[edit] Overview
The US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 402), popularly referred to as the Smith-Mundt Act established the programming mandate that still serves as the foundation for U.S. overseas information and cultural programs and also brought the Voice of America under the Office of International Information at the Department of State.
Smith-Mundt was passed by Congress and signed into law by Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948.
Smith Mundt's most controversial component is contained in Section 501. Section 501 authorized the government to disseminate information about the United States and its policies abroad. However, it also prohibited the dissemination of that same information domestically. According to 501, material produced for foreign production can only be released domestically "for examination only." An act of Congress is required to free a program for domestic release in less than 12 years. USIA's John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums (1965) was the first film that Congress approved for domestic release. 1.
The Smith-Mundt ban on domestic propaganda has been broadened over the years by subsequent legislation. The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1972 amended the Smith-Mundt Act to include a ban on disseminating within the United States any "information about the United States, its people, and its policies" prepared for dissemination abroad. The Zorinsky Amendment added a new prohibition: "no funds authorized to be appropriated to the United States Information Agency shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States, and no program material prepared by the United States Information Agency shall be distributed within the United States."
Section 501 has been challenged on several grounds.
Many argue that the introduction of the internet and related advances in communication technologies have rendered the prohibition on domestic propaganda anachronistic. U.S. cultural and information programs meant for foreign audiences are now readily accessible via the web.
In 1994 when the USIA launched its Internet service, providing access to the text of news dispatches, and audio feeds from VOA radio programs, Senator Jesse Helms objected on the grounds that it violated the Smith Mundt Act. In response, the USIA moved these services from a domestic to a foreign server. Employees of overseas and cultural programs were also forbidden from giving out the URL address of their websites to US citizens. However, these websites remain easily accessible via google and other internet search engines.
Others have challenged Smith Mundt on the grounds that it violates the Freedom of Information Act. In February 1996, Essential Information, Inc., a non-profit citizen activist group founded in 1982 by Ralph Nader asked the USIA for six months records. The USIA refused citing the Smith Mundt Act as the reason for noncompliance. Essential Information Inc. then filed suit. In November 1996 the federal District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Smith-Mundt Act is one of the statutes requiring confidentiality addressed in the FOI Act's Exemption 3.
Smith-Mundt has taken on a new role in recent years with the expansion of "public affairs" activities throughout government. Each new program now includes a PA component, whose primary task is coordinating with Capitol Hill and conducting media relations domestically. Career PD officials in the field are expected to support these operations with regular feeds in the form of "success stories" for publication in the U.S. The U.S. Agency for International Development has developed its own international PA system, which largely bypasses State's "PD" network that formally comes under Smith-Mundt. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), housed in State, expressly demands that PAOs feed its domestic pipeline such stories, whose original ostensible purpose was to serve as overseas press releases -- the Smith-Mundt figleaf. The current head of its PA operation served as a political appointee press officer in Baghdad, where her primary task was handling U.S. media and Congressional liaison offices; she views this as the primary responsibility of all PAOs everywhere. Similar pressures now flow from other State offices. Rather than promote PD in the field, using informed local expertise, PAOs now are viewed as campaign cogs to buttress policies back home. Smith-Mundt is the only legal obstacle to this growing practice, and a weak one at that since non-State offices have a free hand.
Smith Mundt and the Fulbright Hays Act (1961) are considered to be the corner stones of United States public diplomacy legislation.
[edit] Further Reading
- Read Essential Information, INC's Appeal
|
