America’s voice in the world traditionally has been defined by our standing up for personal freedom, individual rights and democratic governance. For our modern times, let’s add this commitment to our voice: advocating for access to reliable information.
That commitment will help citizens gain access to the data and details to make informed decisions. It also will separate us from those nations and actors that manufacture falsehoods and spread them across the world.
The information terrain may be the most consequential battleground upon which democratic and authoritarian nations compete today. Reliable information has become a major flashpoint between opposing visions of governing. Democracies thrive on openness and transparency, while autocracies attempt to control what people know.
Russia and China particularly are active in information warfare, competing for listeners, viewers and readers in developing parts of the world. Their aim is to shape how audiences view their nations while simultaneously spreading damaging propaganda about the West.
Beijing has made a major investment in media and digital technology across Africa. The bet is on skewing the information environment in favor of pro-Chinese narratives, as my colleague Natalie Gonnella-Platts explained in a recent Bush Institute policy brief. As one example, Chinese outlets have the largest share of media bureaus in the region. They likewise train and employ thousands of African journalists.
The training and employment come with a trap, though. The United States Institute of Peace found in a 2023 special report that “To give their broadcasts an authentic flavor, CGTN [China Global Television Network] headhunts recognizable African TV hosts and reporters and offers them well-paying jobs. After joining a Chinese state-media outlet, however, they learn that investigative journalism is unwelcome if it casts either China or its partners in a negative light.” The same report found that “Chinese officials entice, cajole, and intimidate African journalists and editors to produce only positive stories about China, the CPC [Communist Party of China], and its African partners.”
Russia is active, too, spreading lies about unfounded threats to the safety and health of some of their African audiences. For example, Russia backed social media influencers in 2024 to undermine Africans’ faith in life-saving antimalarial initiatives.
So, the battle for accurate information is on, which is why congressional investments in public media like Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia matter. These organizations have provided fact-based reporting — VOA is legally bound to report the news accurately — in nations that Russia and China increasingly target with false narratives.
Until its recent shuttering, VOA reached about 360 million people daily in 50 languages. About 100 million of those news consumers were in Africa, where they received information that the independent agency put through its journalistic protocols. Africans received information about their nations and the world through radio, television, the internet, videos, and documentaries.
VOA’s Nigeria site, for example, supplied residents of Africa’s most populous nation with reporting through dozens of languages. VOA’s willingness to do investigative work resulted in a documentary last year that reported Nigerian banks were responsible for 70% of the nation’s financial crimes.
That’s just one example of how investments in public media inform people about their countries. Audiences receive vetted information that includes the nuance and context of an event or topic that impacts their country, continent and even world. The reporting also helps others around the globe, including policymakers, better understand a country’s realities. My Bush Institute colleague Andrew Kaufmann wrote recently how his Hungarian father came here as a teen in the 1950s after learning about America through Radio Free Europe.
Access to reliable information is a challenge in our own country, too. Northwestern University’s Medill School reports that 55 million Americans live in communities with no access or limited access to local news sources. These “news deserts” have emerged alongside the upending of the local newspaper business model. The death or gutting of local newspapers particularly has rocked rural communities.
Finding ways to sustain for-profit newspapers is one strategy. Nonprofit news sites likewise can sustain healthy information environments.
Another recourse is congressional investments in public radio and television. Our public broadcasting system, which relies upon independent stations, was created in the 1960s to get information into local communities, especially those that lack news sources. Just like the Pony Express once carried information across vast territories, America’s public broadcasting system connects people to information they may not otherwise have access to each day.
The late Dallas businessman Ralph Rogers, a Republican, was one of the most prominent national champions of the system during its early days. The Texas Newsroom continues this mission today, partnering with KERA and other public radio stations in getting information about Texas and its people into homes across the state.
The rural public television and radio stations that serve communities with no other news source particularly need financial support to sustain themselves. About 30% or more of their budgets come from federal funding, says KERA CEO Nico Leone, a former National Public Radio board member. Each local station (or group of stations) is independently run, and the revenue mix typically includes federal money, local philanthropy, earned income and membership dollars. That mix can vary widely across markets, depending on the local context.
To be sure, public media operations like Voice of America and National Public Radio must protect against bias in their reporting. Both abroad and here, citizens need open-minded journalism that, as former Washington Post editor Martin Baron said in a recent interview, provides an “honest, honorable, fair assessment of the evidence.”
But investments in responsible public media serve to help people know what is happening at home and around the globe. That’s important in an age when Chinese and Russian propaganda, artificial intelligence, social media and news deserts make knowing the facts a harder proposition.