[danoni]

There is no direct confrontation because that would be WWIII. Only proxy wars like the one happening now.

RFERL is US-government funded, and the audience is mainly eastern Europe. Even PBS in the US is not funded by the US government.

Why exclusively fund RFERL for a foreign audience if you do not fund your national public broadcaster?

[somenameforme]

RFERL is a propaganda outlet that was established by the CIA as a weapon against the Soviets during the Cold War. [1] And in 1948, just before this all started kicking off, the Smith-Mundt [2] act was passed which prohibited the government disseminating propaganda domestically. That act was then repealed in 2013, because reasons.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act

[snakeyjake]

> That act was then repealed in 2013, because reasons

It wasn't repealed, it was amended.

In 2012.

To provide an Arabic/Pashto/Urdu/etc. language source of information for speakers of those languages within the US due to a lack of coverage by domestic US broadcasters. (not "reasons")

For example: You are an Arabic-speaking individual living in the midwest of the US where you were resettled after getting refugee status. There almost no domestically-produced news sources in Arabic.

Al-monitor exists, but they were founded the same year the act was amended, for the same reasons, and unfortunately while many of their articles are written in native language, many others seem to be machine-translated and no matter what the AI/ML hypelords think, that ain't it boss.

[somenameforme]

You're correct, but rather in the worst of ways. The worst parts of the act, those that specifically enable and fund government produced propaganda were maintained. All the parts that limit its domestic dissemination were removed. So for instance one of the first effects of this change are described here. [1]

---

An unnamed Pentagon official who was concerned about the 2012 law version stated: "It removes the protection for Americans. It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false."[39] The monthly magazine The Atlantic echoed those concerns by pointing out to two USA Today journalists who became target of a smear and propaganda campaign after they reported that the U.S. military "information operations" program spent millions of U.S. dollars in marketing campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq criticized as ineffective and poorly monitored.[36][42] As it turned out, Camille Chidiac, who executed the marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, admitted to be a part of the smear and propaganda campaign against the USA Today reporters.[43]

---

It's the same sort of stuff as when the exact same government administration also passed a law enabling the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial (that also remains to this day), again because reasons. [2] Incidentally it was passed in the exact same completely undemocratic way both times - by shoving it into a must-pass defense authorization bill. It's a suggestive pattern of behavior that's quite telling, especially given where we've ended up at today.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...

[_visgean]

> Why exclusively fund RFERL for a foreign audience if you do not fund your national public broadcaster?

Because the US media market is quite saturated and developed (or at least was when any of this was made into law) compared to countries where media is actively supressed.

[danoni]

I don't see that.

Quality news reporting is lacking. Investigative journalism is almost dead. The mainstream media is on a war footing. There have been 0 interviews with J Mearsheimer on mainstream US media.

[input_sh]

Don't worry, it's not just eastern Europe.

There's also Radio Free Asia, Current Time TV (in Russian), Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Televisión Martí (targeting Cuba) and of course, Voice of America, all under USAGM (Agency for Global Media).