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The Czech Republic strives for EU support to save Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which works after Trump’s administration has reduced the financing of the world television company.
Foreign Minister Jan Lipovsky said that RFE/RL, based in Prague, “is one of the few reliable sources in dictatorships such as Iran, Belarus and Afghanistan.”
In Eastern Europe, the government funded by the US government has reached millions of listeners during the Cold War, helping to spread democratic values, while the communist authorities have tightly controlled the local media.
Elon Musk, who is responsible for reducing the cost of Donald Trump, fired RFE/RL as “radical, who left the crazy, talk to them, while filling $ 1 ml./Year of taxpayers’ money.”
But the President and the CEO of RFE/RL Stephen Kapus said that in the Accelete Grant Agreement “will be a great gift to the enemy of America.”
“Iranian Ayatolal, Chinese communist leaders and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk will celebrate the death of RFE/RL in 75 years,” he added.
The concern of Mr. Kapus repeated the independent committee on the defense of journalists (CPJ), which complained that thousands of journalists would be in short of US financing – and that some work in censorship countries that were already “in danger”.
RFE/RL states that it reaches a weekly audience with almost 50 million people in 23 countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Afghanistan and ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Lipovsky from the Czech Republic said he would discuss with his colleagues of EU foreign ministers, “as at least partially maintaining his broadcasting.”
RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America (VOA) have been based on the financing of the US Agency on Global Media (USAGM).
On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order to cut funding after Musk despised them on X, saying that “close them”.
This step contrasts with the media policy of the authorities in Russia, China and Iran, which have poured funding from their state broadcasters to resist the impact of Western liberalism worldwide.
Most of the full -time VOA staff were put on an administrative vacation, and contractors of the TV and Radio Company, which are dominated by services that do not have English, were fired, AFP reports.
