WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Media from the United States and Russia both are not unbiased in news coverage, US Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs Hearing on confronting Russia’s media on Wednesday.
“Frankly, I think there’s a little bit of fanaticism on both sides,” Rohrabacher said. “We have bias here and they have bias there.”
Rohrabacher went on by saying, “I would hope that we are honest enough with one another to realize that we have major flaws in our dissemination of facts and information in the United States as well.”
On Tuesday, members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs met to discuss how the United States can counter Russia’s use of “weaponization of information,” and how Washington can reform its US media advisory agency, Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).
"These new [media] capabilities and Vladimir Putin's belligerence pose a direct threat to our allies and our interests,” US Congressman Eliot Engel warned during the hearing.
“We are dealing with an organization that doesn’t play by the rules,” Wahl stated during the hearing.
Rohrabacher argued, however, that he would have preferred that another person besides Wahl and speakers from the Legatum Institute and Heritage Foundation had testified at the hearing to “balance out this in a way that perhaps could have compared our [US news] system to the Russian [news] system and to find out where that truth is.”
Earlier this year, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which broadcasts US-centric world news to overseas audiences, requested an additional $15.4 million to expand its Russian-language programming and social media content. By comparison, its combined communication and outreach efforts against the Islamic State amount to $6.1 million.
In February 2015, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also warned that the “international atmosphere is being heavily poisoned by the escalating information warfare that uses global mass media, Internet and social networking,” during his remarks at a United National Security Council meeing.
Relations between Moscow and the West deteriorated following Crimea's reunification with Russia in March 2014. The United States and its allies have been accusing Russia of meddling in Ukraine's internal armed conflict by providing military aid to pro-independence militia. Moscow has repeatedly denied those claim as groundless and asked to provide evidence.
