Should journalists be worried about the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act? [View all]

[FarCenter]

With previous anti-First Amendment statements by President-elect Donald Trump, there has been some worry by journalists that writing something the soon-to-be President doesn’t like may result in unpleasant consequences. Yet that is not the same thing as reporting “fake” news or spreading disinformation.

Hillary Clinton recently said that fake news has “real-world consequences” and puts lives “at risk.” She mentioned bipartisan legislation meant to help the US government respond to “malicious fake news and false propaganda.”

The same day, Ohio Senator Rob Portman announced that the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations – has passed the Senate” as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2017 (pdf). H.R. 6393 passed the House on Nov 30, then the Senate on Dec. 8, and next goes to the President.

One of the priorities of this bill stuffed into NDAA is to “increase the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors like Russia and China in addition to violent extremists.” Portman added, “With the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used against our allies and our interests will fail.”

If Guccifer 2.0 is a front for Russian authorities, and a journalist reports on ‘his’ hacking actions or viewpoints, that shouldn't be considered propaganda, spreading disinformation or fake news…or will that and other such pieces be blacklisted?

The first I heard about this was a link via Slashdot to ZeroHedge; that article was alarming as it claimed the bill:

“will effectively give the government a full mandate to punish, shut down or otherwise prosecute, any website it deems offensive and a source of ‘foreign government propaganda from Russia, China or other nations.’ And since there is no formal way of proving whether or not there is indeed a foreign propaganda sponsor, all that will be sufficient to eliminate any ‘dissenting’ website, will be the government's word against that of the website. One can be confident that the US government will almost certainly prevail in every single time.”

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3149584/security/should-journalists-be-worried-about-the-countering-disinformation-and-propaganda-act.html