Funding is to be cut to Radio Free Asia and Voice of America as the result of an executive order issued by the President of the US, Donald Trump. This could see their coverage of Vietnam come to an end further diminishing the variety of news media on offer to Vietnamese news consumers.
Both RFA and VOA have provided extensive coverage of Vietnam, in particular political coverage and analysis, providing diversity in an otherwise very homogenous news media environment–Vietnam’s official news coverage is mostly dictated by the government.
Notably, both sites are blocked in Vietnam, however, this is done at the domain level which makes it relatively easy to get around with a simple browser plugin.
Interestingly, this comes at the same time as Vietnam is reducing the size of its internal media industry as part of broader plans to shrink the size of the government. That is to say the local media industry is being hit from two sides which is not great for local media practitioners.