Radio Free Asia (RFA) will suspend all news operations on Friday, citing financial collapse brought on by funding cuts under President Donald Trump and the ongoing US government shutdown.
Bay Fang, RFA’s president and CEO, said in a statement that “uncertainty about our budgetary future” had forced the outlet to “suspend all remaining news content production.”
“In an effort to conserve limited resources on hand and preserve the possibility of restarting operations should consistent funding become available, RFA is taking further steps to responsibly shrink its already reduced footprint,” Fang said Wednesday.
The outlet will close its overseas bureaus, formally lay off staff, and pay severance to employees who have been on unpaid leave since March, when the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) “unlawfully terminated RFA’s Congressionally appropriated grant,” Fang said.
Trump signed an executive order on March 14 effectively dismantling USAGM, the government body overseeing RFA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Voice of America (VOA). Since then, RFA has furloughed three-quarters of its US staff and terminated most of its foreign contractors, later axing key language services, including Tibetan, Burmese, and Uighur.
Mass layoffs have also hit VOA, which Trump called a “total left-wing disaster.” Nearly all of its 1,400 employees were placed on paid leave in March, leaving the broadcaster operating on a skeleton crew.
Trump has long railed against the US-funded media networks, calling them a “waste of government resources” and accusing them of political bias.
Founded in 1996, RFA has reported from some of Asia’s most repressive environments, broadcasting in multiple local languages to audiences in China, North Korea, Myanmar, and elsewhere. Its Uighur service, the world’s only independent Uyghur-language outlet, and its North Korea desk are among its best-known projects.
“Make no mistake, authoritarian regimes are already celebrating RFA’s potential demise,” RFA executive editor Rosa Hwang warned in an announcement published on the outlet’s website. “Independent journalism is at the core of RFA. For the first time since RFA’s inception almost 30 years ago, that voice is at risk.”
RFE/Radio Liberty, which shares the same funding structure, confirmed this week that it received its final round of federal funding in September but said it plans to “continue reaching our audiences for the foreseeable future.”
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