To the editor: One more nail has been pushed into America’s freedom (“Under Trump, the Voice of America has fallen silent. U.S. enemies are cheering,” March 19). The Voice of America, which has for over 80 years endeavored to convey untarnished information to its listeners, is now largely silent, with no indication that it’s going to return to its former mission.
I get discouraged attempting to persuade folks of the harmful parallels to what occurred to the information media throughout World Battle II and what’s clearly occurring in the US at present, however I’ve to maintain attempting.
Throughout my childhood within the Netherlands, whereas that battle was in progress, the media was fully dominated by the Nazi Germans who occupied my nation. The one choice was for folks to secretly take heed to Radio Oranje, through the British Broadcasting Corp., which had as audio system such individuals as Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, who tried to offer residents unbiased information and encouragement.
Is that this the trajectory we should now look ahead to? With newspapers ever so subtly shifting rightward and unbiased radio packages silenced, how are we going to get our information? Will we lastly both must succumb to this authorities’s accepted messages or disguise in our closets to take heed to unlawful packages that counter these, as did my mother and father?
Anneke Mendiola, Santa Ana
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To the editor: In 1947, I used to be 5 years outdated when my mother and father and I, having survived the Bergen-Belsen focus camp, first moved to an condo on a welcoming Irish Catholic road in Brooklyn.
The general public library turned a second house to me. In the future, my now buddy, the librarian, requested me to affix two different youngsters to sing a tune right into a microphone within the subsequent room. We sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to thousands and thousands of listeners on the Voice of America.
When my son was 10, we took a visit to D.C. to see the sights. We headed straight for the VOA, which was of super curiosity to my son. As a result of I knew his brother, Geoffrey Cowan, the director on the time, generously escorted my excited son and me into the nooks and crannies of the places of work and studios the place we might overhear all that was in progress.
That have opened my son’s eyes to the world, simply because it had accomplished for me. What an unspeakable loss to the world it will likely be to lose the VOA.
Dorien Grunbaum, Los Angeles
