Voices supporting VOA
Nicholas Cull
Professor of public diplomacy, University of Southern California
TRANSCRIPT:
It was the will of Congress that Voice of America should exist and that it should have a charter requiring balanced news for coverage. So for something that Congress willed into existence to be put out of business by the stroke of a pen seems to me to be un-American and an outrageous thing to have happened.
If American democratic ideas and American ideas of press freedom are not communicated and treasured in the outside world, that’s very dangerous for the United States. That will have an impact on the lives of ordinary Americans.
As a historian, this is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. It’s an issue of speaking for America or being silent. It’s something that all Americans, whatever their political party, should care about.
And so my hope is that Americans can rally around a great American institution and can remember the tremendous achievements of the Voice of America in its past and move beyond this terrible moment and once again make this great service available to people around the world who really, really need it.
Published
Cull is a professor of public diplomacy at the University of Southern California. He is leading scholar of U.S. international broadcasting and American soft power and his research has examined the history of Voice of America and global public diplomacy.