US Needs Greater Investment in Counter-Propaganda – State Department

Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom said that the US State Department needs to modernize its public diplomacy.

 

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The US State Department needs to modernize its public diplomacy and acquire more finances for counter-propaganda campaigns, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom stated on Wednesday.

“What we need to do is modernize the way in which we engage our public diplomacy efforts,” Higginbottom said at a US Senate Foreign Relations hearing. “To be at the scale that we should be, we need a much bigger investment there.”

Higginbottom noted that counter-propaganda is an important priority for the State Department, which has been working hard to counter the Islamic State (ISIL) influence in particular.

“We do some metrics to see how our counter-messaging in going and we can see some progress, but it is not commensurate with what we are dealing with,” Higginbottom added.

The State Department confirmed on Friday that it communicates with various non-governmental actors, including entertainment companies, on how to counter adversaries’ propaganda.

On April 14, WikiLeaks released the so-called Sony Archives, containing some 30,000 documents and more than 170,000 e-mails from Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The leak revealed that the US government has been recruiting leading Hollywood executives, such as the Chief Operating Officer of 21 Century Fox James Murdoch, to counter IS messaging and alleged Russian propaganda, according to local media reports.