- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
US President Donald Trump has signed an order to strip back the federally-funded news organisation Voice of America, accusing it of being “anti-Trump” and “radical”.
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.
DW still does very limited shortwave in Africa, I guess they’ll be happy to take over time/frequency slots but let’s face it the amount of people that you can only reach via short wave is dwindling, they mostly switched to satellite. They rather feed into the local FM broadcast network, and of course you can stream over the internet.
You would actually be surprised how many poor regions in Central and South America as well as in Africa and Central Asia actually rely on shortwave still.
A lot of it is Christian and right-wing broadcasts, but still, it’s used more than you would think. Not everyone can afford expensive satellite rigs to receive.
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The point is rather if you’re operating an FM transmitter, you not only have the money for a satellite dish and DVB-S decoder you already have one, and FM radios are dirt cheap. The electronics for short wave certainly aren’t more expensive but you’ll need a proper antenna. Meanwhile, much of Africa actually has quite decent mobile phone coverage, there’s some piss-poor countries and large areas of nothing, generally desert, but overall, if there’s people, there’s probably reception. Their whole banking system works via mobile phone.
Talking about people who listen, receive, not transmit, and who do not have ready funds available.
Also, FM reception distances is much shorter than shortwave, something you didn’t mention.
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Point being FM coverage is almost universal in any area where there’s a significant number of people, not just lone homesteaders, uncontacted tribes, suchlike. Yes there may be people there that could be reached but the total number is small and if they want any news, they’re getting them from the town over once a month.
Contrast that to the situation when those shortwave broadcasts were originally set up where you had whole cities with actual population that had no electricity, no radio, and certainly no internet. You’ll still find settlements like that, but, as said, not a large amount of people. Alternatively, people behind the iron curtain: You don’t need short-wave to get into North Korea and any Chinese or Russian who cares can access any western media, anyway.
The purpose of these broadcasts isn’t “play some music to 20 evangelical homesteaders 100km away from the next road”. Those people aren’t the kind of people who might, one day, protest in front of the president’s palace.
[Citation required]
There’s no need for us to keep arguing this point, I totally agree that the coverage of listeners of shortwave radio today is a lot less than what it was in the past, but my point is that it’s a lot more still than you’re imagining.
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