Radio free Asia has deep ties to US agencies. It isn’t really a credible source.
"Deep ties to US agencies" is sensationalizing the facts. It's part of the United States government, and nobody has ever tried to keep that secret. Not RFA, not the U.S. Government. Nobody. "Deep ties" makes it seem like it's trying to be covert. It's not.
It isn’t really a credible source.
It's one of the more credible sources of news in Asia. Especially for more authoritarian countries. I used to know a number of its journalists, and they strive for neutrality and factual reporting in places where that is not allowed.
It's the Asian version of Radio Marti, or Radio Free Europe. Funded by the U.S. taxpayers, run by the U.S. government, to bring information to the world. There's nothing new here. This has been going on longer than most of us have been alive.
It's like BBC News, but without all of the sensationalism that has crept into the Beeb over the last couple of decades.
Trying to paint it as some kind of covert propaganda machine illustrates a lack of knowledge, or a personal political agenda.
https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propag...
RFA isn't part of the CIA. It's part of U.S. Agency for Global Media. From Wikipedia:
an independent agency of the United States government which operates various state-run media outlets.[2] It describes its mission, "vital to US national interests", to "inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy"[3] and in accordance with the "broad foreign policy objectives of the United States".[4] USAGM supervises Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio y Televisión Martí, Radio Free Asia, and Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa.
Why is it so difficult for Americans to believe that the US engages in a war of propaganda against countries it labels as “adversaries”? [1]
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-...
Why is it so difficult for Americans to believe
Suggesting that "Americans" suffer from a lack of introspection reveals your own biases. 350 million people. 350 million different worldviews.
Whether that's still true today or not is not something that anyone here is going to agree on.
The RFA from the 1977 article and the RFA today were separated by 44 years.
Perhaps you're confused because they have the same name.
RFA is still run by the US Government, which is worth considering when talking about the possible biases of RFA... but the NYT article you linked has nothing to do with the current RFA.
The reason Radio Free Europe/Asia were founded was to broadcast the benefits of 'freedom' into communist-governed areas. You might think that we're qualitatively the good guys, and I'm all for freedom, but that's definitionally 'propaganda'.
People who listen to RFA know this. People who don't only see that it's run by a U.S. government agency and think it's the equivalent of Soviet shortwave days.
Not everything the government does is evil. Not everything the government publishes is propaganda.
Propaganda is inescapable, like politics. It's all about whose you like the most at the present moment or which kind you're epistemically indoctrinated into. :3 (For me, I like scientific empiricism, but that position, too, is just a philosophical/political/propagandist leaning, frontloaded with all the assumptions and priors that go along with it. And I also think it's the best one, and I think it's dumb to disagree.)
The overused term is "unbiased" which doesn't mean anything. The closest meaningful word to it is "disinterested" which means that the person conveying the information doesn't particularly care about it.
The person who started this thread is trying to discount an RFA report solely because of the source. That seems unwarranted.
* The linked story is way out over it's skis, pulling together partial opinions from a bunch of sources to make a definitive claim that is not really supported. I doubt the Party themselves have even reached a firm decision on the matter yet.
* The (minor!) Radio Free Asia link is a random person they were interviewing, who gave an opinion. It's not RFA's official opinion on the matter, but I'll opine that they pick and choose who they have on based on US interests, that's their charter and raison d'etre.
It's not sensationalizing the facts, it's minimizing the facts. It's a pure propaganda project meant to manipulate public opinion outside of the US. It's the Asian version of Radio Marti, or Radio Free Europe. Funded by the U.S. taxpayers, run by the U.S. government, to improve the image of the U.S. in the world, to strengthen friendly governments and to weaken government enemies.
It is an overt propaganda machine, but fully available for covert agencies to use as part of any project they wish. A great way to use it is to float a story, then get more legitimate outlets to report on the story using it as the source.
It's like BBC News, if the BBC didn't broadcast to British people and was explicitly conceived as a propaganda arm of the government. So not really much like BBC news.
If one listens to VOA/RFA in my country, one would think that the US is a shining utopia and did nothing wrong in Iraq/Afghan invasions (9/11 just happened a few years before I left the country).
The truth is that there is no objective news outlet in the world (even 'facts' fed to the unsuspecting reporters/journalists are dubitable).
Some of Chinese audience see the news in somehow opposite direction: True is likely(but not certainly) False. It's a little more than "not credible".
There is another group always fighting against non-believers and saying they are "wumao"
To some point VOA (A lot of Chinese think they are the same but actually not.Just content similar) was criticized by US government that they are helping CCP. What they really did was put some objective/neutral news. It's likely that the management tried to improve their impression and make them more conceptional because Chinese editors of VOA seem quite delusional to fabricate stories. They are much better now that they misleading with some events really happened but mixed with their interpretations.
A lot of their content show up in: https://www.backchina.com/news/ You have to under Chinese though.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/22/china-us-data-intellige...
Edit: misread your comment but the series is quiet good, not what you asked for tho from a neutral source.
are there any "credible sources"? nowadays eveything is biased. the trick is being aware of the biases in your sources and reading sources with different biases.