have more legal protections, were not completed immediately, but remains administrative license and have been told not to work.
Voice of AmericaCreated during World War II, transmitted throughout the world in 49 languages with the mission of reaching countries without freedom of media.
Liam Scott, a Voa The journalist who covers freedom of the press and misinformation, said he was notified that he also informed that he was being fired as of March 31.
The destruction of the Trump administration of Voa And brothers points of sale “are part of their efforts to dismantle the government more widely, but it is also part of the broader assault of the administration to press freedom and the media,” he wrote in X.
“I have covered the freedom of the press for a long time, and I have never seen something like what happened in the United States in recent months.”
With Voa In Limbo, some of their services have changed to play music due to lack of new programming.
Scanning cuts
Trump signed an executive order on Friday VoaThe American matrix agency for global media in its latest sweeping cuts to the Federal Government.
The agency had 3,384 employees in fiscal year 2023. He had requested $ 950 million for the current fiscal year.
Scan cuts also freeze Radio Free Europe/Radio Libertadformed in the Cold War to reach the old Soviet block, and Radio Free Asiaestablished to provide reports to China, North Korea and other Asian countries with very restricted means.
Other points of sale financed with US funds. Include FARDA RADIOa Persian language station blocked by the Government of Iran, and AlhurraAn established Arab language network after Iraq’s invasion against highly critical coverage by Qatar. Al Jazeera.
The White House said in a statement on Saturday that “taxpayers are no longer in the hook of radical propaganda”, a position was rarely leveled before Trump in The Staid Voafor a long time aimed at counteracting communism.
Trump regularly criticizes his media coverage and has questioned the wisdom of financing Voa When you have a “Firewall” that guarantees its editorial independence.
Trump, with the Council of the Technological Billionaire Elon Musk, has promised to drastically reduce government size to give way to tax cuts. His administration has already finished the vast majority of foreign development assistance and moved to eviscerate the Department of Education.
The movements occur when China and Russia invest strongly in the state media to compete with Western narratives, and China often offers free content to the departures in the developing world.
In an editorial about the disappearance of VoaChina’s State-Administer Global times He said that “the monopoly of information held by some traditional Western media is being destroyed.”
“As more Americans begin to break their coconut and see a real world and a multidimensional China, demonizing narratives propagated by Voa Finally it will become a laugh of time, ”he said.
