Washington to Create Federal Agency to Counter “Foreign Propaganda”: How long before they Target the Alternative Media?

Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News

Washington and their Main-Stream Media (MSM) propaganda machine is now interested in creating an agency to counter foreign “propaganda”. The irony is that Washington and what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts calls the “Presstitute” media is pure propaganda and now they want to fight the so called “propaganda” with propaganda. Now that is funny. According to RT News:

The bill, H.R. 5181, the ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016’ is a companion bill to S.2692 introduced back in March. According to Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) who coauthored the bill alongside Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), H.R. 5181, seeks to incorporate a “whole-of-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions,” which will set up innovative partnerships to combat information warfare with “organizations that have experience in countering foreign propaganda.”

This has been in the works for some time. Congressman Kinzinger (R-IL) wants (now get ready for this) “the free flow of truthful information” is laughable. RT News quoted what Kinzinger said:

As Russia continues to spew its disinformation and false narratives, they undermine the United States and its interests in places like Ukraine, while also breeding further instability in these countries,” Kinzinger said. “At a time when countries like Russia and China are engaging in hybrid warfare campaigns, the United States has a unique opportunity to respond to foreign manipulation by encouraging the free flow of truthful information. This can further prevent conflict and ensure future stability,” the congressman added

According to a March 17th article by the Voice of America (VOA) (a CIA sponsored news organization who is funded by the U.S. government along with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty) “U.S. Senators Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, have introduced a bill aimed at countering propaganda from Russia, China and other countries.” What is interesting is that under the new legislation ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act’ not only counters foreign propaganda but they will “help” local communities in those same countries to protect themselves from their own government’s media manipulation. This means more funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) who already manipulate populations within countries they are trying to destabilize with U.S. propaganda. According to the VOA report:

According to its sponsors, the legislation — called the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” — is aimed at improving the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation, and help local communities in other countries protect themselves from manipulation from abroad.

Speaking during a conference Wednesday at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research institute, Portman said he believes the U.S. is not making sufficient efforts to counter “destabilizing” foreign propaganda and disinformation

Senator Portman is a hypocrite because what the U.S. has done abroad with their NGOs is to destabilize governments they want to remove from power such as to what happened in the Ukraine. Now Ecuador is on the radar for regime change since Venezuela is in an economic crises and the political crisis in Brazil with the possible removal of its democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff. The VOA report mentions RT News and CCTV:

While much of the public discussion of these issues is focused on the urgent need to counter extremist messaging, and I understand that, I think it is equally important to address the extremely sophisticated, comprehensive and long-term efforts by nation states to manipulate and control information in order to achieve their national objectives, often at the expense of U.S. allies; our interests, our values,” Portman said. “These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations.”

According to the Ohio Republican, the scale of spending on the U.S. government’s Voice of America, and that of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the U.S. Congress, is dwarfed by the money spent on RT, a Kremlin-funded satellite TV channel, and the Chinese government’s CCTV

Senator Portman also mentioned the importance of restructuring U.S. counter-propaganda under a single government agency “Surprisingly,” he said, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.” Senator Murphy (D-Conn) said “The simple suggestion in our bill is to have an umbrella strategy that unites all of the different agencies that are playing roles, so that we can have a coordinated strategy.” In other words, the MSM will operate under one umbrella run by the U.S. government (although the MSM has followed Washington’s script for a very long time) to produce propaganda. Who would be leading the new agency?

Under the bill, a new Center for Information Analysis and Response would play the coordinating role. This center, Portman said, would be led by the U.S. State Department, but with the “active participation” of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (which oversees VOA and RFE/RL, among others), “the intelligence community and other relevant agencies.”

The bill also would set up an Information Access Fund, which would assist in the training of local journalists, as well as award grants and contracts to non-government and civil society organizations, research centers, private sector companies, media organizations and other experts outside the U.S. government that have experience in identifying and analyzing disinformation methods used by foreign governments

So which organizations and experts would be involved? Of course the NED, USAID as mentioned earlier, but you can add the International Republican Institute (IRI), Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Amnesty International, the Open Society Foundation, the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), National Democratic Institute(NDI), CBS, ABC, PBS, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times and the list goes on. What is laughable is what Senator Murphy said “This fund, said Murphy, would “simply seek to seed good information efforts — telling the truth, telling counter-narratives to the Russian story, to the Chinese propaganda stories all around the world.” Telling the truth? The MSM has lost credibility for the lies they have been pushing on the public. According to the Associated Press (AP):

Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans’ skepticism about what they read on social media. Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions

With Washington’s new agenda, the remaining 6 percent (it’s amazing the MSM stills gets that much!) who still trust the media will be reduced to less than 1 percent. It won’t be long before they also target the alternative media. This is good news because Washington and their MSM presstitutes realize that they lost the information war and that is positive news.

# # # #

Timothy Alexander Guzman is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on political, economic, media and historical spheres. He is a contributing writer to Globalresearch.ca, Silent Crow News, and The News Doctors.  His writing also has appeared in The Progressive Mind, European Union Examiner, News Beacon Ireland, WhatReallyHappened.com, EIN News and a number of other alternative news sites. He is a graduate of Hunter College in New York City.

This article appeared first on Silent Crow News, an alternative media site that reports on world events that include geopolitics, war, economics, media, education, science and technology.  Reprinted with permission.

Source: http://thenewsdoctors.com/washington-to-create-federal-agency-to-counter-foreign-propaganda-how-long-before-they-target-the-alternative-media/