Smith-Mundt Act

Karl Mundt

1948 - Smith Mundt

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 has gone through many policy reforms. Seventy years of change has created the modern Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which demonstrates the change in contexts from back then. Originally, the act was developed to promote better foreign perceptions of the United States. 1948 was a strange period in the history of the world, as WWII had recently ended, but the Soviet Union and the United States were beginning to engage in the Cold War. The Soviet Union spread a large amount of misinformation about the US, and the Department of State decided that it would be wise to promote truthful content about the US. The growing "global communist threat" gained support for the act, as many hoped to portray the US positively in Europe. 

The act did not push for more pro-US propaganda to be shown to foreign entities, or at least that is not the motivation initially. United States citizens were embittered to the name-calling employed by the Soviet Union, and aimed to only spread the truth about what the US stood for. The government wanted information about the US to come directly from us, which they thought to be more powerful than countering with similar propaganda. 

1948 Soviet Propaganda

The second piece of the act controls domestic spreading of the propaganda released to the rest of the world. These pieces of propaganda were explicitly required to be available to media organizations upon request, but not to private citizens. Congress was not concerned with Americans gaining access to this content, but did not want to compete with commercial news broadcasters in the spread of information. In 1948, the Smith-Mundt act allowed the pieces of information developed by the Secretary of State to be disseminated through "press, publications, radio, motion pictures, and other information media". 

1972 - Fulbright Amendment

The 1972 version of domestic dissemination of information, often called the Fulbright Amendment (after Senate Foreign Relations Chair William Fulbright), stated that material prepared for international dissemination shall not be spread within the US or its territories. However, it is available upon request for media organizations, scholars, and members of Congress. 

1985 - Zorinsky Amendment

The Zorinsky Amendment of 1985 (named after the Democratic Senator Edward Zorinsky) adds onto what was already written in the act, prohibiting public diplomacy fund usage in essentially propaganda creation. The words are "to influence public opinion in the United States", but of course "propaganda" is regarded so negatively that no piece of legislation wants to use the word. Some argue that the Amendment hinders public diplomacy efforts, but Zorinsky clearly was of the opinion that propaganda should not be something that the general public funds. 

1994 - USIA Internet Services

In 1994, the Internet Services branch of the USIA was formed. This was obviously because the Internet was widely used around this time, and was necessary to control the spread of information in these areas. How was the US supposed to stop citizens from getting access to public diplomacy when the Internet made it so easy to find everything? US citizens were previously unable to access the websites that disseminated this information, and US government officials were prohibited from sending the links out. Enforcing restrictions became entirely impossible, even a hindrance at times, where foreign officials would cite Smith-Mundt to avoid investigation about bad journalistic practices. Concerns with enforcing this part of the Smith-Mundt Act went on for nearly two decades until President Obama signed the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act in 2012. 

2012 - Smith-Mundt Modernization

This Act allowed any dissemination of public diplomacy upon a person’s request, including past information that was previously restricted. This lifted the idea that foreign propaganda was “too dark” for Americans to possibly comprehend, and also allowed for more transparency within the government. The Smith-Mundt Act had good intentions at the beginning, but the hypocrisy could not be avoided until the belated Modernization of information.