After four-term Democrat President FDR, the popular Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (Public Law 402) prohibited the government from FURTHER propagandizing its own public and controlling the narrative. The Act originally introduced at the request of the United States State Department as the BLOOM BILL after Rep. Sol Bloom (D-Ill), the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign affairs, in October 1945. The purpose of the bill was to make various existing information and exchange activities permanent, such as THE VOICE OF AMERICA radio broadcasts that began in 1942 and to create the institutional framework to grow the programs as required.
There was a broad consensus that the suppression of the free flow of information contributed to the outbreak of wars. During World War I, the U.S. media was particularly vocal about the role nationalist (vice government) news agencies had — notably Reuters (Great Britain), Havas (France), Wolff (Germany) — in controlling news content and availability across borders. It was the same in World War II. In September 1944, for example, then-Congressman J. William Fulbright, Democrat from Arkansas, introduced a bill calling for international agreements to guarantee freedom of the press and radio as an aid in preventing future wars. Senator Robert A. Taft, Republican from Ohio, introduced a similar bill in the Senate that stated the “complete absence of censorship and the removal of discrimination in the use of facilities of communication will contribute to the knowledge of all peoples, nullify the effect of false propaganda and remove causes of misunderstanding among nations, thereby contributing to the prevention of war in the future.”
Sources:
- “Smith-Mundt Act.” U.S. Agency for Global Media.
https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/oversight/legislation/smith-mundt/.
Government. - “Smith–Mundt Act.” In Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act.
Reference. - February 23, 2012. Matt Armstrong. “A Brief History of the Smith-Mundt Act and Why Changing It Matters.” MountainRunner.Us.
https://mountainrunner.us/2012/02/history_of_smith-mundt/.
General Website Link. - June 16, 2018. Betty Freauf. “Smith-Mundt Act Of 1948 And The Coup.” News With Views.
https://newswithviews.com/smith-mundt-act-of-1948-and-the-coup/.
General Website Link.