United States Agency for Global Media

BBG meets with Secretary Kerry, shares key priorities of the Board

April 19, 2016

Washington, D.C. — The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) met today with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss the BBG’s work and impact on key global issues.

Secretary Kerry was briefed on a range of issues, including the Board’s journalistic mission to counter ISIS and Russian misinformation with objective reality-based journalism.  The Board told the Secretary that its first order of business is to position the BBG as an impactful tool of U.S. global policy in the challenging 21^st century media environment. This would enable the agency to more effectively achieve its mission of producing objective and professional journalism and telling America’s story to the world.

Secretary Kerry praised the BBG and CEO Lansing for the tangible improvements they have made to U.S. international broadcasting media.

“Today’s Broadcasting Board of Governors is not the BBG of a few years ago,” Secretary Kerry said.  “Much-needed change has come to one of the U.S. government’s most critical agencies, and it couldn’t have come at a more important time.  With the decrease in press freedoms around the world and the increase in extremist propaganda and disinformation, access to the truth is more important than ever.  I applaud the reforms that BBG’s new leadership has already taken, and I congratulate CEO John Lansing for the energy and enthusiasm he has brought to the organization.”

Secretary Kerry was also briefed on the BBG’s five priorities:

• Accelerate a dramatic, market-driven shift to digital and social media
• Concentrate its focus on key foreign policy priority audiences and geographic areas (ISIL and Violent Extremism, Russia & the Russian Periphery, China, Iran, Cuba)
• Enhance strategic cooperation across the BBG’s five independent networks
• Curate, commission and acquire external content
• Better measure impact and hold ourselves accountable for success

About the BBG

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency supervising all U.S. government-supported, civilian international media. Its mission is to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. BBG networks include the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti). BBG programming has a measured audience of 226 million in more than 100 countries and in 61 languages.