America's news TV channel for the Mideast fires its staff and goes off the air after funding cuts
Source: AP
Updated 5:55 PM EDT, April 12, 2025
CAIRO (AP) — The head of a U.S.-funded Arabic-language television and online news outlet that claims a 30 million-strong audience in the Middle East and North Africa terminated most staff and curtailed TV programming Saturday, accusing the Trump administration and Elon Musk of having “irresponsibly and unlawfully” cut off funding.
In notices to Al Hurra news staffers about their dismissals, chief Jeffrey Gedmin said he had given up on the U.S. administration’s freeze lifting anytime soon for the congressionally approved money for Al Hurra and its U.S.-funded Arabic language sister organizations.
Gedmin accused Kari Lake, President Donald Trump’s appointee to the American government agency overseeing Al Hurra, Voice of America and other U.S.-funded news programming abroad, of dodging his efforts to speak with her about the funding cutoff.
“I’m left to conclude that she is deliberately starving us of the money we need to pay you, our dedicated and hard-working staff,” Gedmin said in severance letters obtained by The Associated Press and excerpted on the website of Al Hurra’s parent company, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/al-hurra-trump-musk-tv-news-mideast-2cf49a91d141ba6fdcdb1ae9dd740fdf
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