Viewed with the sound off, it appears on video to be a tour of a typical construction site in eastern Ukraine. But unmuted, the report by Russian TV host Arkady Mamontov becomes more ominous. As eerie music overlays the din of power drills, the camera zooms in on a tube protruding from a piece of brick wall and then quickly cuts to what appears to be a small shower room.

A powerful pair of lawmakers in the House of Representatives have agreed on major legislation to overhaul Voice of America and other government-funded broadcasting outlets that could have implications for the broadcaster's editorial independence, Foreign Policy has learned.

As governments around the world are scrambling to respond to the crisis in Ukraine, the networks of the Broadcasting Board of Governors are providing Ukrainians and Russians with extensive coverage of multilateral discussions and conversations with world leaders.

U.S. National Security Advisor to President Obama Susan Rice and U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel are promoting through social media State Department’s response to Putin’s propaganda machine. The Obama Administration has offered so far very little help to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees such journalistic media outlets as Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and the Voice of America (VOA).

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency that oversees U.S. government non-military international broadcast and Internet services, probably knows more than it's letting on. The good news is that it has released another in its series of expertly researched documents on viewing and listening habits related to its many language services abroad.

At dinner in Prague with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s president, Jeff Gedmin, and half a dozen RFE/RL staffers, Gedmin said, to no one in particular, “Do you think at any time in the future history will look back and say, ‘I wish they hadn’t broadcast so much information’?”

When officials from Radio Liberty invited me along for a press trip to Jalalabad to watch them distribute radios to the population, I jumped at the chance. After all the gloom and doom of previous weeks, I was desperate for a feel-good story...

Distinguished journalist Christian Caryl will lead RFE's efforts to step up news coverage from the nation's capital as he assumes the role of Chief Editor of RFE's Washington, D.C. bureau. Caryl is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy and the New York Review of Books and is a Senior Fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies.