TRANSCRIPT:
In Vietnam, I grew up listening to Voice of America every afternoon with my grandfather. After the war, under the censorship system, we could only get news about the world from Voice of America because we couldn’t trust the news from our national media, which owned and controlled by the one-party, communist state government.
I was so honored and so proud when I was first invited to be interviewed and perform at Voice of America studio in Washington D.C. in 2018. I was so impressed with their journalists. They worked so hard to be unbiased and impartial, maintaining the values and principles of free press.
Now my heart is broken when I heard Voice of America was shut down because the federal funding for the U.S. Agency for Global Media was cut.
The USAGM has 420 million listeners in 100 countries and in 63 languages in the past eight decades. I know there are millions of people around the world whose heart were also broken when this news came out.
So please do all your best. Do whatever you can to help to restore Voice of America. Write or call to your representative to save USAGM. Thank you very much.
Published
Mai Khoi is a popular Vietnamese musician-turned-political activist who advocates for free expression. In 2020, she went into exile in the United States.