Trump’s aid cuts will lead to a surge of propaganda, say...

Loss of USAid funds will sow ‘chaos and confusion’ and force independent media outlets to shut down, says RSF. Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze will lead to a decline in the number of independent media outlets across the world, causing a surge in misinformation and playing into the hands of state propagandists, media organisations have warned. The US president has suspended billions of dollars in projects supported by USAid, including more than $268m (£216m) allocated to support “independent media and the free flow of information”.

Image Credit: the Guardian [A man in a cherry picker removes signage from the outside of a building]

A USAid factsheet, accessed by the press freedom campaign group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) before being taken offline, showed that in 2023 the US agency funded training and support for 6,200 journalists, assisted 707 non-state news outlets and supported 279 civil-society organisations dedicated to strengthening independent media in more than 30 countries, including Iran, Afghanistan and Russia.

Image Credit: the Guardian [Three soldiers in camouflage fatigues fire a heavy field gun in a snowy landscape]

RSF said Trump’s decision had sowed “chaos and confusion”. Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF US, said: “Non-profit newsroom and media organisations have already had to cease operations and lay off staff. The most likely scenario is that after the 90-day freeze, they will disappear for ever.”. In Ukraine, where the media had until recently been largely controlled by oligarchs, nine out of 10 outlets rely on subsidies and USAid is the primary donor, according to RSF.

Image Credit: the Guardian [A man in a facemask holds a poster saying ‘truth will prevail’ in a public city square]

“It’s a very dangerous moment,” said Anna Babinets, chief executive and co-founder of the Kyiv-based investigative platform Slidstvo.Info, which has lost 80% of its funding from groups that formerly received money from USAid. “We are having to think about cutting our frontline reporting and our war-crime reporting – it means that the people of Ukraine, and the world, will know less about what is happening here.”.

Image Credit: the Guardian [A security guard outside offices with signs in Spanish]

Trump has made unsubstantiated claims that billions were stolen at USAid to pay for positive media coverage of his opponents in what he calls the “fake news media”. Meanwhile, Elon Musk called USAid a “criminal organisation” and said it had paid media to “publish their propaganda”. Valerii Garmash, head of Make Sense, which develops independent media in Ukraine and received almost 50% of its funds for its 6262.com.ua website in the city of Slavyansk from USAid, said its projects had started shutting down.

Image Credit: the Guardian [Armed men in military fatigues stand in a town street as a burqa-clad woman walks past]

“We are 24km [15 miles] from the frontline and provide spaces for journalists to prepare before they go there – these spaces have now had to close. Without the money, we have to work like volunteers.”. Weimers said a decline in the number of independent news outlets could lead to a surge in misinformation. “Chaos causes a vacuum and when you pull reliable sources of information, that vacuum will be filled will less reliable sources [such as] state propagandists,” he said.

Image Credit: the Guardian [A black man with a laptop on his lap]

“Just look at those praising this move: it’s leaders in China, Russia, Hungary, El Salvador – countries known for horrible human rights violations, particularly against their press,” he said. Babinets said that since the funding freezes and cuts had been announced, anonymous Telegram channels and unnamed websites had also sought to discredit media recipients of USAid in Ukraine. “We have seen a lot of fake stories about our organisations – that we are not journalists, that we are just spies. It’s playing into the Russian narrative,” she said.

In neighbouring Belarus, Natalia Belikova, of Press Club Belarus, said 70% of her organisation’s funding came from a mix of US federal sources and that various cuts and freezes to funding had put it on “the brink of existence”. Belarus has orchestrated widespread persecution campaigns against journalists and forced hundreds of reporters into exile in recent years. Press Club Belarus surveyed 20 of the country’s outlets in early February and found that 60% of budgets came from US funding. “They are at risk of fading away and gradually disappearing,” said Belikova.

Belikova said independent reporting had played a crucial role in keeping Belarusians informed about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “This decision really plays into the hands of authoritarian regimes,” she said. “If Belarusian independent media stops existing, then people will only be left with the state propaganda. If there is no alternative, it will gradually capture their minds and we may have a very different society in just a few years.”.

Experts fear investigative reporting, which can take years to conduct and often requires a large amount of money, will suffer the most from USAid cuts. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which operates globally and has produced in-depth investigations such as the Panama Papers, which scrutinised secretive offshore tax regimes, said 29% of its funding had been frozen and it had had to lay off 20% of its staff.