‘Chinese State Media Cheered’: VOA Director Warns Trump Admin Boosting Dictators By Taking Down Network
CBS News’s Nancy Cordes interviewed Voice of America Director Michael Abramowitz this week about the Trump administration putting him and his entire staff on administrative leave, taking the pro-America network off the air.
“This is what overseas viewers might have seen on Voice of America last week, and this is what they saw today. A short 30-second video promising that VOA will represent America, though how and when is unclear,” Cordes began.
“I got an email from HR on Saturday morning, that’s when I first learned what was going on,” Abramowitz says as Cordes noted, “Michael Abramowitz is the director of VOA. He and all 1,300 employees were placed on administrative leave this weekend after the White House labeled VOA radical propaganda.”
“I really believe that at VOA, the journalists’ by-laws, if they have a bias, they hate totalitarianism, they hate tyranny, they hate authoritarianism,” Abramowitz added as Cordes explained some of the history behind the network:
VOA was founded in 1942, broadcasting behind enemy lines and later behind the Iron Curtain.
Today, VOA reaches about 360 million people around the world each week and is translated into about 50 different languages. The budget is just over a quarter billion dollars a year.
“Our principal mission is really to tell the story of America,” Abramowitz then tells Cordes.
“So you’re getting through to an audience that otherwise might only hear propaganda about the US,” she notes as he agrees, “That’s the idea.”
Cordes then explained, “Trump officials say VOA has been too critical of the commander in chief” and noted that “Chinese state media cheered the halting of VOA, calling the outlet a live factory with an appalling track record.”
“Right now, VOA is shuttered and it could be a major, really self-inflicted blow to the national security interests of the United States,” Abramowitz warned.
“Why is that?” Cordes asked.
“Because it’s an incredibly important tool for basic combating Chinese, Russian, Iranian disinformation, for telling the truth to people living under tyranny. If America pulls off the playing field and cedes it to our adversaries, then they’re going to be telling the narratives that people around the world are going to be hearing. And that can’t be good for America,” Abramowitz replied.
“They’re going to be hearing an anti-American message?” Cordes pressed.
“They’re going to be hearing an anti-American narrative, and we need to fight that,” Abramowitz concluded.
Watch the clip above via CBS News.
