The external broadcasting service of the US government, founded in 1942. By 2000, the VOA was broadcasting worldwide in English and 52 other languages (including six to the former USSR and 10 to Africa) from three stations in the USA, and 15 overseas relay stations.
Voice of America (VOA) is the official international radio and television broadcasting service of the United States federal government. It is vaguely similar to other international broadcasters such as the BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Netherlands, Radio France Internationale, Voice of Russia and Radio Canada International, although these other agencies are not fully government-controlled.
There are also many affiliate and contracted radio stations which carry VOA programs. VOA programs in many of its broadcast languages are also available on the World Wide Web in both streaming media and downloadable formats.
Languages
The Voice of America currently does radio broadcasts in 44 languages and television broadcasts in 24 (marked with an asterisk):
|
Afan Oromo Albanian* Amharic Armenian* Azerbaijani* Bangla* Bosnian* Burmese Cantonese Creole Croatian* Dari* English (also Special English)* French* Georgian |
Greek* Hausa Hindi* Indonesian* Khmer Kinyarwanda Kirundi Korean Kurdish Lao Macedonian* Mandarin* Ndebele Thai Pashto* | Persian* Portuguese Russian* Serbian* Shona Spanish* Swahili Tibetan* Tigrigna Turkish* Ukrainian* Urdu* Uzbek* Vietnamese |
Overview
VOA's parent organization is the International Broadcasting Bureau, which is overseen by the presidentially-appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors. Although the IBB was originally seen as a "wall" protecting VOA and other official U.S. civilian international broadcasters from political interference, critics in recent years have questioned the degree of independence of VOA's news programs from government policies.
History
VOA was organized in 1942 under the Office of War Information with news programs aimed at areas in Europe and North Africa under the occupation of Nazi Germany. VOA began broadcasting on February 24, 1942. In the 1980s, VOA also added a television service, as well as special regional programs to Cuba, Radio Martà and TV MartÃ.
The VOA has been broadcasting on the Internet since 2000 in English. The International Broadcasting Bureau, in its 2007 budget, proposes reductions in VOA's English language programming, by eliminating VOA News Now radio while maintaining VOA English to Africa, Special English, and VOA's English website.
Laws governing VOA-IBB's activities
Under United States law (the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948), the Voice of America is forbidden to broadcast directly to American citizens. The law explicitly forbidding VOA from carrying out any domestic broadcasting activities is partly derived from the U.S.'s lack of a state-funded domestic radio or television broadcaster. The U.S. PBS (TV) and NPR (Radio) networks in the U.S. function with some public funding, but without the oversight that state broadcasting corporations typically have. Both networks have supplied material for VOA Worldnet TV (which was merged into VOA in 2004), or VOA's Radio's flagship English Service. However, VOA is audible on shortwave and broadcasts streaming audio over the Internet, which enables Americans to hear the programming.
International Broadcasting Bureau services
VOA broadcasts several programs aimed at specialist audiences through the International Broadcasting Bureau. Radio Sawa is aimed at a younger audience in the Arab world (note: Radio Sawa is funded by the IBB, but is not part of VOA). Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia are VOA sister services aimed at the ex-communist states and oppressive countries, particularly in Europe and Asia.
A comparison of VOA-RFE-RL-RM (IBB) to other broadcasters
Programming
The Voice of America has 22 domestic and 16 overseas correspondents, who are U.S. citizens and employees of the U.S. government. They are augmented by contract correspondents and part-time "stringers," in numerous countries, who file in English and numerous languages used by VOA's various language services.
VOA allocates a certain amount of its budget to television production and programming.
Featured shows
Acoustic cafeControversy
National sovereignty
Some critics have suggested that the US government violates national sovereignty by broadcasting and operating in their countries.
Paying for appearances
Recently, news accounts charge that VOA has for years been paying mainstream media journalists to appear on their shows.
In response, spokesmen for the Broadcasting Board of Governors told the newspaper El Nuevo Herald that such payments do not pose a conflict of interest.
User Comments Add a comment…