Its mission is "to promote freedom and democracy and to enhance understanding through multimedia communication of accurate, objective, and balanced news, information and other programming about America and the world to audiences overseas." VOA will "serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news."
These are just a few quotes stating what the VOA's missions are.
After reading up on exactly what the VOA is and what it does, it blows my mind that I've never heard of it before. It's a WORLDWIDE broadcast through satellite, cable, FM, AM, shortwave radio, the internet, phones, and on TV. It's accessible by every means people use to get information from. And obviously, this news is intended for the rest of the world so that they know what is going on in America. But why have I never listened to it? Wouldn't it be a viable news source for those of us inside the country as well?
And it's been around for so long, one would think I'd have heard my parents mention it - or even my grandparents mention it. But no, nothing. I even asked my mom and dad if they knew anything about it. Nope. And apparently, it goes by different names in different countries, but they're all under the umbrella of the VOA. Also, in America, it's called VOA so there's no excuse.
In addition to being broadcasted all over the world in tons of languages, it also sounds incredibly reliable. Everything they broadcast must be backed up by two independent sources before it is aired. So basically, it has almost no bias at all. Obviously, everything has a little bit of bias - but the intention of the VOA is not to impose its political view on anybody, to make anybody thing that the US is better than it is, or to push down any other country.
I think that this will be a REALLY interesting thing to talk about in class and I hope to write another blog post about it once I get more details.
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