The decison affects thousands of employees – some 1,300 staff have been put on paid leave at Voice Of America (VOA) alone since Friday’s executive order.

Critics have called the move a setback for democracy but Beijing’s state newspaper Global Times denounced VOA for its “appalling track record” in reporting on China and said it has “now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag”.

The White House defended the move, saying it will “ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”.

Trump’s cuts target the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is supported by Congress and funds the affected news outlets, such as VOA, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe.

They have won acclaim and international recognition for their reporting in places where press freedom is severely curtailed or non-existent, from China and Cambodia to Russia and North Korea.

Although authorities in some of these countries block the broadcasts – VOA, for instance, is banned in China – people can listen to them on shortwave radio, or get around the restrictions via VPNs.

RFA has often reported on the crackdown on human rights in Cambodia, whose former authoritarian ruler Hun Sen has hailed the cuts as a “big contribution to eliminating fake news”.

It was also among the first news outlets to report on China’s network of “re-education camps” in Xinjiang, where thousands of Uyghur Muslims have allegedly been detained – a charge Beijing denies. Its reporting on North Korean defectors and the Chinese Communist Party’s alleged cover-up of Covid fatalities has won awards.

VOA, primarily a radio outlet, which also broadcasts in Mandarin, was recognised last year for its podcast on rare protests in 2022 in China against Covid lockdowns.

But China’s Global Times welcomed the cuts, calling VOA a “lie factory”.

“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multi-dimensional China, the demonising narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughing stock,” it said in an editorial published on Monday.

Hu Xijin, who was the Global Times’ former editor-in-chief, wrote: “Voice of America has been paralysed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which has been as vicious to China. This is such great news.”

Such responses “would have been easy to predict”, said Valdya Baraputri, a VOA journalist who lost her job over the weekend. She was previously employed by BBC World Service.

“Eliminating VOA, of course, allows channels that are the opposite of accurate and balanced reporting to thrive,” she told the BBC.

The National Press Club, a leading representative group for US journalists, said the order “undermines America’s long-standing commitment to a free and independent press”.

Founded during World War Two in part to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA reaches some 360 million people a week in nearly 50 languages. Over the years it has broadcast in China, North Korea, communist Cuba and the former Soviet Union. It’s also been a helpful tool for many Chinese people to learn English.

VOA’s director Michael Abramowitz said Trump’s order has hobbled VOA while “America’s adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States”.

Ms Baraputri, who is from Indonesia but based in Washington DC, first joined VOA in 2018, but her visa was terminated at the end of Trump’s first administration.

She rejoined in 2023 because she wanted to be part of an organisation that “upholds unbiased, factual reporting that is free from government influence”.

The recent cuts have left her “feeling betrayed by the idea I had about press freedom [in the US]”.

She is also concerned for colleagues who may now be forced to return to hostile home countries, where they could be persecuted for their journalism.

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic has appealed to the European Union to intervene so it can keep Radio Free Europe going. It reports in 27 languages from 23 countries, reaching more than 47 million people every week.

RFA chief executive Bay Fang said in a statement that the organisation plans to challenge the order. Cutting funding to these outlets is a “reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space”, he said.

RFA started in 1996 and reaches nearly 60 million people weekly in China, Myanmar, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. In China, it also broadcasts in minority languages like Tibetan and Uyghur, apart from English and Mandarin.

“[Trump’s order] not only disenfranchises the nearly 60 million people who turn to RFA’s reporting on a weekly basis to learn the truth, but it also benefits America’s adversaries at our own expense,” Mr Fang noted.

While Chinese state media has celebrated the cuts, it’s hard to know how Chinese people feel about it given their internet is heavily censored.

Outside China, those who have listened to VOA and RFA over the years appear disappointed and worried.

“Looking back at history, countless exiles, rebels, intellectuals, and ordinary people have persisted in the darkness because of the voices of VOA and RFA, and have seen hope in fear because of their reports,” Du Wen, a Chinese dissident living in Belgium, wrote on X.

“If the free world chooses to remain silent, then the voice of the dictator will become the only echo in the world.”

A White House statement said the order would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”, and included quotes from politicians and right-wing media railing against the “leftist”, “partisan” VOA.

VOA, still primarily a radio service, was set up during World War Two to counter Nazi propaganda. It is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Mike Abramowitz, the VOA’s director, said he and virtually his entire staff of 1,300 people had been put on paid leave.

Abramowitz said that the order left VOA unable to carry out its “vital mission… especially critical today, when America’s adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States”.

The president’s order targets VOA’s parent company US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which also funds non-profit entities such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, which were originally set up to counter communism.

It tells managers to “reduce performance… to the minimum presence and function required by law”.

CBS, the BBC’s US news partner, said that VOA employees were notified in an email by Crystal Thomas, the USAGM human resources director.

A source told CBS that all freelance workers and international contractors were told there was now no money to pay them.

Emails obtained by CBS notified the bosses of Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that their federal grants had been terminated.

VOA and other stations under USAGM serve more than 400,000,000 listeners and are broadly equivalent to the BBC World Service, which is part-funded by the British government.

Elon Musk, the billionaire and top adviser to Trump who has been overseeing sweeping cuts to the US government, has used his social media platform X to call for VOA to be shut down.

The US president also cut funding to several other federal agencies – including those responsible for preventing homelessness, and funding museums and libraries.

Trump was highly critical of VOA in his first term. He has recently appointed staunch loyalist Kari Lake to be a special adviser for the USAGM.

The president regularly states that mainstream media outlets are biased against him. He called CNN and MSNBC “corrupt” and “illegal”, without providing evidence, during a speech at the justice department.

The White House’s statement linked to several commentators and reports from right-wing media organisations about VOA’s alleged bias.

It quoted an article written for the right-wing Washington Times by Dan Robinson, a former White House correspondent for VOA, who said that the organisation had “essentially become a hubris-filled rogue operation often reflecting a leftist bias”.

It included links to other articles that accused VOA managers of telling staff not to describe Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”, and to suppress negative reports of Iran.

Other links were to everyday reporting of the 2020 US election, which it claimed were favourable to Trump’s rival Joe Biden.

Voice of America launched in 1942 with a mandate to combat Nazi and Japanese propaganda. Its first broadcast – made on a transmitter loaned to the US by the BBC – stated a modest purpose.

Gerald Ford, a former president, signed the VOA’s public charter in 1976 to safeguard its editorial independence.

By 1994, the Broadcast Board of Governors, with oversight over non-military broadcasting, was established.

In 2013, a shift in legislation allowed VOA and affiliates to begin broadcasting in the US.