The House on Friday passed a defense policy bill that would revive a Cold War tool that the federal government could start using once again to counteract Russian propaganda through U.S.-sponsored broadcasting.
House lawmakers tucked language in the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes defense programs for the next fiscal year, aimed at restoring Voice of America and other government media to fight Russian messages. The provision is one of the first legislative acts by Congress to combat the spread of Russian propaganda that has alarmed policymakers in the United States and Europe.
“The United States’ response to this onslaught of propaganda has been crippled, in part, by bureaucracy,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said in a statement following the NDAA vote. “Our agencies that helped take down the Iron Curtain with accurate and timely broadcasting have lost their edge. They must be revitalized to effectively carry out their mission in this age of viral terrorism and digital propaganda.”
To that end, Royce authored legislation that will restructure the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a part-time body that oversees VOA and similar entities but has come under considerable criticism in recent years.
“[I]t took the BBG six months to produce a single 30-minute program in the Russian language following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” Royce’s team pointed out earlier this year. “This $2.5 million program, Current Time, was quickly taken off air in Latvia due to low viewership. Meanwhile the VOA has stopped broadcasting to the Middle East in Arabic entirely.”
Royce’s reform will eliminate the current board and create a chief executive officer endowed with the authority to consolidate the U.S. agencies tasked with broadcasting to Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The CEO will be advised by a new panel of five presidential appointees, who will be drawn from a list of names furnished by Congress.
“I am pleased to support this bipartisan legislation that funds our troops and keeps the country safe by providing critical tools to tackle new threats, including the weaponization of information by ISIS and Russia,” Royce said.
