More than 1,300 staff placed on administrative leave as White House accuses VOA of being anti-Trump, "radical" and "leftist".

US President Donald Trump has signed an order to strip back the federally-funded news organisation Voice of America, accusing it of being “anti-Trump” and “radical”.

A White House statement said the order would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”, and included quotes from politicians and right-wing media railing against the “leftist”, “partisan” VOA.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
      45·
      20 hours ago

      I know foreign people who listened to VoA, and now it won’t be there anymore for them.

      Stuff like this is a perfect example of how little Trump understands soft power. That was an outlet for American ideals (ok, propaganda) and American culture to diffuse across the world. Seeing how power abhors a vacuum, I won’t be surprised when China increasingly fills this void.

      • NJSpradlin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        19 hours ago

        Remember, Trump isn’t dancing by his own tune. Who stands to benefit the most from the US undoing their relationships, contracts, defense agreements, and soft power agendas?

        Then also remember that at the rate we’re moving, the 1st amendment is or will be dead very soon. Even this comment could end up with me being blacked bagged after not too long.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
        5·
        19 hours ago

        I won’t be surprised when China increasingly fills this void.

        The language barrier makes that unlikely. I think this one is going to remain empty for a while.

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      18 hours ago

      DW still does very limited shortwave in Africa, I guess they’ll be happy to take over time/frequency slots but let’s face it the amount of people that you can only reach via short wave is dwindling, they mostly switched to satellite. They rather feed into the local FM broadcast network, and of course you can stream over the internet.

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
        52·
        18 hours ago

        but let’s face it the amount of people that you can only reach via short wave is dwindling, they mostly switched to satellite. They rather feed into the local FM broadcast network, and of course you can stream over the internet.

        You would actually be surprised how many poor regions in Central and South America as well as in Africa and Central Asia actually rely on shortwave still.

        A lot of it is Christian and right-wing broadcasts, but still, it’s used more than you would think. Not everyone can afford expensive satellite rigs to receive.

        This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

        • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          2 hours ago

          The point is rather if you’re operating an FM transmitter, you not only have the money for a satellite dish and DVB-S decoder you already have one, and FM radios are dirt cheap. The electronics for short wave certainly aren’t more expensive but you’ll need a proper antenna. Meanwhile, much of Africa actually has quite decent mobile phone coverage, there’s some piss-poor countries and large areas of nothing, generally desert, but overall, if there’s people, there’s probably reception. Their whole banking system works via mobile phone.