ComradeSharkfucker, sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml

Voice of America’s Persian Service began airing in its current form in 1979, shortly after the Iranian Revolution toppled the Shah and installed the Islamist clerics who rule the country to this day. V.O.A. was created by the U.S. government to tell America’s story to the world, and, for decades, the Persian Service was one of its largest departments, producing news reports and talk shows that at times reached close to a quarter of Iran’s adults. In February, when the United States and Israel launched coördinated air strikes on Iran, the Persian Service had no journalists reporting in the region. Its programming was limited to an hour a day, several employees said. “Normally, we would have correspondents on the Iranian border, talking to people who were leaving the country, getting firsthand accounts,” a V.O.A. journalist who has worked closely with the Persian Service told me. “Now we barely do any of our own reporting. I’m here only to be here when we rebuild this place so that somebody is still here who knows what we used to be.” (A spokesman for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees V.O.A., said that the Persian Service had provided substantial original reporting at the start of the war.)

Definitely nothing to do with that pandemic haha

AROOOOOO

I wonder if meme culture has cycles like fashion does?