The termination of US government funding for the two venerable radio stations Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) shows how blindly fanatical the Tesla owner’s axe-wielding has become.
Musk claims RFE/RL is run by ‘radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1 billion a year of US taxpayer money’. But that is an ignorant distortion of the truth. For 75 years these beacons of open journalism have provided a lifeline for millions trapped inside dictatorial regimes – a necessary pro-democracy corrective to lies, propaganda and censorship.
The stations were originally created to serve audiences behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War – RFE broadcast to Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, while RL broadcast to Russia – with a mix of news, analysis and cultural programming.
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