In his latest attack on public media, Donald Trump has signed an order aimed at dismantling the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the five broadcast agencies it supports, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
Voice of America was viewed by successive U.S. administrations as vital to the promotion of democracy.
Some criticised it as a mouthpiece for the USA – but that’s not why Donald Trump is seeking to destroy this 80 year old institution. He accused VOA of being “radical” and “anti-Trump”.
Like Australia’s ABC, the USAGM is one of several international public service media outlets based in western democracies. It is part of the Public Media Alliance and largely funded by taxpayers to uphold democratic ideals of universal access to news and information.
The cuts are part of Trump’s wider campaign to weaken the news media and bring it to heel.
Less than three months after taking office Trump launched legal action against some media outlets whose coverage he claimed was unfair. He banned the Associated Press from covering White House events over its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
Trump almost certainly plans more litigation against recalcitrant news outlets. He has claimed repeatedly that outlets like CNN and MSNBC are corrupt and illegal.
“It has to stop, it has to be illegal, it’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other,” he said in one controversial speech.
Believe the rhetoric.
Trump also wants to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the independent company that was created and funded by Congress to support public media in the United States.
In this he is supported by many Republicans. A U.S. House subcommittee has called the chief executives of the nation's two largest public broadcasters to Capitol Hill to address a hearing led by Marjorie Taylor Greene. The title of the hearing gives a hint at its aim - Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable.
"I want to hear why NPR and PBS think they should ever again receive a single cent from the American taxpayer," Greene said in a statement ahead of the hearing. We could be forgiven for thinking that she's already decided the hearing's outcome.
This is a grim time for US media. Trump's attacks would once have been unthinkable in the country that champions free speech in its constitution.
So we must ask - could it happen in Australia?
A independent and transparent media is essential to a functioning democracy – or as we say at ABC Friends: Democracy depends on a strong ABC!
The ABC is worth fighting for.
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