Ed Royce: “I just will close with this because we had testimony before the Foreign Affairs Committee last summer by the former BBG…”

“I just will close with this because we had testimony before the Foreign Affairs Committee last summer by the former BBG Governor, Enders Wimbush. And I wanted to quote what he said: Today's problem is not enough information but the opposite. Most places, even some enduring the repression of nasty regimes, get plenty, much of it junk. This is the new competitive landscape for U.S. international broadcasting. Our competitors, too, have multiplied, while our allies have retreated. One would think that American strategists would sharpen their spears to compete in this world. Yet the opposite seems to be happening, again, due in large part to the incoherence of the BBG. It is incapable of articulating a set of media strategies, and it has no way to attach whatever measures it does adapt to larger U.S. national objectives. So as you can tell, the current bureaucratic umbrella overseeing U.S. international broadcasters is deeply flawed. That is why this bill is so important. We need our international broadcasters to succeed in their missions. We want the Voice of America to--I am going to quote President Kennedy here--``tell America's story to the world.'' We want our surrogate broadcasters to tell the stories to people in closed societies that their own governments won't tell them. And we want the American taxpayers to see a return on the generous investment they have been making in international broadcasting.…”