Top members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee have introduced a bill that calls for reforming the U.S. government-sponsored broadcasters to make them more efficient in penetrating information into closed nations like North Korea.

Reps. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY), the committee's chairman and ranking member, respectively, introduced the United States International Communications Reform Act of 2015 (H.R. 2323) on Thursday with 12 co-sponsors.

The bill is the reintroduction of legislation (H.R. 4490), which passed through the House in July last year but was ultimately scrapped as the Senate never considered it before the Congress ended its term. Royce was the main sponsor of that bill.

The legislation calls for establishing a full-time head at the Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversees such broadcasters as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, consolidating RFA and two other "freedom broadcasters" into a single organization and making clear that VOA's mission is to support U.S. public diplomacy efforts.

"Right now, groups like ISIS, Putin and Iran are weaponizing information to undermine regional stability and stoke violence.

We're on the defensive and failing to cut through the information with facts," Royce said in a statement.

"By clarifying BBG's mission, creating accountable leadership, and reducing the bureaucracy, more of the agency's budget can be spent on countering foreign propaganda," he said.

Engel stressed that VOA, RFA and other U.S.-backed broadcasters were the "global gold standard for transmitting honest, unbiased news around the world during the Cold War," and the need for such information is just as great today.

"Authoritarian governments and extremist groups are flooding airwaves and covering websites with propaganda and misinformation," he said. "It's time to breathe new life into American international broadcasting by modernizing and streamlining the BBG." (Yonhap)