7 Nov 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, News and features, Statements
During a one-day mission to Budapest on 22 October 2025, partner organisations of the Council of Europe’s Platform for the safety of journalists met with journalists, media representatives, legal experts and representatives of civil society to discuss key issues affecting media freedom, rule of law and free expression. Stakeholders described a severely restricted media environment within which independent journalism operates, while also highlighting the deep political polarisation shaping the run-up to the expected April 2026 elections.
In the past year, the ruling party Fidesz has maintained the most sophisticated system of media capture and control yet seen within the European Union, constructed through sustained dominance over public media, continued consolidation of private outlets under allied ownership, and persistent distortion of the market through control over state advertising, with severe consequences for media pluralism and independent journalism.
While online harassment against independent media has long been documented in Hungary, including campaigns aimed at representatives of the Platform partners, the polarised and divisive nature of the election campaign has increased the severity and nature of the threats. Multiple stakeholders reported targeted harassment and smear campaigns directed at independent journalists and outlets by representatives and supporters of the two most prominent parties and media outlets deemed friendly to the ruling party, many of which are owned by the Government-linked KESMA foundation. The partners were alarmed by reports that journalists have been smeared online and in the media as being affiliated with opposing political parties in an attempt to discredit them as trusted and independent sources of public interest information.
The partners also sought to assess the impact that the draft bill on the Transparency in Public Life had on the work of journalists, media outlets and civil society. If passed, it would have allowed for the blacklisting, financial restriction and potential closure of media outlets receiving foreign funds, having a deeply chilling effect on media. For those able to remain open, they may be forced into exile to be able to continue reporting. The mission heard that the bill remains shelved, with no current indication Fidesz plans to reintroduce it ahead of the 2026 election.
However, the ruling party’s two-thirds parliamentary majority and recent extension of the state of emergency mean the bill could be passed immediately, without public consultation. Many representatives spoke of the uncertainty this proposed bill caused, as well as the resources expended by many to establish contingency plans to ensure they can continue their vital work. With its reintroduction still a possibility, the bill continues to pose an existential threat to what remains of Hungary’s free press.
The Platform further notes that although the foreign funding bill was withdrawn, the Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO), the Government office that would be charged with overseeing the proposed law, has spearheaded the attempted delegitimization of media which receive any form of foreign funding or grant, portraying them as foreign agents and traitors. The SPO’s reports have fed wider online harassment and hate against journalists working for these titles online and on social media, including referring to independent journalists as “political pressure groups”. The SPO has also supported campaigns led by the ruling Fidesz party to target journalists and civil society such as the smearing of leading independent outlets and NGOs.
The Platform’s partners are also concerned about the rise of legal harassment directed at journalists and media outlets, including abusive claims based on GDPR regulations or press correction procedures. While we support processes to hold journalists to account and ensure inaccuracies are addressed, we are concerned by reports that this process has been used to target factual if critical reporting. With the capture of Hungary’s courts by the ruling party a persistent issue, such legal harassment can have a disproportionate impact on public interest reporting.
No progress has been made by Hungarian authorities in aligning domestic law with the EU’s European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) since its full entry to effect in August 2025. Those we met confirmed the absence of any engagement with media outlets or civil society towards this goal. Instead, the Hungarian government has presented the regulation as an authoritarian dictat from Brussels and has challenged the EMFA before the European Court of Justice, seeking to have it nullified.
Following revelations about the abuse of zero-click spyware Pegasus against multiple journalists by Hungarian intelligence services in 2021, initial investigations by the prosecutors failed to provide answers and, to date, no individual or authority has been held responsible for these attacks on journalistic privacy and source protection. Unjustified national security justifications have been used to shield the responsible state institutions from accountability, resulting in a state of impunity.
Beyond such surveillance, the partners also discussed the threat of Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, a form of digital censorship which left the websites of more than 40 different media offline for several hours after a spate of attacks in recent years. Although police arrested an individual they claim is responsible earlier this year, it is unclear when they will face trial and questions remain over whether the cyber-attacks were carried out with external coordination and resources.
The Platform partners note that after the mission ended, the Hungarian portfolio of Ringier, a Swiss media company, which includes the most popular tabloid, Blikk, was purchased by Indamedia, a pro-government media group. The acquisition, made ahead of next year’s election, is yet another example of the consolidation of media under ownership of private business interests close to the government and looks likely to further erode media pluralism in Hungary ahead of the vote.
Despite severe pressures on media freedom, quality and independent journalism continues to exist in Hungary and a cohort of outlets maintain a strong commitment to fact-based, public interest reporting. This is reinforced by high-levels of public support, which has translated to significant subscription funding and solidarity when an outlet is targeted. However, these outlets continue to face sustained economic, political and legal challenges and their foothold remains extremely fragile.
The platform delegation included representatives from the Platform secretariat, ARTICLE 19, Committee to Protect Journalists, European Broadcasting Union, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, European Federation of Journalists, Index on Censorship, International Federation of Journalists, International Press Institute and Reporters Without Borders.
Prior to the commencement of the mission, partners reached out to organise meetings with the Prime Minister and the SPO. On behalf of the Prime Minister, Zoltan Kovacs confirmed that he was unavailable to meet due to prior commitments, while the partners never received a response from the SPO.
Signed by:
Index on Censorship
ARTICLE 19
International Press Institute (IPI)
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
Justice for Journalists Foundation
Committee to Protect Journalists
European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Rory Peck Trust
Association of European Journalists (AEJ)
PEN International
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
17 Oct 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, France, News and features
It is understandable that we have been distracted by events in the Middle East over the past week. The release of the Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners ahead of a ceasefire in the deadly two-year-long war in Gaza is a potentially epoch-making event – even if not quite the most significant for 3,000 years, as Donald Trump has suggested. But the peace deal has overshadowed events much closer to home.
France has been in a state of political deadlock for months. At the beginning of this month, on 6 October Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu resigned and then found himself reappointed within the week. He is now attempting to avoid votes of no confidence introduced by the far-right National Rally and hard-left France Unbowed by suspending President Macron’s plans for pension reform.
This may all sound very technical and “continental”, but France matters. An unstable France means an unstable Europe. Macron may yet avoid the collapse of his presidency, and with it the Fifth Republic, but he will struggle to stop the slide towards a creeping populism of the right and left.
We ignore what is happening in France at our peril. We have watched the drift towards populism and authoritarianism across Europe. But our nearest neighbour could yet become the latest example of a “hybrid democracy” on the lines of Hungary. Some would say it is already halfway there. This is due, in part, to a phenomenon that has received scant coverage in the UK, possibly because it is such a mouthful in English: the so-called “Bollorisation” of the French media.
The term is named after Vincent Bolloré, sometimes known as “the French Murdoch”, a billionaire whose family-controlled Vivendi group dominates the media on the other side of the Channel. The parallels with Murdoch provide a useful shorthand but Bolloré really is a quite distinct figure whose media organisations directly support the ideology of the French far right. Although he has officially retired, Bolloré’s influence remains significant, and his organisations have been credited with propelling Marine Le Pen’s National Rally into the mainstream.
The beginnings of Bollorisation can be traced back at least ten years to the purchase of the broadcaster Canal+, France’s main pay-to-view channel. The emergence of CNews, a 24-hour right-wing news channel modelled on Fox News smashed the dominance of public broadcaster France TV (which owns France 2 – formerly Antenne 2 – and France 3). Bolloré then began his march through the French media world. His acquisition of Prism Media in 2021 gave him a dominant position in print and digital magazines including business, lifestyle, travel titles and even TV guides. Two years later, after a long battle with the European regulatory authorities, Vivendi purchased the giant French publishing house Hachette, which also owns the publishing group Little, Brown in the USA and the UK. But Bollorisation doesn’t stop there. The far-right billionaire now also owns the radio channel Europe 1, the iconic French celebrity and news magazine Paris Match and France’s only Sunday newspaper, Le Journal de Dimanche, which has shifted its editorial line from the political centre to the far right. Meanwhile, Bolloré also owns the Havas Group, a giant international advertising and PR agency, which helps manage the reputation of the empire.
Investigative journalists and media freedom organisations in Europe have been warning about Bollorisation for years. Mediapart, the independent French investigative publication, has compiled a huge ongoing dossier on the subject. After the French elections last year almost delivered power to the National Rally, Mediapart’s Antton Rouget wrote: “The work of media outlets controlled by the Bolloré Group during those elections set a new precedent: while major corporations have always thrown their weight behind campaigns in a bid to influence public debate, never before had one done so as openly and unapologetically, with the clear aim of helping the far-right into power.”
There are many theories about why France was so vulnerable to Bollorisation. But there is general agreement that the French media was already in the hands of too few people. And when traditional media owners looked at declining advertising revenue they were all too happy to sell. A weak regulatory landscape and Bolloré’s tightly-focused right-wing mission made for a perfect storm.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) which is based in Paris has consistently expressed its concern about Bolloré’s tactics, including the use of the courts to silence investigations into his empire. Earlier this year RSF published a report into the billionaire’s use of non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses to protect him from criticism. The report was commissioned after Jean-Baptiste Rivoire, a former journalist at Canal+, was fined 150,000 euros for questioning Bolloré’s methods in an RSF documentary, Le Système B.
The Heinrich Böll Stiftung which is aligned to Germany’s Green party, has also raised concerns about the crisis of media freedom in France concluding baldly: “France is an outlier among other major European democracies for the mediocrity of its media system and the strong position of the far right within mass media”.
An Atlanticist tendency in the British media and among the political classes means Europe is too often a blind spot. Shamefully few British politicians or journalists speak a European language, and many are focused on Washington politics to the point of obsession. This partly explains why the coverage of France is so poor beyond the heroic efforts of the Paris correspondents and a handful of French commentators based in the UK.
But there really is no excuse. There is a cultural and political crisis in France that deserves our attention. Bollorisation may be a mouthful, but we need to start talking about it, to avoid a different version of the phenomenon happening here.
You may also want to read our recent article on the controversy over Spitting Image’s parody of Paddington. StudioCanal, which is controlled by the Bolloré Group, is pursuing legal action against the comedy programme over its portrayal of the beloved bear.
3 Oct 2025 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features, Yemen
Salim Mohammed was working in an adjacent building when Israeli missiles struck the headquarters of two major Yemeni newspapers on 10 September 2025. The 40-year-old investigative journalist and father of three survived, but watched helplessly as colleagues gathered to watch a Gulf Cup youth football match between Yemen and Saudi Arabia died under the rubble of the main building.
“The explosions were massive. I felt the earth shake,” Salim recalls from Sanaa, where he now works without his camera, laptop, or personal equipment — all buried in the partially destroyed building. “I saw people fall to the ground, smoke covering everything. All my colleagues were under the debris. Some of their bodies remained there for days.”
The airstrikes on the offices of 26 September [named after the starting date of the civil war in the 1960s] and Al-Yemen newspapers killed at least 31 journalists, according to the Houthi-run government, in what local and international media rights organisations described as one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in recent decades. The incident highlights the precarious situation facing Yemeni media workers trapped between Israeli military operations, Houthi authoritarianism, and rival armed factions.
Israel claimed the strike deliberately targeted Houthi media centres, a justification that sparked local and international outrage over civilian casualties masked as military operations. The Committee to Protect Journalists‘ Middle East programme director Sarah Qudah called the strikes “a deeply concerning escalation that expands Israel’s war on journalism beyond the genocide in Gaza.”
“This latest wave of killings is not only a grave violation of international law, but also a terrifying warning to journalists across the region — there is no safe place,” Qudah added.
Hisham Mohammed, a sports journalist since 2004 and father of five who also survived the attack, emphasises that newspaper employees are not participants in political conflict but rather civil servants who have adapted to Yemen’s changing power structures over the past decade.
“We are government employees who previously worked under Ali Abdullah Saleh’s rule, then Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, and currently under Houthi administration,” Hisham explains. “We don’t create editorial policy — we implement it according to the directives of whoever holds power.”
The targeted building housed the newspaper’s archives dating to 1962 and is now completely destroyed. Hisham currently works from home using WhatsApp and other mobile applications to file stories.
Living under permanent threat
The September strikes were not merely an attack on a workplace but a warning to remaining journalists working in Houthi-controlled media institutions, who now operate under constant terror.
Walid Ghalib, 46, a father of six who works in local news at the official Al-Thawra newspaper in Sanaa (who requested his real name to be withheld), describes the pervasive fear: “We constantly worry we’ll be the next target. Previously, during years of Saudi and Emirati airstrikes, we received multiple threats of bombing our newspaper headquarters. We would evacuate our offices whenever we heard reports of potential targeting.”
“Now, after the Israeli strikes and the targeting of our colleagues, some of us only spend three hours at the newspaper headquarters—usually from 4 to 7pm. Others have decided to stay home,” Walid adds.
He emphasises the lack of alternatives: “There is no substitute for this work. There is no longer independent journalism like before. We work according to what newspaper management requests, which in turn follows the directives of the ruling authority.”
Hisham Mahmoud, 38, former editorial director of investigations at 26 September newspaper in Marib city—controlled by the internationally recognized government—presents a bleak picture of eroding journalistic independence in Yemen. Having moved between Sanaa, Taiz, and Marib throughout his career, he witnessed firsthand how editorial freedom disappeared.
“I worked as an investigative journalist at the official Al-Thawra newspaper in Sanaa since 2012. After the Houthis seized Sanaa in late 2014, new editorial policies were imposed on the newspaper, our salaries were cut by more than 70%, and I couldn’t continue,” Hisham recalls.
He moved to Taiz, his birthplace, and attempted to write about the war raging through the city’s streets between Houthis and other local factions. “I didn’t side with anyone, not my governorate’s residents and neighbours, nor those bombing them in my reports. I focused on the humanitarian suffering the war inflicted on citizens. But that didn’t please the newspaper leadership in Sanaa, and I was fired in early 2017.”
Hisham then moved to Marib, where he was appointed investigations director for the government-created version of 26 September newspaper in 2018. However, he faced similar exclusion due to views misaligned with imposed editorial direction.
“Every party in the Yemeni war wants journalists to be mouthpieces. Independent media has been completely killed, and real content is not allowed. This transforms journalism into a tool for mobilization and incitement, destroying what remains of opportunities for societal peace,” Hisham explains.
Arrests and kidnappings across battle lines
Beyond bombardment, Yemeni journalists face systematic repression from warring factions. On 23 September 2025, the human rights group SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties documented the kidnapping of journalist Majed Zayed in Sanaa, noting it came two days after he posted a patriotic song celebrating the Yemeni flag on Facebook, coinciding with the anniversary of the 26 September Revolution. The organisation confirmed his fate remains unknown.
In May 2025, Reporters Without Borders documented the detention of eight journalists by Houthis in Hodeidah city — one of the broadest arrest campaigns since the 2022 UN-brokered ceasefire under the Stockholm Agreement.
Independent journalist Mohammed Al-Mayahi was kidnapped from his home in September 2024 and sentenced in May 2025 to 18 months imprisonment by a Houthi court on charges of harming national security. He was fined five million rials ($10,000) and forced to sign a pledge never to write again.
In internationally recognised government-controlled areas, conditions appear no better. The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate condemned the Southern Transitional Council militia’s raid on Aden Al-Ghad newspaper headquarters in Aden on 27 September 2025, and the arrest of editor-in-chief Fathi bin Lazraq before his later release and the newspaper’s forced closure. The syndicate considered this a violation of press freedom, holding the Transitional Council fully responsible.
In June, the State Security Prosecution in Hadramawt issued arrest warrants for journalists Sabri bin Makhashin and Muzahim Bajabir over Facebook posts criticising local authority corruption. Despite the Interior Ministry’s decision to release Bajabir, the Hadramawt governor refuses to implement the order.
Multiple repressive laws
According to human rights activist Tawfiq Al-Humaidi, president of SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties, Houthis have exploited the “Anti-Normalization with Israel Law” passed in December 2023 to suppress any dissenting voice.
“The law was expanded to include anyone expressing discontent with living conditions or criticising the group’s performance—transforming from a political law into a tool for criminalising opinion. The concepts of treason and betrayal were broadened to muzzle mouths and prosecute journalists outside the legal framework,” Al-Humaidi explains.
He says that those working in official media in Houthi-controlled areas are government employees subject to group-loyal leadership, following directives from Al-Masirah channel — the Houthis’ strongest media arm — which determines general direction for other institutions.
“In a country suffering the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, Yemeni journalists are besieged from all sides: aerial bombardment targets them, arbitrary arrests from de facto authorities, and persecution from the internationally recognised government. Between the Houthis’ and the government’s jaws, between incitement rhetoric and battlefields, truth is lost and free pens are broken,” Al-Humaidi adds.
The convergence of military strikes, authoritarian repression, and economic collapse has created an environment where journalism in Yemen has become, as survivor Salim Mohammed describes, “a profession written in ink but paid for in blood”.
The 10 September attack represents a chilling expansion of threats facing regional journalists. For Yemeni media workers specifically, it compounds years of systematic persecution, arbitrary detention, and forced self-censorship under multiple armed authorities claiming legitimacy.
As freedoms recede and journalism transforms into a mobilisation tool, truth remains the greatest casualty in Yemen. Journalists who once documented their country’s rich history and diverse voices now operate in fear—unable to report freely, unable to remain silent, and increasingly unable to survive.
