America's Voice Author:Alan L. Heil, Alan Heil A history of the Voice of America, the nation's largest publicly funded, international broadcaster. The VOA, which celebrates its 60th anniversary on February 24, 2002, broadcasts globally in 50 languages (but is prohibited from doing so in the United States by the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act) and has an audience of more than 93 million regular... more » listeners. The author will highlight several key events and ongoing struggles within the organization: (1) the efforts of successive administrations, congresses, and foreign governments to shape the content of the broadcasts, (2) the move from shortwave to multimedia, including the internet, (3) the struggle to gain independence from the Department of State and the United States Information Agency, (4) the struggle to present the news, not propaganda, (5) the principal characters in the shaping of the VOA, and (6) the building of a global newsgathering capability.The book will also focus on many of the major historical events on which the VOA reported from the 1960's to the present, including the World Trade Center terrorist attack, the 2000 presidential election, Presidential scandals (e.g., Watergate and the Lewinsky affair), ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and Rwanda, Tiananmen Square, the Middle East, Vietnam, the Cold War, the McCarthy hearings, the advent of the internet and the information age, and man's historic walk on the moon.« less