To be honest I have never dived into the drama and don’t read either of them. I’m just interested why they are hated so much in our circles, yet loved by the more right leaning ones.
Radio Free X are CIA cutouts
the main source of most of the wild made-up bullshit you see about china, DPRK, etc. right-wingers love it for that sole purpose.
As others have said they are straight-up anticommunist propaganda financed by the US government.
I would like to plug this thread to mention that there’s hardly any unbiased news sources. To the point where one should probably tend to pore through news sources who are upfront about their biases, so that it’s easier to sift fact from propaganda.
The US and UK have really turned this into a science: Establish NGOs that rely on funding from US/UK funding. Smear other state news agencies as propaganda outlets. Smear non-state news agencies as supportive of “regimes”. Then take over the narrative in any country.
This way of doing things has been adopted by many corporations and billionaires lately. They either directly buy news organizations, or they make them reliant on “charity” funding from them, then turn them into their stenographers. George Soros has been doing this for years in an effort to push pro-West propaganda. Bill Gates has been doing this through his foundation to push the profit-ization of climate change and for privatizing healthcare and education. Blackrock has been doing it to push the identity politics culture wars.
“I’m just interested why they are hated so much in our circles, yet loved by the more right leaning ones.”
Not just for RFA/RFE, but the usual answer to that is “because it is madeup bullshit”. It is kind of why it has become a meme that any made-up story about communist states cites RFA as their source, if they cite anyone at all.
There’s no attempt made to even pretend to be real news, they just want to target the folks who treat headlines as gospel.
It is literally propaganda press. Full stop.
You can debate the biases and corporate control of media like CNN or RT or Fox, but RFA and RFE were literally founded by the CIA and receive all their funding from the American State Department.
This isn’t a hidden fact, it’s even highlighted on their Wikipedia articles. They also are known for making up ludicrous batshit insane stories with no sources, or their sources are anecdotal “from a friend of a friend”.
Radio Free Europe was also made initially to broadcast American propaganda into the Soviet Union.
If one thinks that the CIA and state department are good sources of information about other countries and never lied to about anything to propagate imperialist wars, I don’t know what to say.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) was a news agency operated from 1951 to 1955 by the Central Intelligence Agency, through the Committee for Free Asia, to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda.[1][2][3][4][5]: 120
RFA first broadcast in 1951 from RCA facilities in Manila, Philippines. Broadcasts were made in three Chinese dialects, as well as in English.[3] RFA maintained offices in Tokyo, and aside from in the Philippines, broadcasts were also made from Dhaka and Karachi, Pakistan. Although intended to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda into mainland China, as well as to overseas Chinese and others, the news agency faced difficulties in doing so.[3] In mainland China personal radio ownership was low, and in other parts of Asia, radio reception was poor.[3][1] In 1953, the Committee for Free Asia decided to terminate RFA,[6] with it finally going off the air in 1955.[1] However, propaganda broadcasting continued with new facilities in Seoul through Radio Of Free Asia until 1966.[7][8]
Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia were later preserved by the Clinton Administration and repurposed into their modern iterations.[9][page needed]
During the Cold War, RFE was broadcast to Soviet satellite states, including the Baltic states, and RL targeted the Soviet Union; RFE was founded as an anti-communist propaganda[11] source in 1949 by the National Committee for a Free Europe, while RL was founded two years later. The two organizations merged in 1976. Communist governments frequently sent agents to infiltrate RFE’s headquarters, and the KGB regularly jammed its signals. RFE/RL was headquartered at Englischer Garten in Munich, West Germany, from 1949 to 1995. Another broadcast site was operated at the village of Glória do Ribatejo, east of Lisbon, Portugal, from 1951 to 1996. European operations have been significantly reduced since the end of the Cold War.
From Wikipedia.
