To the editor: Yet another nail has been driven 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 bring untarnished news to its listeners, is now mostly silent, with no indication that it will return to its former mission.
I get discouraged trying to convince people of the dangerous parallels to what happened to the news media during World War II and what is clearly occurring in the United States today, but I have to keep trying.
During my childhood in the Netherlands, while that war was in progress, the media was completely dominated by the Nazi Germans who occupied my country. The only option was for people to secretly listen to Radio Oranje, via the British Broadcasting Corp., which had as speakers such persons as Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, who tried to give citizens unbiased news and encouragement.
Is this the trajectory we must now look forward to? With newspapers ever so subtly shifting rightward and unbiased radio programs silenced, how are we going to get our news? Will we finally either have to succumb to this government’s approved messages or hide in our closets to listen to illegal programs that counter those, as did my parents?
Anneke Mendiola, Santa Ana
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To the editor: In 1947, I was 5 years old when my parents and I, having survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, first moved to an apartment on a welcoming Irish Catholic street in Brooklyn.
The public library became a second home to me. One day, my now friend, the librarian, asked me to join two other children to sing a song into a microphone in the next room. We sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to millions of listeners on the Voice of America.
When my son was 10, we took a trip to D.C. to see the sights. We headed straight for the VOA, which was of tremendous interest to my son. Because I knew his brother, Geoffrey Cowan, the director at the time, generously escorted my excited son and me into the nooks and crannies of the offices and studios where we could overhear all that was in progress.
That experience opened my son’s eyes to the world, just as it had done for me. What an unspeakable loss to the world it will be to lose the VOA.
Dorien Grunbaum, Los Angeles
