The mainstream media has lost all credibility in recent years, with its coverage of the pandemic and election leaving little doubt about who is running things and where they stand. There are lots of places to pin the blame for how it reached this state, but one big factor is former president Barack Obama.
In fact, it was his move to repeal the Smith-Mundt Act, also known as the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, that set the stage for the current propaganda machine that the national media has become. This move allowed propaganda to be used in broadcasting and took away the requirement for it to be credible. It essentially allowed the media to use propaganda against Americans.
Before the act was repealed, U.S. programming that was produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) – now known as the United States Agency for Global Media – such as the Voice of America, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, could only be consumed at broadcast quality overseas. Available in 61 languages and more than 100 countries, it covered topics such human trafficking in Asia and human rights abuses in Iran.
The act was amended in the 1970s, and in 1985, Nebraska Senator Edward Zorinsky said that this type of propaganda should not be allowed in the U.S. in order to set us apart "from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government activity."
The idea was that American taxpayers should not be paying for propaganda for American audiences. Although some people involved in BBG projects claim it isn’t propaganda, a former U.S. government source admitted that it advances American interests.
When Obama dropped the propaganda protections, it meant government agencies could create “news” and opinions to be delivered to Americans to further their narratives – and the taxpayers have to pay for it.
In a fact check about whether this actually happened, even the AP couldn’t honestly claim it was false; they said that the whole act was not repealed but that Obama “rather lifted some restrictions on the domestic dissemination of government-funded media.”
Putin says it's hard to beat the U.S. in "the war of propaganda" This was even a topic in Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Vladmir Putin. When asked by Carlson why he wouldn’t want to present evidence that NATO was behind the Nord Stream attack so he could win a propaganda victory if it was true, the Russian president responded: “In the war of propaganda, it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media. The ultimate beneficiary of the biggest European media is American financial institutions. Don’t you know that?"
He added: “It is possible to get involved in this work, but it is cost- prohibitive, so to speak. We can simply shine the spotlight on our sources of information, and we will not achieve results.”
American media outlets are supposed to be "free press”; the First Amendment makes this clear. And without the Smith-Mundt Act protecting it, the media can be taken over by political operatives and the government. That’s why we are being fed so many lies about “climate change,” COVID-19 and countless other topics that all conveniently support the preferred liberal government narrative. And lately, it has been going even further, with services like Newsguard receiving government funding to censor right-leaning news outlets.
It is now painfully obvious that Obama helped lay the groundwork for the state of the media today and all of the propaganda it is forcing on us.