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The Czecheke government has pledged to open and support Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty after US President Donald Trump’s administration shorten funds for the broadcaster, which is opposing the propaganda of autocratic regimes such as Russia and Iran.
The emergence of Prague -based media relies on the US federal grants and was initially created to communicate beyond the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Fund cuts were part of Trump’s attempt to reduce foreign aid and close Voice of America, a federal broadcaster launched during World War II.
“We will do everything we can to give them the opportunity to continue in this very important role,” Prime Minister Czechekisht Petr Fiala told Financial Times, adding that he had heard Radio Free Europe in his youth. “” I know what it meant for me in communist times. “
Fiala called for “a coalition of states for a European solution”. He said he felt “very proud” to wait for RFE/RL and hoped he would stay in Prague, where it has been based since 1995.
The Czecheke government has registered seven other EU countries to help find new RFE/RL funds and Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský even suggested a European takeover: “If we look at it, then it makes sense to consider ways to secure its future, including the possibility of purchasing it.”
The media group says its 1,700 staff still has a 47MN weekly audience in 23 countries and in 27 languages.
Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s efforts to cut public administration, has called for the closure of the RFE/RL, rejecting it as “Radical Leaving crazy people talking to themselves while torching $ 1 billion/year of US taxpayers’ money”.
The broadcaster hopes he can overthrow the aid cuts in court. On Tuesday, she sued the US Global Media Agency for violating the US Constitution, ending grants that covered her $ 142m annual budget. “We believe the law is on our side and that the celebration of our death by despots around the world is premature,” said Chief Executive Stephen Capus.
The director of the RFE/RL Russian language channel, Pavel Butor, said Trump’s cut was “a friend” that left Russian officials “to display champagne”. He said he still hoped for the US Congress to return the order. Historically, “some of our strongest supporters came from the Republican side, so I hope they speak,” he said.
Butor has a painful personal experience of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the media after his wife was arrested when she visited her family in Russia in 2023. Alsu Kurmasheva, who works for RFE/RL, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for alleged crimes involving false information on Russian troops in Ukraine.
She was released as part of an exchange of American prisoners-Russian in August last year after being held in what her husband called “dehumanizing conditions, sleeping and eating 3 meters from a hole in the ground that served as a toilet”.
Daisy Sindelar, a former editor of RFE/RL, said that “angry” support from Prague and some other European governments showed that they “understand the importance” of the work of the broadcaster. “The war in Ukraine is not a distant reality but something that is happening on their border,” she said.
Butor said that financing problems may decide the right to stay in danger for many employees who have residence permits related to their work. Half of the 160 staff of his television channel are Russian.
“Our journalists care about their countries, they do not see themselves as representatives of America,” he said.
