Columbia Journalism Review, 21 Jan 2013, Emily T. Metzgar: "Spurred by a line in a New York Times article that called the US government 'the largest broadcaster that few Americans know about,' I did a LexisNexis search for and analysis of major American print media outlets’ coverage of Voice of America over a recent two-year period. Both as a subject and as a source of news, it was only mentioned 188 times during the two-year period considered. (A similar search for 'CNN' yielded more than 2,000 mentions—in The New York Times alone.) Seventy-six percent of the VOA mentions referred to the organization itself, providing context about VOA, mentioning its relationship to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and alluding to the role of VOA in inspiring the audiences of less-than-free societies. There was frequent reference to VOA’s role in the Cold War, particularly in the presentation of profiles of dissidents and leaders from that period. There were also several mentions of Voice of America’s continued efforts to provide content to audiences in China and Iran in addition to those governments’ ongoing efforts to block delivery of such content. Only 12 percent of the references to Voice of America directly quoted reporting done by the broadcaster and just another 3 percent of the references used indirect quotes from the news organization. Thus, although VOA is well regarded as a news source overseas, only 15 percent of the already-limited references to VOA in the American print media examined contained any content attributed to the broadcaster." -- When news organizations quote VOA, do they do so because they perceive VOA as an authoritative news outlet, or because they think the report reflects the official US government position on the subject covered by the report -- like quoting "the semi-official newspaper Al Ahram" to get the Egyptian government's take on a certain matter? See previous post about same subject.