Talk:Smith–Mundt Act

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Is VOA and Radio Free Asia permitted to spam?[edit]

I get a strange kind of spams almost daily about Chinese dissident news, using proxies and English study, which I absolutely had never asked for, and most U.S. citizens can not even recognize. Many spams are encourageing feedback to email address on voanews.com, voa.gov and rfa.org to "improve their service". The spams does not have a pattern of their subjects or addresses.--Skyfiler 17:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone write about the motivation of this law? Why were its supporters interested in preventing the broadcast of such information in the US? Because the views of the Voice of American or Radio Free Europe were so controversial that they would offend people in the US? I don't think so. Because the views were so poorly supported that broadcasting them in the US would make clear VOA or RFE were sham operations? Doesn't sound right. Because the Communist Party was so strong domestically that it would have staged mass demonstrations against this kind of broadcast? Of course not. Because private businesses didn't want to face any competition from government-supported media? Maybe. But I have no idea. Since the Freedom of Information Act didn't exist when Smith-Mundt was passed (~25 year gap), the motivation wasn't to forestall any FOIA requests to get files from VOA or RFE. In short, I'm totally puzzzled and hope someone better informed will add this to this stub. Interlingua 13:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to second this request, if anyone knows anything more. It does seem quite odd. To my knowledge, VOA content was never particularly controversial nor "so poorly supported...", etc. I think that the "competition with domestic media" explanation is probably the most likely, although then why was the ability to examine broadcasts limited only to researchers and so on? Also, are VOA broadcasts copyright? Being works of the US Government I would think not, but suppose today someone decided to record them and rebroadcast them domestically in the US, perhaps via the Internet? Would that violate this law? Gee, that seems impossible, due to 1st Amendment implications, even if the government forbids itself from disseminating this stuff domestically... Anyway, this is a fascinating topic.--69.22.75.205 13:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Congress was concerned about domestic propaganda being used as disinformation upon the American public, so they banned it. Even though the VOA's content is uncontroversial and could be useful to Americans, it is seen as preferable to make all domestic propaganda illegal. 98.246.191.164 (talk) 14:49, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also Fulbright Program[edit]

Wasn't this act also the basis of the Fulbright Program? Badagnani 10:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"The act also prohibits domestic distribution of information intended for foreign audiences"

Isn't this just another way of saying that the US doesn't want the people at home to know what it is telling people in other countries?

And you American guys...are OK WITH THIS? O_O


I'm not "OK" with it but seeing as it's remarkably easy for us to get access to our own propaganda since the advent of the internet we have a lot bigger fish to fry. Lord knows why they won't broadcast it here but it really doesn't seem to be as insidious as you think it is. --An American 196.209.112.230 (talk) 08:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

H.R.5736 -- Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012[edit]

It seems this act has been "updated" as of May 2012

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.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.5736: — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.153.187.119 (talk) 00:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It did get amended in the NDAA of 2013. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4310/text -- BlindWanderer (talk) 00:41, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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