Muting of 'lie factory' VOA should have come earlier

The way in which Voice of America was muted recently, following the Donald Trump administration cutting its funding, might have been beyond the expectations of its employees. They took it for granted that the "just voice" they try to spread around the world would only be muted by foreign "totalitarian" or "authoritarian" regimes to prevent VOA from fighting for "freedom" and "democracy".

Founded in 1942, the international broadcasting state media network's targeted and primary audience is non-Americans outside the US borders, especially those living in countries without "press freedom".

Although it claims to broadcast "uncensored" information, the content it provides is highly selective, its programs specially designed and its agenda carefully set with the purpose of inciting its audience in the targeted countries and regions to overthrow their own regimes.

During the Cold War, VOA's operations expanded in an effort to fight communism and played a role in the decline of communism in several countries. VOA continued to serve as a de facto propaganda tool of the US government after the end of the Cold War, and was invariably behind, along with some other US media outlets and internet companies, the "color revolutions" in different countries.

Despite this, with the rise of the internet and social media that markedly diversify people's sources of information, the influence of such government-sponsored destabilizing operations under cover of "media organizations" such as the VOA has declined markedly. More importantly, the improvement of the media literacy of the targeted audience has also accelerated that process.

Particularly, after the series of failed "democracy experiments" trapped some countries, such as Afghanistan, in decades of chaos, even many keen followers of VOA have awakened to the fact it is not reporting for their interest but for the narrow ends of the US government in its geopolitical games.

No wonder those saying that China "revels in" the US government cutting its funding to VOA are also those that try to see the modern world through a Cold War prism or with the tainted spectacles of ideological prejudice. Overestimating VOA's influence in China, they simply ignore that the Chinese people today are fully confident in their nation's socialist path with Chinese characteristics, and Chinese culture, and they would resolutely resist any external forces' attempts to instigate "peaceful evolution" in their homeland.

Instead of treating VOA as a reliable source of information or a voice of the "free land", many Chinese see it as a "lie factory". As Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a news conference, that some US media outlets are seen that way can only be blamed on "a notorious track record in their China coverage".

Ironically, the White House has fully uncloaked the nefarious activities of these media organizations by defending its move to defund the US Agency for Global Media, to which VOA belongs, along with Radio Free Europe, saying it will "ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda".

The latest update on the VOA website was frozen about 10 days ago. Something that should have happened decades ago.