The Urdu service of\u00a0Voice of America (VOA)<\/em>\u00a0has landed itself in the middle of a struggle between America\u2019s two major parties \u2014 Republican and Democratic \u2014 to win over Muslim votes.<\/p>\n

Some Urdu journalists may lose their jobs for airing a video that favours Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

There are only 3.5 million Muslims \u2013 about 1.1 per cent of the total US population \u2013 and apparently that\u2019s why no party made a serious attempt to grab Muslim votes in previous elections. But this election is different.<\/p>\n

And this point was also highlighted in the revised Urdu content of the July 22 video, which initiated the probe. \u201cThe number of Muslim voters in several key US states could play a significant role in the upcoming presidential election. In the 2016 election, President Trump won Michigan with less than 11,000 votes. The number of Muslim voters in this state is 1.5 million,\u201d the post noted.<\/p>\n

The video, posted on\u00a0VOA Urdu\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0website with logos and subtitles, featured clips of Mr. Biden speaking at a July 20 Million Muslim Votes event that was organised by nonprofit Engage Action. In the video, he promised to undo President Donald Trump\u2019s alleged anti-Muslim measures \u201con day one\u201d and urged Muslims to vote for him to defeat \u201cIslamophobia\u201d.<\/p>\n

About a week after it was broadcast, some pro-Trump groups forwarded the video to Michael Pack, the CEO of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which runs\u00a0VOA<\/em>. He immediately ordered a probe to determine how and why this video was broadcast. \u201cStaff members who attempt to influence American elections will be held accountable,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The statement noted that two of Mr Trump\u2019s biggest congressional foes \u2014 Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashid Tlaib of Michigan \u2014 also \u201cmade appearances in the video\u201d.<\/p>\n

The USAGM statement underlined the importance of Muslim voters in the November 2020 elections.<\/p>\n

The content, which appeared on the\u00a0VOA\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts as well, has since been removed and may have violated federal law, the USAGM said.<\/p>\n

US media reports said that \u201cseveral\u00a0VOA<\/em>\u00a0Urdu employees\u201d were being probed for broadcasting the content while Mr Pack said that once the probe was over, those found responsible would be \u201cdealt with swiftly and fairly\u201d.<\/p>\n

Newspaper: Dawn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Urdu service of Voice of America (VOA) has landed itself in the middle of a struggle between America’s two major parties — Republican and Democratic — to win over Muslim votes. Some Urdu journalists may lose their jobs for airing a video that favours Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. There are only 3.5 million Muslims – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[4],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}