US President Donald Trump has moved to shut down a number of prominent US-funded international media outlets, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as he continues his efforts to cut government spending and reshape US foreign policy. In a statement on March 15, the White House said the move “will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”
Critics fear the move will strengthen authoritarian regimes around the world, leaving millions of people in closed societies without access to independent information. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Director General Steve Kapus called the move “a huge gift to America’s enemies.” He warned that the closure would weaken the United States and would be celebrated by “Iranian ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk.”
Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza was one of many activists on the front lines of the fight against resurgent authoritarianism who expressed alarm at the closures. For many people living in authoritarian societies, outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have become objective and credible alternatives to what is often a tightly censored domestic information space. Kara-Murza suggested that the closures of these outlets would be toasted in Moscow and beyond. “Another bottle of champagne has been opened in the Kremlin,” he joked.
As expected, the closure of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America was greeted with enthusiasm on Russian state television in prime time. Margarita Simonyan, who heads Russia’s flagship international media platform RT and the state media group Rossiya Segodnya, called the news “a stunning decision by Trump.” Meanwhile, fellow Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov took a break from fantasies of a nuclear attack on Britain to mock the 1,000-plus journalists who now face an uncertain future. “You are vile, lying, pathetic traitors to the motherland. Go and die in a ditch,” he commented.
For decades, authoritarian regimes from Nazi Germany to Communist China have fought the influence of independent, US-funded media and taken various measures to try to block it. Voice of America was first created in 1942 at the height of World War II, while Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was created in 1950 during the early years of the Cold War to provide uncensored information to people living behind the Iron Curtain.
Initially focused on radio broadcasting, these channels and their many affiliates have evolved into multimedia platforms that reach hundreds of millions of people each week. This was never a purely altruistic endeavor; proponents argue that providing access to objective information abroad strengthens the U.S. position internationally.
Until their recent dramatic closure, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and many other regional pro-democracy platforms like Radio Free Asia were overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). While they have often been the subject of debate in the United States over allegations of political bias and doubts about their continued effectiveness, recent research has shown that they remain widely recognized by international audiences as important sources of unfiltered information.
Despite its funding from the U.S. government, the network adhered to a code of journalistic integrity and objectivity similar to the charters governing other state-run media outlets, such as the BBC. This independence from government editorial oversight sometimes got it into trouble with U.S. officials. Some in the Trump White House tried to justify the decision to cut funding by arguing that these state-funded broadcasters had become overly politicized and no longer represented the values the new administration wanted to project.
The international influence of USAGM’s stable of media outlets is perhaps most evident in the number of journalists jailed or otherwise persecuted by authoritarian regimes for their work. Currently, ten journalists and staffers from USAGM-affiliated agencies are being held in countries including Belarus, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Myanmar. Following news of the closures, Ukrainian journalist Stanislav Aseyev wrote that he had been tortured with electric shocks while in the custody of Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, in part because he had previously worked for Radio Liberty.
The timing of Trump’s decision to shut down the US international broadcast network could hardly be worse. In today’s increasingly multipolar world, the information space is a critical front in the escalating global struggle between rival democratic and authoritarian camps. China and Russia have long recognized this, both of which devote huge annual budgets to supporting sophisticated international media operations in a variety of guises. The US was once seen as the world leader in this soft-power contest, but suddenly that is no longer the case. Generations of autocratic regimes have failed to silence the Voice of America, but now the Trump administration has done so itself.
Mercedes Sapuppo is Associate Director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.
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