For journalists in Ukraine, safety has become a leading concern. Radio Svoboda, the Ukrainian branch of Radio Free Europe, had been covering the protests (in Ukrainian) since they started in November.

As Egyptians took to the polls to vote on a new constitution, Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa provided audiences the latest news, expert analysis and reaction from the street. In the week leading up to the election, Alhurra aired a daily program called Constitutional Referendum.

The United States Senate has confirmed three new members to serve on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees all U.S. government-supported civilian international media. The Senate this evening unanimously approved Jeffrey Shell, Matthew C. Armstrong and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker for membership on the bipartisan board. Shell was confirmed as chair of the board.

For the last six years, the U.S. government has spent more than $24 million to fly a plane around Cuba and beam American-sponsored TV programming to the island's inhabitants. But every day the plane flies, the government in Havana jams its broadcast signal. Few, if any, Cubans can see what it broadcasts. The program is run by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, and for the last two years, it has asked Congress to scrap the program, citing its exorbitant expense and dubious cost-effectiveness.

Federal employees were told to identify U.S. stations but not to make offers of government-funded news to domestic media. With the controversy swirling over media reports that after a recent congressional modification in the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, U.S. officials may try to target Americans with government propaganda, the federal agency in charge of news and information programs for foreign audiences told its employees that they can start identifying U.S. stations that may be interested in taking their programming but should not contact them specifically to market such programs.

The end of the Cold War changed the nature and mission of international broadcasting. But Congress correctly saw a continued role for such broadcasting to serve U.S. foreign policy by delivering targeted news and information to places where local media still provide an incomplete picture at best and leave citizens unable to make informed decisions. After adding broadcasts from Radio Marti to Cuba in 1985, and TV Marti in 1990, Congress created the International Broadcasting Bureau in 1994. Then came Radio Free Asia in 1996 and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks in 2004.

For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?

All of U.S. international broadcasting could soon report to a new czar at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, under a plan contained in BBG’s budget request for FY 2014. “Included in the budget request is a legislative proposal to establish a Chief Executive Officer for all civilian U.S. international media,” is the way the sixth paragraph of the budget request begins. “The proposal will improve the management and efficiency of BBG operations, helping to mitigate the challenges of a part-time board.”