10 Sep 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, Burma, Cambodia, News and features, United States, Vietnam, Volume 54.02 Summer 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 2 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Land of the Free?: Trump’s war on speech at home and abroad, published on 21 July 2025. Read more about the issue here.
Kyaw Min Htun, a Burmese editor and reporter, moved from his home in Myanmar to the USA more than 20 years ago, seeking a place where he could finally report freely. For two decades, the USA provided that, allowing him to secure various roles at Radio Free Asia (RFA), which is based in Washington DC. On 15 March, however, that all changed.
Alongside about 75% of his US-based colleagues, Htun was told not to go into work. His job was one of thousands of casualties of president Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts to government-backed initiatives.
“Our hands are tied and we cannot do our jobs,” Htun, who was deputy director of RFA when he was furloughed, told Index.
At the beginning of May, RFA announced it would be terminating the contracts of more than 90% of its US-based staff and shutting down several language services. Days later, this move was delayed due to an administrative stay from the courts.
On 14 March, Trump had signed an executive order to stop federal funding to the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees US-funded international media. It came amid a broader assessment by the State Department of all overseas spending that has so far led to the termination of the country’s support for more than 80% of the global aid projects it had backed.
USAGM financially supports RFA and other media platforms including Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Office of Cuba Broadcasting and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Its aim – since its inception with VOA in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda as a form of soft power – has always been “to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy”. Collectively, USAGM outlets have created news in 64 languages, reaching 427 million people each week.
In many countries, such outlets are a lifeline, offering a window into what’s happening at home and abroad amid wars and famines, disasters and conflicts.
RFA – which was broadcasting in nine languages in China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and North Korea – has been a fixture in Asia’s media landscape since 1996, when it was established to counter propaganda. It has won awards for covering under-reported issues, including the plight of North Korean escapees, the impact of the civil war in Myanmar and the treatment of the Uyghurs.
The Trump administration, however, sees VOA and RFA as “radical propaganda”, and what it calls “anti-Trump content”.
Elon Musk – the tech billionaire and, at the time, a senior adviser to the president – said on his social media platform X that RFA and RFE were made up of “radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1billion [a] year of US taxpayer money”.
While support for some outlets could resume amid several lawsuits that have been lodged against USAGM and the government, many are worried about the ramifications already being felt by journalists, citizens and democracy as a whole in Asia.
The fallout
Aleksandra Bielakowska, director of advocacy and assistance at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told Index that many of RFA’s regional reporters were journalists working in exile or underground in places such as Cambodia or Myanmar.
Journalists including Mech Dara, who exposed trafficking and scam compounds in Cambodia, and Sai Zaw Thaike, who reported on the mistreatment of inmates inside Myanmar prisons, are being persecuted by their governments. These journalists operate clandestinely to ensure stories from their countries are told, free from state influence.
The funding cut meant RFA had to sever the contracts of most of its local freelancers, exposing them in a region where press freedom is rapidly in decline. Myanmar, China, North Korea and Vietnam are among the top 10 worst countries for journalist safety. Last year, 20 journalists were killed in Asia (up from 12 in 2023) and 30% of global arrests of journalists took place on the continent.
Several efforts are being made to curtail media freedoms in countries across Southeast Asia in particular, said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Vietnam is one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists; in Tibet, the Chinese government forbids foreign media from entering; and in Hong Kong, since the adoption of Beijing’s National Security Law in 2020, many outlets have been forced to close and their journalists arrested on national security charges.
Bielakowska said there was currently little protection available for journalists in the region, and the situation could get worse when “authoritarian regimes […] don’t see any opposition from democratic countries”.
Certain authoritarian leaders celebrated the USA’s abandonment of such publications, said Lau. Cambodia’s leader Hun Sen praised Trump on Facebook for combating “fake news”, while Global Times, part of China’s state media, lauded the cuts, claiming “almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it”.
“This just tells you actually how impactful that reporting really was,” Lau said, adding that the US cuts had made the work of restricting media freedoms by these governments much easier.
“Press freedom is definitely on the retreat, and what comes in its place is never anything great,” said Rohit Mahajan, chief communications officer at RFA.
A lack of safety globally
Back in the USA, reporters’ jobs are at risk. RFA has put the majority of its staff in its headquarters on leave and VOA has had to furlough 1,300 staff, the majority of whom are journalists.
