Madeline Dean: ‘We Must Ensure People Have Access To Reliable Fact-Based Information’

3 months ago

On Tuesday, Rep. Madeline Dean (D-PA) questioned the U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Amanda Bennette on personnel in the agency during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

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00:00October 10th be put in the record and her title is the associate editor news and

00:07standards and best practices without objection to be placed in the record I

00:11apologize and please go forward ma'am. Not at all I thank you Chairman Issa and

00:15my sympathies to representative Mast and his family thank you ranking member Crow

00:20for holding this hearing today and I'm especially thankful to the three of you

00:24it is an honor to be in your company to be in conversation with you with the

00:29extraordinary work the body of work you all have done but especially what you

00:34are doing now please send my regards to all those you work with they are well

00:40led by you and that might reveal that I'm a little puzzled by some of the

00:44focus of the questions today on personnel matters because what you are

00:48doing is so incredibly important and we need to be an appropriate partner with

00:53you not overseeing HR. I'd like to talk first about combating disinformation

01:00we've seen a startling rise in the spread of misinformation disinformation

01:05and plain flat-out lying both domestically and across the globe we've

01:10even heard instances in this very room which I find so regrettable I've made a

01:16point to call out disinformation when I hear it and try to correct the record

01:20because after all if we are not operating under facts and truth we are

01:26not operating well I firmly believe we must ensure that people have access to

01:31reliable fact-based information we must support credible unbiased media

01:36organizations that work to provide that information globally. Ms. Bennett you say

01:42in your written testimony quote disinformation by our adversaries paired

01:47with censorship of truthful reporting threatens the viability of fragile

01:51democracies and presents an urgent national security risk to the United

01:56States end quote. Mr. Kappas you similarly state that reinforcing the

02:01Democratic foundation of other nations contributes to the safety and security

02:06of the American people and I know Mr. Abramovitz you have similar

02:10responsibilities. How do you all check how do you use your organization

02:17appropriately to check and combat disinformation particularly in those

02:22areas where we see vulnerable democracies at risk? I'd like I'd like to

02:27cede to my colleagues without but first to say something as basic as the fact

02:31that without VOA without Radio for Europe there are big parts of the world

02:36that would not even know that there had been a Russian invasion of Ukraine

02:40because the Russians were saying there had been none these are the only two

02:44sources of truth in that matter in very large portions of the world so perhaps

02:49you two would like to talk about thank you. Sure well we do it in a lot of

02:54different ways I think one of the things that we have different you know we have

02:5948 different language services and each of those services approaches it

03:03differently but often there are you know fact-checking or disinformation

03:09monitoring types of enterprises you know they're carried out that are that are

03:16appropriate for each culture so for instance the Mandarin desk I've learned

03:22you know we have a disinformation desk and they were looking for instance at

03:26how Google's artificial intelligence gave answers online and they discovered

03:32that often the answers were in line with Chinese propaganda and then when

03:38the chatbot was the Google chatbot was silent on issues like human rights

03:43abuses in Xinjiang or street protests against COVID and so our team of

03:49reporters surfaced that and that became something that was got public and and

03:55many members of Congress and both parties learned about that and they

04:00publicized it so it's dozens of different exercises like that across

04:05the new services that we do that. Thank you. Mr. Kappas. There's a number of

04:12things I'd like to say about this and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about

04:15it I would say that all of the services and you have to remember that we're

04:20operating in 23 different countries 27 different language services are all of

04:26our or entities have the mandate of identifying disinformation campaigns

04:33often were some of the first people to spot them before they go viral and so

04:39they have the mandate to find them and then report on them you can see examples

04:45across the board of all of our services doing incredibly important work in this

04:51I I think there's a misperception that our job is to simply be propagandists on

05:01the other side nothing could be further from the truth about that we we have a

05:08mandate to present the truth if we are viewed as simply a mouthpiece for the

05:15United States government or for just being the flip side being propagandists

05:21then I can't think of a quicker way for all of us to be deemed irrelevant by

05:26the audiences that we're trying to reach so we don't play games with the news

05:31that's the most important thing that I would say that would be a takeaway I

05:36would hope is we don't play games with the news we report what's going on and

05:41that's the mission I thank you for that fine diligent filter and it's so

05:46desperately connected to national security for us but also globally so

05:52thank you especially thank you for the reporting at the Children's Hospital

05:54yesterday I yield back I thank the gentlelady I recognize myself now

06:03has been the committee has asked for and not received any substantiation

06:11including dissertation

Madeline Dean: ‘We Must Ensure People Have Access To Reliable Fact-Based Information’

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