US Shutting Down a Key News Source

http://www.opednews.com/articles/US-Shutting-Down-a-Key-New-by-Elizabeth-Murray-CIA_Information_Intelligence_News-131203-989.html



US Shutting Down a Key News Source
OpEdNews Op Eds 12/3/2013 at 19:12:43
By Elizabeth Murray

This New Year's Eve, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will quietly deliver a devastating blow to the American public's access to accurate, unbiased information that is unparalleled in quality and comprehensiveness by shutting off access to the World News Connection .

WNC is a valuable trove of U.S. government-sponsored media translations and analyses that has informed the work of American scholars, journalists, writers and historians for the past six decades. It is one of the few offices in the U.S. intelligence community that regularly shares information with the people, rather than simply extracting metadata about them.

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The World News Connection has been one area in which the U.S. intelligence community serves to inform the public, not just the policymakers. The translations of foreign news articles and broadcasts can shed important light on the activities and motivations of governments and political movements around the world.

There is no shortage of support or demand for the Open Source Center's high-quality products, both inside and outside the intelligence community. In 1997, when post-Cold War budget cuts threatened to curtail or eliminate OSC products altogether, the Open Source Center was deluged with letters of support attesting to its invaluable role in the academic, research, and intelligence fields. The campaign, championed by Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, succeeded in saving the OSC from draconian budget cuts.