U.S. International Communications

Origins

The first sustained effort at reaching out to foreign audiences, U.S. international radio broadcasting in languages other than English, came as a reaction to Nazi radio propaganda during World War II. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, President Roosevelt formed a Foreign Information Service (FIS), under the leadership of playwright Robert Sherwood, who also wrote presidential speeches. Sherwood then initiated broadcasting to Europe via privately owned (shortwave) radio stations.

The Voice of America (VOA) was founded under the auspices of FIS on February 24, 1942, and continued to operate after World War II as international broadcasting in foreign languages became a common phenomenon worldwide. An umbrella organization that handled all of the U.S. government's international communication efforts (non-military), the United States Information Agency (USIA), was created in 1953 under President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–61), and VOA became the agency's largest department. During its existence, USIA played an important role in informing the foreign press and public about U.S. government activities. The most prominent among USIA's activities targeted toward the international press was the so-called Washington File, a daily text and information service. Washington File staff would distribute texts on most important global events, [Page 1418]which were then given to foreign government officials and the press for publication in newspapers, TV, and radio. In addition to the Washington File, USIA also published electronic journals and posters. In the United States, the agency ran Foreign Press centers to assist foreign journalists.

As of October 1999, USIA activities in the field of nonmilitary international broadcasting were fully taken over by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and the agency itself ceased to exist.

Voice of America (VOA)

The Voice of America is a “multimedia international broadcasting service” that is funded by the U.S. government through the BBG. As of 2008, VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news and cultural programming to an international audience of roughly 115 million people in 45 languages. Determined to present “straight-arrow news, public service programming, and enlightened comment to people everywhere, the organization adopted the motto of letting ‘the facts be submitted to a candid world'” (Heil 2003).

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