Ali Velshi is taking a deep dive inside Project 2025, the 900-page conservative playbook for a new Trump administration. Chapter Eight’s innocuous title, “Media Agencies,” describes a plan to end the journalistic independence of Voice of America (VOA), the government-funded international radio broadcaster of the United States of America. VOA is the oldest and largest U.S. international broadcaster, producing content in 48 languages across digital, TV, and radio channels.
Protected from political influence and interference by a “firewall” between it and government officials, Project 2025 prescribes eliminating that firewall to use VOA as a broadcast for and by the executive branch and outlines other attacks on the independence of PBS and NPR.
Velshi sits down with Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent at Vox, to discuss Trump’s attacks on the media and the wider implications of Project 2025’s designs on journalism.
“In a coup, that’s the number one thing that you need to do first. Because You take over the radio station, you create a sense of inevitability,” Beauchamp warns. “You can’t be resisted because you control all the information. There’s scholarship that shows that how’s coup plotters succeed.”
LISTEN: VELSHI ON PROJECT 2025 AND THE THREAT TO INDEPENDENT NEWS MEDIA
WATCH: VELSHI AND BEAUCHAMP TALK ABOUT THE THREAT OF PROJECT 2025
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