TRANSCRIPT:
People outside the United States need some kind of hope. There are people in places where there’s serious repression. I think the Voice of America offers for people throughout the world some kind of hope in a future for themselves, for their kids, for their grandkids. And that’s the kind of world I want to live in, where there’s hope for a better future.
And VOA, in its eclectic way, did that by having native-language journalists who understood various countries as well as understanding the United States, talking straight up to people. And I think we need that because if we’re not careful people can isolate themselves and isolation isn’t good anymore.
Russia under Putin these days is trying to clamp down on what’s said on the Russian media. China has very tightly tried to clamp down on them. And Voice of America has been hard to silence by them.
And it has a credibility in those circles in Russia and in the former Soviet Union that you don’t buy overnight. It had … it built it up over the years and nobody else has the same credibility. I mean BBC, Deutsche Welle, these other services just don’t carry that je ne sais quoi, that certain credibility that VOA carries.
And so if it goes away, people like Putin, people like Xi, people in Cuba, people in Venezuela running the government, they’re perfectly happy because there’s no credible source to contradict what their state media is putting on.
Published
Kirby served as U.S. ambassador to Moldova from 2006–2008 during the George W. Bush administration and as U.S. ambassador to Serbia from 2012–2016 during the Obama administration.