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IPFS News Link • Free Speech

FARA: Freedom of the Press, But On the Government's Terms

• http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org

A bipartisan group of lawmakers called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate if Al Jazeera, the news outlet connected to the Qatari government, should register with the Justice Department as an agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA.)

This has broad implications for our First Amendment, our access to dissenting opinions, and in how the rest of the world views us.

The lawmakers claim Al Jazeera "directly undermines American interests" and broadcasts "anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel" material. Al Jazeera would joinRussian outlets RT and Radio Sputnik, Japan's Cosmomedia, the Korean Broadcasting System, and the China Daily in registering as foreign state propaganda outlets. DOJ has also been asked to look into a range of other Chinese media.

Ironically, the bipartisan request to force Al Jazeera to register comes amid a controversy over the network's filming of a documentary critical of pro-Israel lobbying in the US The network used an undercover operative to secure footage revealing possibly illegal interactions between advocacy groups and lawmakers.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act was never intended to regulate journalism. The legislation in fact includes finely-worded exemptions for approved journalists, scholars, artists, and the like, who are not required to announce themselves as "agents of a foreign principal" regardless of what they create. The law was created in 1938 in response to German propaganda, specifically Nazi officials and those they employed to make pacifist speeches in then-neutral America and to organize sympathetic German-Americans. By requiring those working for the Nazis to register, and report their finances and spending, US counterespionage authorities could more easily keep track of their activities.

FARA law doesn't even prohibit straight up propagandizing, though it seeks to limit the influence of foreign agents by labeling their work, apparently to help out Americans who otherwise would not be able to tell the difference on their own. The law specifically says "Disclosure of the required information facilitates evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons in light of their function as foreign agents." Indeed, the Atlantic Council claims these actions "do not suppress freedom of speech; instead, it serves the First Amendment by supplementing information available to the public."

Here's a use of FARA in line with the law's original intent: the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, whose job is to lobby Americans on behalf of a foreign government, in this case, to take vacations in Abu Dhabi, is a FARA registrant. You know who is up to what when the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority says they have decent beaches you should visit. Other typical registrants might include an American lawyer hired by Saudi Arabia to lobby Congress in favor of more arms sales. Being a foreign agent is happily legal and very popular with former Congresspeople and government bureaucrats; you just need to announce your employer.

But FARA can also serve a more nefarious purpose, as a Catch-22 prosecution (a "compliance statute") for those the US wants to declare as foreign agents but who resist; if the feds want to taint you as a foreign agent, you either agree and register, or face jail.

That is what happened in the case of RT and Radio Sputnik. Following the 2016 election, frightened officials demanded the Russian news organizations register as propaganda agents. RT's editor-in-chief maintained her network was an independent news outlet, but chose to comply rather than face criminal proceedings, adding "we congratulate the American freedom of speech and all those who still believe in it." Critics then swung RT's snarky comment on free speech into "proof" it unfairly criticizes America.