Trump Dismantles Voice of America:- China, Russia, and Turkey Fill Global Media Void

Trump’s dis­man­tling of Voice Amer­i­ca oper­a­tions has cre­at­ed unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for rival pow­ers to expand their glob­al influ­ence oper­a­tions. On June 24, 2025, The New York Times report­ed that RT’s edi­tor cel­e­brat­ed Trump’s “awe­some deci­sion” to shut down fed­er­al­ly fund­ed media out­lets, while Chi­nese and Russ­ian state media have rapid­ly expand­ed oper­a­tions to com­man­deer com­mu­ni­ca­tions space aban­doned by the Amer­i­cans across Africa, Asia, and beyond. The arti­cle begins:

June 24, 2025 America’s rivals cel­e­brat­ed as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion set out to dis­man­tle its glob­al influ­ence and infor­ma­tion infra­struc­ture, includ­ing the media out­lets that had helped mar­ket the Unit­ed States as the world’s moral and cul­tur­al authority.The edi­tor in chief of RT, the Krem­lin-backed news net­work, crowed about Pres­i­dent Trump’s “awe­some deci­sion” to shut down Voice of Amer­i­ca, the fed­er­al­ly fund­ed net­work that reports in coun­tries with lim­it­ed press free­dom. “Today is a hol­i­day for me and my col­leagues!” Hu Xijin, a for­mer edi­tor in chief of China’s state-run out­let Glob­al Times, wrote that the paral­y­sis of Voice of Amer­i­ca and Radio Free Asia was “real­ly grat­i­fy­ing” and, he hoped, “irre­versible.” A top aide to Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban of Hun­gary post­ed that he “couldn’t be hap­pi­er” about the administration’s move in Feb­ru­ary to gut the agency that dis­trib­uted for­eign media fund­ing. Offi­cials in Cam­bo­dia and Cuba also wel­comed the cuts. In the months since, Chi­na, Rus­sia and oth­er U.S. rivals have moved to com­man­deer the com­mu­ni­ca­tions space aban­doned by the Amer­i­cans. They have pumped more mon­ey into their own glob­al media endeav­ors, expand­ed social out­reach pro­grams abroad and cranked up the vol­ume when pub­li­ciz­ing pop­u­lar cul­tur­al exports.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/business/media/us-china-russia-global-communications.html [Pay­wall]

Key Points

• For­mer Chi­nese state media edi­tor Hu Xijin called the paral­y­sis of Voice of Amer­i­ca and Radio Free Asia “real­ly grat­i­fy­ing” and hoped it would be “irre­versible.”
• Rus­si­a’s Sput­nik opened new offices in Ethiopia with plans for South Africa and Tan­za­nia, while Turkey’s TRT start­ed broad­cast­ing in Soma­lia as part of Erdo­gan’s “Cen­tu­ry of Turkey” vision.
• Chi­na has shift­ed strat­e­gy from gov­ern­ment mes­sag­ing to ampli­fy­ing social media influ­encers and pri­vate entre­pre­neurs, then using state media to boost their con­tent globally.
• The Euro­pean Union stepped in with $6.2 mil­lion emer­gency sup­port for Radio Free Europe as Britain cre­at­ed a soft-pow­er coun­cil to fill Amer­i­ca’s aban­doned glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions role.

State Media Drives Global Influence Operations Worldwide

State media serve as crit­i­cal instru­ments in glob­al influ­ence oper­a­tions, with gov­ern­ments deploy­ing their reach to shape inter­na­tion­al nar­ra­tives and advance strate­gic interests.

Rus­sia lever­ages plat­forms such as RT as a vehi­cle for coor­di­nat­ed dig­i­tal cam­paigns and dis­in­for­ma­tion, and has recent­ly launched a fake “Glob­al Fact-Check­ing Net­work” to manip­u­late glob­al dis­course and legit­imize Krem­lin nar­ra­tives. Iran’s IRIB pro­pa­gan­da net­work merges state media broad­casts with covert online oper­a­tions, pro­ject­ing regime mes­sag­ing glob­al­ly and employ­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal tac­tics to sup­press dis­sent, a role inten­si­fied by IRIB’s use of forced con­fes­sions and its expan­sion into dozens of lan­guages and regions. China’s strat­e­gy lever­ages expand­ing pro­pa­gan­da net­works in Latin Amer­i­ca and glob­al influ­encer oper­a­tions using veiled state media reporters and hon­ey­pots to embed pro-Bei­jing nar­ra­tives across con­ti­nents. Mean­while, Turkey’s TRT faces legal scruti­ny over FARA vio­la­tions as it extends Ankara’s influ­ence among dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties and inter­na­tion­al audiences.

These cas­es illus­trate how state media are increas­ing­ly weaponized as tools of soft pow­er and infor­ma­tion war­fare, blur­ring the bound­aries between jour­nal­ism and pro­pa­gan­da to polar­ize soci­eties and under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic norms. Russ­ian state media, for exam­ple, con­tin­ue to adapt their tac­tics globally—using RT and Sput­nik to ampli­fy pro-Krem­lin mes­sages in Latin Amer­i­ca, Africa, and the Mid­dle East, even cir­cum­vent­ing West­ern bans through mir­ror sites and local ampli­fiers, while Iran’s IRIB has grown into a glob­al pro­pa­gan­da arm with a near monop­oly on domes­tic broad­cast­ing and a vast inter­na­tion­al pres­ence, often broad­cast­ing forced con­fes­sions and regime nar­ra­tives in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law.

Exter­nal References:

1. Under­min­ing Ukraine: How Rus­sia widened its glob­al infor­ma­tion war in 2023

2. 10 Things to Know About Tehran’s Pro­pa­gan­da Net­work, the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran Broadcasting

3. China’s Influ­ence Oper­a­tions in Latin Amer­i­can Media

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.