Hartford — The State Department will have $160 million at its disposal over the next two years to help news organizations overseas combat propaganda from countries such as Russia.

"This fund would be used to try to build up independent journalism in states that don't have a history of it," U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said to a room full of reporters Tuesday while announcing passage of bipartisan legislation that he cosponsored with Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

The U.S. wouldn't pick the message or censor any newspaper or website, Murphy said, but "would be simply offering to help other countries in their efforts to produce more independent journalism to counter this Russian propaganda narrative."

The legislation, Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, would expand responsibilities and funding of the Global Engagement Center within the State Department, which will now oversee a "whole of state" effort to combat propaganda overseas. The director of the center will be a Senate-confirmed appointee, and the funding will be distributed to foreign news organizations in the form of grants.

Historically, the center has worked to counter propaganda from the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. Its current annual budget is $5 million.

Over the last five years, the use of propaganda, especially by the Russians, "has hit new heights," Murphy said, specifically naming a fake news story that President-elect Donald Trump hung up on the leaders of the Baltic nations after they tried to raise the issue of Russian aggression.

"Ultimately the best way to tell the true story and to confront that false narrative is for local media to be able to tell the truth, not for the United States to come in and tell people in Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia what really happened," he said.

Portman, the Republican cosponsor, at an event sponsored by the international affairs think tank Atlantic Council in March, said that China spends billions annually on its foreign propaganda efforts, and RT, Russia's state-funded 24/7 international news channel, "reportedly" spends about $400 million annually just on its Washington bureau.

According to a representative with the RT press office, however, RT's entire budget for 2016 was 17 billion rubles, or about $275 million, making the $400 million figure incorrect. The representative did not specify how much of the 17 billion rubles the network allotted for its Washington bureau.

The new center, Murphy hopes, is a first step in giving the "new president the tools to try to counter some of the nonmilitary ways that countries like Russia and China are trying to influence the world and run counter to U.S. national security interests."

But he acknowledged that Trump could chose to spend all of the money to counter propaganda from the Islamic State.

During the Cold War, the CIA carried out a campaign, known as "Operation Mockingbird," to influence news organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere, as uncovered by journalist Carl Bernstein.

"U.S. support for foreign journalism is best done through the State Department rather than the CIA," Murphy said. "This is going to be done out in the open. Everyone is going to see the news organizations, the websites, and the journalism projects that we fund."

There will be no strings attached to the money "other than you engage in independent journalism that is not influenced or funded by a state actor."

There isn't a need for the U.S. government to fund these efforts domestically because "we have a robust network of objective, independent journalism," Murphy said, noting that the American media is getting better at identifying disinformation.

But he did call for a congressional inquiry into Russian interference in the U.S. election, based on a CIA assessment that FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with, and discussions over potential new sanctions against the country.

j.bergman@theday.com