Voice of America, Straight Talk Africa, 9 Jan 2013, VOA director David Ensor as interviewed by host Shaka Ssali: "What over the years, over the 70-odd years of VOA's history we have learned, is that -- and I say this often to people who say why aren't you hitting harder on the ayatollahs in Iran or something like that -- I say, look, the best answer to propaganda is not more propaganda. It is truth. We're in the truth business at the Voice of America. We may not get it a hundred percent right all the time, but that's always our goal. That is our goal.

"And, you know, when America sometimes has a story to tell that isn't altogether positive about itself, you know, issues of race, or Abu Ghraib, actually our credibility, Voice of America's credibility, we've discovered, grows when we tell the truth about ourselves. And that is when we build an audience around the world, when people say, ah, these Americans realize they're not perfect, they are analyzing their own flaws, trying to figure out how to make their selves a better country. That makes the Voice of America, which talks in these terms, worth listening to on other subjects, besides America, perhaps what's going on my country.

"So I think there's a real power to old fashioned journalism. We have to do it on an increasing number of different media. We have to stay with the times.;But the old-fashioned values of journalism I believe in. And that I think is what we're really based on now."

Mr. Ensor was responding to the other guest on the program, a communication professor who was, as communication scholars are wont to do (and is a reason I am no longer a communication professor), obfuscating the role of international broadcasting. The transaction between the listener and the broadcaster is really quite simple, and has nothing to do with persuasion theories: the audience wants news that is more comprehensive, reliable, and credible than the news they get from the state-controlled or otherwise deficient domestic media. International broadcasters that provide such a product attract an audience. That's International Broadcasting 101.