Washington-based Htun, although among those affected, considers himself lucky. With US citizenship – he sought political asylum in 2005 – he can remain in the country, but many of RFA’s team come from Asia and their US visas are reliant on their work status. For some, the prospect of returning home – potentially to a country such as Cambodia or China where they may have helped to highlight human rights abuses – is a dangerous one.
“With the current administration’s policies, it is very hard to say they are safe even if they apply for asylum here, because they could be denied any time and they could be deported,” said Htun. “This is an unprecedented, man-made disaster.”
Aside from the threat of deportation, the furloughed staff are now not earning and are scrambling to find work. They are among thousands in the capital who have lost their jobs since the wave of executive orders, which have seen other government departments closed or drastically reduced in size.
This means that competition for jobs is fierce, said Htun. The USAGM Employee Association is collating donations to support journalists affected.
Information black holes
Aside from the impact on the safety of journalists, the shuttering of these media platforms, or even just a reduction in their content, impacts the public, limiting information.
It creates a “black hole of information”, said Bielakowska, who added that this would certainly be the case in countries such as Laos and Tibet, which are more closed. In countries with strict authoritarian regimes, VOA and RFA are often the only accessible forms of information other than state-sponsored or heavily-censored media.
This will lead to “a dramatic turning off of a pipeline of accurate and independent news stories about what is happening within authoritarian states”, said Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There isn’t as good a source in Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese, Tibetan as RFA. People will lose touch with the real world.”
Many in Myanmar – where a civil war has raged since 2021 and the military has shut down internet access in parts of the country – rely on shortwave radio for information on the war and wider events, such as the destructive earthquake in March. While the BBC and VOA are available, only a portion of their content focuses on Myanmar whereas 100% of RFA Burma’s content is focused on the country, said Htun. He explained that a content vacuum gave the Myanmar military junta an opportunity to exploit the situation by sharing their own propaganda and misinformation.
Samady Ou, an American-Cambodian activist and youth ambassador for Khmer Movement for Democracy, cannot go home to Cambodia because his democracy work has put a target on his back. He said that there was no reliable media outlet in the country without VOA and RFA.
“Right now, in Cambodia, we don’t have any news medium left that is independent and not pro-government,” he said. “When there’s unjust goings on like land grabs or Chinese big companies coming in taking away land, [Cambodians] have no voice at all.”
US pro-democracy organisation Freedom House ranks Cambodia as “not free” as a result of a “severely repressive environment” driven by the Cambodian People’s Party which “has maintained pressure on the opposition, independent press outlets and demonstrators with intimidation, politically motivated prosecutions and violence”.
Looking ahead
Experts hope the funding cut is only temporary and the USA will see the value in supporting regional media.
Historically, USAGM has always enjoyed strong bipartisan support from Congress across every administration, explained Mahajan, calling these platforms “unique tools in America’s soft power”.
Most USAID funding in Asia has been directed towards peace and security projects, indicating that this has historically been a vested interest for the USA.
“I think there’s a consensus inside of the Congress, even right now, that China and authoritarian regimes are one of the biggest challenges of the USA, and without the right information, freedom of the press and access to reliable information, we’ll have no updates about these countries, and these countries will also manage to spread their model of information inside of Asia, which is a direct threat to the USA itself,” said Bielakowska. Whether the new administration can be convinced of this is yet to be seen.
In the meantime, RFA has filed a lawsuit, claiming the government is unlawfully withholding funds and that only Congress can fund or defund an organisation it has created.
“We are trying to keep RFA afloat as we pursue a legal challenge to the termination of our grant, which we believe is unlawful,” Mahajan said. RFE and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks have also filed lawsuits.
In April, the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted an injunction to restore funding to USAGM, but the government is yet to release the funds. Htun predicts that the legal process will wage on for months to come, potentially escalating to the Supreme Court.
“This drama could take longer than expected – probably two or three more months,” he said.
During that time, journalists will remain out of work and exposed while citizens across Asia will be far less informed.
But there is always a chance that other funders could be found for these media platforms.
“Other states and entities and private organisations could fill some of the gaps in funding for media outlets,” said Kurlantzick, who called on powerful countries in the region to stand up for media freedom by committing more funds.
Lau said it was in the interests of other concerned governments to have access to reliable information, as well as to the private sector operating in some of these countries.
Such is the public support for these media sources that Ou believes the public in Asian countries may also crowdfund to keep them functioning.
In the meantime, Bielakowska is confident that RFA and VOA are used to operating in fragile situations.
“Even with this blow, I still hope that they can continue working on the ground and find ways to support themselves.”
