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WASHINGTON —The chief executive officer of the United States Agency for Global Media said Wednesday the agency she leads is playing a critical role globally in giving audiences access to credible and unbiased news countering media run by authoritarian regimes.
"We are at an inflection point," Amanda Bennett said in prepared testimony for the Senate foreign relations subcommittee overseeing the State Department and other international activities.
"Authoritarian regimes are using malign influence, disinformation, propaganda and information manipulation to close the flow of information and undermine those seeking fact-based information about the world around them. The governments of the [People's Republic of China], Iran and Russia often work together to amplify their malign influence," she continued.
USAGM estimates that 394 million people access its programming each week. The federally funded agency overseen by the U.S. Congress comprises two federal entities - Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting - and four nonprofits: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Open Technology Fund (OTF).
Bennett said USAGM was built for this moment with more than 4,000 media partners around the world countering the influence of state-run media.
According to USAGM, RFE and VOA programming was viewed 8 billion times in Russian and Ukrainian in the year since the Russian invasion, and 1 in 4 Iranian adults used OTF-supported circumvention tools to access information.
"This is the most important time for this agency since the Cold War, and perhaps since World War II," said Bennett. "USAGM must be positioned to be consistently competitive in today's dangerous world of information manipulation and heavy investment by authoritarian regimes and other bad actors."
Agency asks for $944 million
USAGM has requested $944 million for fiscal 2024, a $59 million increase over the current year. Some lawmakers have questioned whether the agency is making good use of taxpayer funding.
"We have a very open system," Democratic Senator Ben Cardin said, comparing USAGM networks to state-funded media. "We guard very carefully the journalistic independence of your agency, and we will do that. But we as policymakers want to make sure that we're placing our resources and priorities in those parts of the world where we are the most vulnerable."
USAGM has undergone Senate-directed structural changes in recent years to address different priorities across the entities, technological hurdles, government bureaucracy and low funding in comparison to state-funded media in other countries.
Earlier this year, House Foreign Affairs chairman Michael McCaul expressed concern about hiring practices and possible censorship at Voice of America, writing in a letter to Bennett, "As a publicly funded media organization, it is imperative that USAGM and VOA comply with these strict requirements for both integrity and nonpartisanship, keeping USAGM leadership out of the editorial decision-making process."
USAGM valued abroad
Public diplomacy experts told lawmakers that USAGM should not try to adopt every platform and every target given resourcing challenges.
"Washington should undertake concerted campaigns grounded in truthfulness to expose the failures and false promises of dictatorship," said Jessica Brandt, policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution. "It should also apply that information worldwide, not just because it's consistent with democratic principles, but because it puts Russia and China in a defensive position."
Brandt noted that overseas audiences value USAGM coverage for its truthfulness.
"In its coverage of the United States, VOA should not hesitate to present the American experience in its full complexity," she testified. "It is a sign of strength, not weakness, for a government-funded entity to reckon honestly with its challenges. I think doing so may resonate with those who are struggling to nurture their own democracies."