Foreign journalists at US-backed media fear being sent to repressive homelands after Trump's cuts
Donald Trump recently signed an executive order gutting the government-run US Agency for Global Media. The agency funds Radio Free Asia and other outlets tasked with delivering uncensored information to parts of the world under authoritarian rule and often without a free press of their own.
«It fell out of sky,» Vuthy, a single father of two small children, said through a translator about the Trump administration's decision, which he says threatens to upend his life.
«I am very regretful that our listeners cannot receive the accurate news,» Hour said, also through a translator.
Both men said they're worried about providing for their families and being allowed to stay in the US. They say it's impossible to return to Cambodia, a single-party state hostile to independent media where they fear being persecuted for their journalistic work.
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The administration has been dismantling or slashing the size of federal agencies, leading tens of thousands of government workers and contractors to be fired or put on leave. But the targeting of the US Agency for Global Media, whose decades-old networks aim to extend American influence abroad, means journalists who have defied authoritarian regimes to help fulfill a US mission of delivering pro-democracy programming could be deported and face harassment and persecution in their homelands.
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Eleven journalists associated with the US-funded media outlets are behind bars overseas, including RFA's Shin Daewe,
