'Wildly inappropriate': VOA purge continues as foreign journalists' visas cancelled
'Wildly inappropriate': VOA purge continues as foreign journalists' visas cancelled
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/10/wildly-inappropriate-voa-purge-continues-as-foreign-journalists-visas-cancelled?
Foreign journalists working for Voice of America will not have their visas renewed by its new management and face repatriation to countries where some could face reprisals, in a move described by a former news executive from the organisation as “enormously cruel and wildly inappropriate”.
The denial of visa renewals follows a purge of executives and senior journalists from VOA and other state-run broadcasters under the authority of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) by its new Trump-appointed CEO, Michael Pack.
Pack fired all the station directors who had not already resigned, and dissolved the bipartisan managing boards of the broadcasting organisations, replacing them with himself and five other Trump loyalists.
snip//
One of the journalists fired by Pack compared the new releases to official statements of the North Korean regime.
“It is a bit Dear Leader like, isn’t it?” the journalist said. “The one about him saying he’s been flooded with people welcoming him with open arms is just ludicrous – for him to say that he’s trying to improve morale and at the same time he’s sending Voice of America journalists back home to places like Thailand, or Cambodia or China. How in the world is that going to improve employee morale when you’re sending people home, perhaps to their deaths? And that’s not hyperbole.”
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