Political panel talks week 1 of P.E.I. Legislature's spring sitting
From the province's controversial deal with the National Hockey League, P.E.I.'s tariff response plan, and a showdown between two levels of government over the Community Outreach Centre, CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin speaks with Sally Pitt and Paul MacNeill about the first week in the legislative assembly.
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(Alex Panetta/CBC News) Photo: (Alex Panetta/CBC News) Hour Hum is one of them. He fled Cambodia in 2017 after some of his colleagues (new window) were arrested (new window) and RFA had to shutter its office (new window) . He went into hiding in Thailand. After seven years, he finally got a work visa and came to the U.S. with his wife. He likened it to reaching heaven after years in hell. Now, with a one-month-old to care for, he's clinging to his job as layoffs sweep across the newsroom. His wife is feeling anxious again as she did during those years in hiding, Hum said, fearing deportation. If they don't kill me, they'll put me in jail, he said of his prospects in Cambodia, where reporters are routinely arrested and international organizations say independent journalism is increasingly impossible (new window) to do. It's almost the same thing. 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(Alex Brandon/The Asssociated Press) Photo: (Alex Brandon/The Asssociated Press) In China, the government-affiliated Global Times (new window) called RFA and other U.S.-funded news operations a relic of Cold War ideological propaganda and welcomed its entry into the dustbin of history. The so-called beacon of freedom, it wrote, referring specifically to Voice of America, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag. There was a celebratory Facebook post from Cambodia's longtime leader, Hun Sen, accused (new window) of rampant corruption (new window) and the killing (new window) and jailing of political opponents (new window) . He applauded Trump for leading the world in combating what Sun called the scourge of fake news (new window) . And as the U.S. pulls back on funding news, China and Russia are expanding (new window) their footprint (new window) , with state-run outlets like RT and CGTN opening dozens of stations and bureaus in Africa alone. A different world Such moves reflect a world where autocracies are spreading (new window) and the number of democracies has been shrinking (new window) for decades. And, indeed, one argument for scaling back funding for foreign state-funded news organizations such as RFA is that the world scarcely resembles the one in which it was founded. It was inspired by an earlier Cold War model: Radio Free Europe. Originally funded (new window) by the CIA, RFE broadcast in over a dozen Eastern European languages since the 1950s. There was overwhelming political support for RFA as it was built over the 1990s and entrenched into law in 1997 in a 401-21 vote (new window) in Congress. A year later, when China's government blocked (new window) RFA's reporters from covering a presidential trip (new window) there, Bill Clinton personally met with those reporters and granted (new window) them interviews. But the world and the U.S. position in it have changed. Back then, the internet barely counted as mass media. Today, there are more smartphones in the world (new window) than people, allowing myriad ways to communicate. The U.S. no longer has the same power to set the terms of the global conversation as it did when it had 10 times (new window) China's GDP, unrivalled military dominance (new window) and a balanced budget (new window) , as opposed to exploding debt (new window) today, and a less-dominant (new window) military. Part of wider cuts to government-funded media The Trump administration itself has said virtually nothing about its rationale for eliminating Radio Free Asia, specifically. It has justified gutting government-funded media in general, from the agency (new window) that oversees Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe to NPR and PBS (new window) . He was elected in large part to reduce the federal bureaucracy, right? State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said when asked about the cuts to Radio Free Asia. It's about waste and fraud, mismanagement. This is something that has to occur. A man in Beijing stands in front of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace June 5, 1989, during the crushing of the Tiananmen Square uprising. Radio Free Asia was founded seven years later as a way to get information to people who had little access to uncensored media. Photo: AP / Jeff Widener, File Fang is emphatic, however: That even in a world with countless ways to communicate, there's still a role for an organizations like hers. She described a staffer working day and night, relentlessly calling sources in China to report on the Uyghur internment camps. That was broken from here, she said. U.S.-based staff, working in Mandarin, also broke stories about COVID for which there was voracious appetite inside China, she said. Video views increased eightfold at the time, including clicks from Wuhan, Fang said. One Ipsos poll conducted (new window) for RFA in 2018 suggested as many as 44 million people a week may have accessed its content within China, about three per cent of its population. A Gallup survey commissioned by the service in 2023 found that almost three-quarters of Cambodians surveyed were aware of RFA, and 8.5 per cent saw its work on a weekly basis. When we were created, it was with the understanding that having an educated citizenry in these different countries supporting democratic values would actually lead to awareness that is beneficial to U.S. interests, Fang said. Reporters share their stories A few remaining reporters were working on stories last week in the near-vacant newsroom in downtown Washington. One involved a bullet-train project (new window) in Vietnam — with a look at (new window) a sole-source contract and questions about oversight (new window) . Others touched on struggling tariff talks (new window) ; a journalist arrested (new window) in Cambodia; and a Cambodian official telling Japan to avoid raising human rights during a political summit. A few days earlier, there was an unusual story about a Cambodian police officer charged with drunk-driving (new window) . The arrest came after RFA posted an extraordinary crash video that drew millions of views and attention to the case. We made that big, said Poly Sam, director of the Cambodian service, himself a survivor of ghastly violence (new window) under the Khmer Rouge. During a work pause, the few remaining reporters discussed their own personal stories. Vuthy Tha is a single father of two young children, from Cambodia. He described threats from Cambodian officials, including from a cabinet minister and a spokesman for the governing party. We know where you live, he recalled the spokesman telling him when he was in hiding in Thailand. Some time after, he saw someone standing outside filming his home. Asked what would happen to his kids if he's deported, Tha said he hopes co-workers might care for them. His colleague Hum just became a dad last month. In the weeks before the birth, Hum had been worrying he'd lose his job and with it, his health coverage. When the baby arrived March 26, and Hum still had his job, he took it as a sign and named the baby Lucky. Khoa Lai of the Vietnamese service said he arrived in the U.S. months ago, hopeful that, here, he could write without fear, unlike in his home country, where he still uses a pseudonym for some reporting. I think it is a phase, he said of the recent moves against organizations like RFA. I think it will pass soon. At the end of the day, I think America is still a country of freedom. Alexander Panetta (new window) · CBC News
