America's news TV channel for the Middle East goes off air after funding cuts
The head of a US-funded Arabic language television and online news outlet sacked most of its staff and halted TV programming on Saturday, accusing the Trump administration and Elon Musk of having 'irresponsibly and unlawfully' cut off funding.
Al Hurra claims a 30 million-strong audience in the Middle East and North Africa.
In notices to Al Hurra news staff about their dismissals, chief Jeffrey Gedmin said he had given up on the US administration's freeze lifting soon for the congressionally approved money for Al Hurra and its US-funded Arabic language sister organisations.
Mr Gedmin accused Kari Lake, US President Donald Trump's appointee to the American government agency overseeing Al Hurra, Voice Of America and other US-funded news programming abroad, of dodging his efforts to speak with her about the funding cut-off.
'I'm left to conclude that she is deliberately starving us of the money we need to pay you, our dedicated and hard-working staff,' Mr Gedmin said in severance letters obtained by The Associated Press and excerpted on the website of Al Hurra's parent company, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Mohamed al-Sabagh, an Egyptian journalist working at the Al Hurra news website in Dubai, told the AP that all the staff on the website and the television channel received emails terminating their contracts.
Al Hurra is the latest US government-funded news outlet — after Voice Of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and others — to cut staff and services amid what the outlets say is the move by the Trump administration and Mr Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) to withhold their congressional appropriations.
Ms Lake, appointed to oversee the US Agency for Global Media, describes her agency as being consumed by a 'giant rot' that requires the agency's destruction and rebuilding.
The US-backed news organisations were set up starting in the Cold War between the West and Soviet Union. Their designated goal was to provide objective news about the United States and other subjects overseas, often to people under authoritarian governments without access to a free press.
The George W Bush administration created Al Hurra in 2003, the same year his administration's invasion of Iraq overthrew that country's leader.
Al Hurra's journalists covered the US occupation and sectarian and extremist violence that followed, with some them dying on the job during the 2011 Arab Spring, and other political changes across the Middle East.
While Al Hurra over the years faced charges of bias from both conservatives and liberals in the United States, it was one of the few outlets in its region providing space for freedom of the press and speech.
In his note to staff, Mr Gedmin said his organisation would retain a number of staff members and a 'presence' online as court battles over the cuts play out in US courts.
'It makes no sense,' Mr Gedmin wrote, 'to silence America's voice in the Middle East.'
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