Epoch Times - Is there value to preserving the VOA? | Cleo Paskal
Aired: 2025-03-27
Duration: 02:44


=== Funding Cut for Solomon Islands Journalists (02:44) ===

[00:00:00]  Carrie Lake initially talked about, for example, setting up a dedicated unit within VOA to investigate Chinese illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive activity throughout the region.
[00:00:14]  And VOA is very well placed to connect those dots.
[00:00:16]  It's hard for, you know better than anybody.
[00:00:20]  When you cover the CCP, your advertising can get cut, you're marginalized, you're discredited.
[00:00:28]  So imagine if you're a little newspaper in Solomon Islands and you want to cover what China is doing in your country.
[00:00:36]  It's nearly impossible.
[00:00:38]  And I'm using that as a specific case because there is a very good news organization in Solomon Islands called In-Depth Solomons that was beat.
[00:00:47]  Being funded in part through USAID, it was going to other agencies and that was going to that.
[00:00:56]  And they're having a hard time now.
[00:00:58]  They can't do that sort of coverage.
[00:01:00]  They're not going to be able to get local advertising to support themselves.
[00:01:03]  So they were doing what basically VOA should have been doing anyway, but they were doing it on the ground in their own voice and with incredible courage.
[00:01:15]  Some of those journalists have now been laid off.
[00:01:18]  What typically happens in those situations is the pro-PRC government offers them a job within the government.
[00:01:25]  Come and do marketing for us or come and do PR for us.
[00:01:30]  You've got a journalist who has a family.
[00:01:34]  Their parents might need medical care.
[00:01:37]  Their kids need school fees.
[00:01:40]  The source of funding has been cut off.
[00:01:43]  They need To survive.
[00:01:45]  So they get diverted into the system.
[00:01:51]  They know it.
[00:01:53]  Doesn't make them feel good.
[00:01:54]  But they need to be a good parent.
[00:01:57]  They need to be a good child.
[00:01:59]  And this is their only option for doing it.
[00:02:02]  So that's an example of where the cuts are directly hurting Chinese coverage.
[00:02:06]  For example, Broca's story about how the Minister of Police in Solomons had a bank account with a Chinese national and the son of the former Prime Minister of Solomons, which is the one that switched the country from Taiwan to China, in Singapore.
[00:02:21]  That is an incredibly important piece of information that changes the way you look at policing, for example, in Solomon Islands.
[00:02:29]  It wouldn't have happened if they wouldn't have been getting funding from the U.S. Now, there have been different sorts of funding to achieve very specific political goals, and that's the problem.
[00:02:41]  It sort of all became kind of enmeshed.