It makes no sense at all to continue funding VOA or Radio Free Europe

The president of Brussels-based Foreign Correspondents Association, of which I am a part of, issued a statement voicing solidarity with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, whose funding was terminated by the Donald Trump administration last Saturday as part of the broader cuts to the US Agency for Global Media.

I argued in a column in 2011 that it makes no sense for Voice of America, a sister broadcaster of RFE/RL and Radio Free Asia, to exist today because it was created in 1942 during World War II and had its heyday during the Cold War years. Its parent body, the USAGM, is an arm of the US government information/disinformation campaign.

The Cold War ended more than 30 years ago. So when European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas sounded nostalgic on Monday about RFE, which she said she listened to decades ago, she inadvertently admitted that it was a thing of the past and irrelevant today.