President Donald Trump’s attempt to dismantle the Voice of America is a mistake. I know because I ran VOA East Asia for 10 years and experienced firsthand how VOA benefits America. We must reverse this decision while we can.
VOA sets people free. America took root under a heartless king. It is only natural that two centuries later, VOA should be a powerful voice for the world’s oppressed masses. Take Pol Pot. He was one of the 20th century’s biggest mass murderers for killing more than a million Cambodians. Late in his life, defeated and under house arrest in a remote jungle village, he poisoned himself after hearing a VOA report that a date had been set for his trial for war crimes. His wife said he listened regularly to VOA and couldn’t bring himself to believe VOA would broadcast something that wasn’t true. Armies searched for him in vain. Their bullets did no good. It took a bulletin of truth from VOA to end him.
Some argue that VOA helps the world become more like us. This is true. Our allies around Asia listen to VOA news for insight on how we do things. They then take our best ideas and discard the others. There is no harm in this. Americans benefit when Vietnam’s Constitution calls for a government “of, by, and for the people”; or when China unveils a new forest service that looks a lot like our own National Park Service; or when new stock markets follow our rules; or when foreign players play our national pastimes well enough to produce top-tier players like Yao Ming and Shohei Ohtani.
Others believe VOA’s strength is being a moral force for what is right. This, too, is true. Although VOA doesn’t take sides, it reports facts that audiences use to decide for themselves between right and wrong. Just by being there and reporting the news reliably every day, VOA encourages people to think before acting.
Still others believe VOA encourages the growth of honest, reliable, comprehensive and unbiased news reporting. Even crusty censors in China’s Public Security Bureau admit they learned their English listening to VOA Special English before they were free to travel, study abroad, learn our ways, play our sports, and asked to censor our books and movies. When the Cultural Revolution fog lifted, VOA was there to give them good information.
Speaking strictly for myself, I believe VOA’s greatest strength is its staff’s commitment to the highest standards of journalism. We feel VOA privileges us to lead purpose-driven lives because the information we give empowers our families, friends, and neighbors back home to pursue happiness the American way.
It is distressing to think VOA might not be there the next time we want to make a dictator fear us, or when an iron-fisted dictator starts to round up people he doesn’t like, or after an autocrat cuts his people off from hearing what Americans are saying about him. VOA is good for America. We should be good to it.
Fortunately, a judge has temporarily restrained Trump’s attempt to close VOA. So at least for the time being, VOA is anything but silent. There is more to come. Don’t touch that dial!
Honolulu resident Jay Henderson is former director of Voice of America East Asia Division.