Global Times hails US president’s order to strip back government funding to news organisations he deems ‘radical’
Chinese state media has reacted gleefully to the Trump administration’s decision to slash government funding to media organisations such as Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA).
The Global Times, a daily English-language tabloid and Chinese Communist party mouthpiece, celebrated the cuts to the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees broadcasters such as VOA and RFA.
“When it comes to China-related reporting, VOA has an appalling track record,” the Global Times said in an editorial on Monday.
“From smearing human rights in China’s Xinjiang … to hyping up disputes in the South China Sea … from fabricating the so-called China virus narrative to promoting the claim of China’s ‘overcapacity’, almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it,” the editorial said.
The Beijing Daily, a newspaper run by the Chinese Communist party (CCP), also published a column commending the cuts.
The schadenfreude comes after US president Donald Trump signed an order gutting USAGM and instructing it to reduce its operations to the bare minimum mandated by the law. He accused VOA of being “radical” and “anti-Trump”.
