Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) voted unanimously in favor of reforming U.S. International Broadcasting (USIB). It is the second time the Committee has marked up the United States International Communications Act, H.R. 2323 in its new incarnation, which was first introduced by Chairman Ed Royce (R–CA) and Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D–NY) last summer. The new bill will now go to the full House and potentially to the Senate, which last year failed to introduce its own companion bill and therefore stalled reform efforts.

It is surely a sign of the urgency and frustration felt by Members of Congress over the multiple-front propaganda wars waged against the United States and its allies that broadcasting reform again has won unanimous approval. Recent congressional hearings have highlighted the threat from ISIS social media propaganda and recruitment, as well as Russia’s “weaponization of information” in its efforts to destabilize Ukraine after annexing Crimea in 2014.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke for many when she told HFAC on January 23, 2013, that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) “is practically a defunct agency in terms of its capacity to be able to tell a message around the world. So we’re abdicating the ideological arena and need to get back into it.” Yet, since the end of the Cold War, the BBG appeared to have lost its way and has only recently started to regain a firmer sense of its mission as the challenges from abroad have grown.

The major change to the current state of affairs introduced in H.R. 2323 will be the separation of U.S. broadcasters into two distinct types, each with its own full-time CEO and advisory board:

  • Voice of America (VOA). VOA, which focuses on the United States and its relations with the world, would be housed in a new International Communications Agency. This federal agency would also include the Office of Cuba Radio. One difference from the previous bill (a bow to considerable opposition by journalists within VOA) is that VOA would “present” as opposed to “promote” U.S. government policy.
  • Freedom News Network. The other entity will be the surrogate radios of the Freedom News Network. These radios are funded by grants from the U.S. government, but have more independence. They comprise Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and other “freedom broadcasters,” who broadcast news of local interest into closed societies.

Broadcast reform must be seen in the broader context of the intensifying fight for the global information space in the war of ideas. USIB as a whole is one of the most important tools of U.S. public diplomacy and serves communities around the world “by presenting accurate, objective, and comprehensive news and information, which is the foundation for democratic governance, to societies that lack free media” in the language of the legislation. That mission is as critical today as it ever was during the Cold War.