Radio Free Asia, founded nearly three decades ago to report on China and other Asian countries without independent media, said Wednesday it will halt production after the US government ceased funding.
The broadcaster had already laid off or furloughed more than 90 percent of staff and drastically scaled back production since President Donald Trump’s administration in March axed most money to US government-funded media.
Long a thorn in Beijing’s side, RFA’s closure comes just as Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping on an Asia trip and looks for better relations.
Some of Trump’s cuts were successfully challenged before courts, but Radio Free Asia faced a new halt to funding due to the shutdown of the federal government, which has lasted nearly a month.
RFA said it would have no choice but to halt all news production effective Friday, the first time it has done so since it went on air in 1996.
Bay Fang, the president and CEO of RFA, said the decision means that remaining money can go to severance packages for staff who will now be formally let go.
“Our strategy all along has been to protect our people for as long as possible,” she told AFP.
She said that Radio Free Asia was open to receiving new new revenue streams so it could resume.
“We’re trying to preserve what we would need to start back up,” Fang said.
“I do feel like it’s a fight against the clock. We have to get this funding as quickly as possible,” she said.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which was founded during the Cold War to broadcast inside the Soviet bloc and was a loose inspiration for RFA, has survived in part due to pledges of support by European governments led by the Czech Republic.
Voice of America, which unlike the others was directly part of the US government, ground to a halt immediately after the Trump cuts, with its English-language website still featuring a top story on US lawmakers averting a government shutdown — in March.
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