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blackguard19 ago

HR 5736 was not passed until January 2013, sneakily, as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act.

So a law that legalized strategically contrived domestic media stories to dupe the population was hastily passed weeks after Sandy Hook.

DarkMath ago

It's scary they got away with that. I consider myself pretty well informed and I had NO IDEA that's what HR 5736 was.

No one knows about HR 5736 and how it justifies things like Sandy Hook. To prove Sandy Hook was a hoax all people need to see is the text in HR 5736.

I am totally blown away right now, absolutely flabbergasted.

Silverlining ago

A BILL

To amend the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences, and for other purposes.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/5736/text

Seems fairly harmless on the face of it.

RweSure ago

DarkMath is completely wrong in his interpretation of this. Notice that it says it applies only the State Department and the work of the Broadcasting Board of Governors which do public diplomacy broadcasting mainly through news services. You can go here and see what it says

https://www.bbg.gov/who-we-are/mission/

It does not apply to postings on message boards.

The 1948 bill never prevented Americans from gettting and using this material. If I had a radio station, I still could have asked for this material and licensed it to us on my radio station. if the broadcast used material from the AP or Reuters or other news services, I would need a license from them as well. In fact, the law says they should use public news sources wherever possible. The distinction is that you would have to make the request.

One of the arguments for updating this bill came about from fighting terrorism. If you look at the BBG website. The broadcasts are fairly niche, like VOA Somalia. This is because the law basically has a non compete clause. If private media is adequately covering a topic, the BBG is not allowed to create programming in that sphere. Recently people wanted to broadcast VOA Somalia to the Somali community in the US. The idea was this was the best news source on Somalia and would provide counterweight to the broadcasting/messaging done by the Al Shabab terrorist group which is one of the only news sources regularly available to Somalis. And the US is hugely influential to Somalia. Do you know what the President of Somalia's previous job was ? He worked in the Buffalo office of the New York Department of Transportation

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/how-an-american-bureaucrat-became-president-of-somalia-214798