 Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) recently proposed a bill named after the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It would restore a ban designed to prevent the domestic dissemination of government-sponsored propaganda. What is the link between Kirk’s murder and government propaganda? Sen. Lee’s office cited a You.Gov poll that shows that one-quarter “of very liberal Americans find political violence justifiable – a startling revelation on the effects of extremist rhetoric from the ideological left.” The statement continued: “Now, Americans are not only vulnerable to, but likely paying for their own propagandization.” It cited the now defunded National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Corporation for “incredibly politically biased” content. But the use of tax dollars to fund propaganda is not a strictly left-wing phenomenon. As the U.S. government approached the ongoing shutdown, the Department of Housing and Urban Development posted this bulletin on its landing page.  https://federalnewsnetwork.com/government-shutdown/2025/09/hud-website-blames-looming-shutdown-on-radical-left/ Agree or disagree, public employees blaming the “radical left” is nothing like the National Weather Service warning that a hurricane is set to make landfall in the Carolinas at 2 a.m. These statements also seem to violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from engaging in political activities on government time. What Is Propaganda? The word comes from an office Pope Gregory XV established in 1622 within the Roman Catholic Church during the Counter-Reformation – the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or “Congregation for Propagating the Faith.” The missionary office gave modernity a new word that would, in time, take on darker meanings – referring to information that, even when true, is selectively presented to create inflammatory effects. To be fair, the line between truth and propaganda is a thin one. But there are obvious extremes. The National Weather Service example is clearly public safety information. The White House under President Lyndon Johnson telling Congress and the American people that North Vietnam attacked U.S. naval forces on Aug. 4, 1964 (when it manifestly did not) was clearly propaganda. Much else lies in between. So, then, Does the Lee Bill Make Sense? Despite reservations, we believe it does. We endorse it. Sen. Lee’s bill is a necessary effort to prevent government agencies from trying to shape the American people with their tax dollars. In a representative democracy, any shaping should be done the other way around. Sen. Lee’s bill would do this by restoring the original intent of the Smith-Mundt Act, a law passed at the beginning of the Cold War in 1948. The United States was then standing up the Voice of America to broadcast U.S. government-produced news to the world as our truth to counter communist propaganda. Concerned that government-created editorial content could be turned inward, Smith-Mundt banned the U.S. government from influencing public opinion in at home. In 2013, the domestic dissemination ban was repealed by a “modernization act.” The State Department and U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversaw programming like that of the Voice of America, were permitted to release their content inside in the United States. Some argued the internet made the separation between domestic and foreign audiences all but impossible. The law still forbade “targeting” of Americans for the purposes of “propaganda.” In this vein, we agree with Sen. Lee’s public defunding of NPR and PBS. Government-funded editorializing is never going to be seen as neutral and unbiased. And it always creates the opportunity for mischief, whether of the NPR variety (turning a blind eye to the Hunter Biden laptop story) or of housing officials using a federal website to attack “radical leftists.” Our government must not create “news” or political content for Americans’ consumption. We don’t want our civil servants to issue political opinions – whether they blame the shutdown on left-wing, radical woke Marxists, or right-wing MAGA troglodytes. We, the American people, are sometimes pointlessly divisive and sometimes civil and wise. But we can think for ourselves, thank you very much. Comments are closed.
|
Archives
May 2025
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed