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Q: One of the great challenges to journalists paid by the U.S. government is to maintain objectivity and credibility in their reporting—especially in situations that are potentially embarrassing to America. How would you rate Voice of America's success in this over the years?

Alan Heil: Voice of America (VOA) said in its first broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe in 1942: "The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth." That has been its watchword ever since. There have been, over the years, efforts by one U.S. administration or another or usually well-intentioned diplomats, to pressure the Voice to "trim its sails" in news it reports. But by and large, as the book says, the journalists of VOA have been successful in repelling such efforts.

Q: What are some examples of this?

Alan Heil: During the McCarthy period of the early 1950s, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War, some in Congress and in various administrations of both political parties sought to curb VOA reporting. But others realized, as Edward R. Murrow once said, that the Voice had to be truthful to be credible. In 1976, President Ford signed a VOA Charter into law that mandates the Voice to be an accurate, comprehensive, and objective source of news. Visit any VOA office in Washington, D.C., today, and you'll see that Charter hanging on the wall.

Q: What was your most exciting, most challenging moment, in your years at the Voice of America?

Alan Heil: I can think of two examples, one as a VOA foreign correspondent overseas, and the other as director of News and Current Affairs of the Voice in Washington. Abroad, it was covering the Jordan civil war, also known as Black September, in the Jordanian capital of Amman in 1970. Electric power was absent, and we had to move about after dark to news sources while tracer bullets lit the sky and ricocheted through the nearby alleys as we covered the demobilization of the Palestinian forces by King Hussein's army. It was risky but exhilarating reportorial work.

At home, it was a juxtaposition of events: the inauguration of President Reagan in 1981 at the very moment the fifty-two American hostages were being released in Tehran after 444 days in captivity. I was in the central newsroom at the time, making the call with my distinguished director of news, the late Bernie Kamenske. The inauguration was the easy part. The president was sworn in, and nine VOA languages were covering that live, literally a stone's throw away from the VOA headquarters building in Washington. The hard part was getting ironclad confirmation from Tehran that the hostages were actually freed. Remember, this was a decade before the rise of CNN and the availability of satellite telephones to VOA and other media. VOA was bound in 1981, as it is today, by the two-source rule: the Voice must have two independently corroborating sources or a correspondent actually witnessing an event before it will report it. Luckily, we had a contract reporter in the Iranian capital, in a house right next to the airport where the hostages' plane was on the ground—about to take off. The minute the plane was airborne, she shouted on the phone to VOA's central newsroom: "They're in the air!" We learned within the hour that editors in Iran's official news agency had been monitoring VOA's Persian Service to confirm the liftoff. People depended on VOA, because they believed it.

Q: Walter Cronkite has noted that VOA is an organization known to millions of people around the globe but to only a handful of Americans. Why do you think this is so?

Alan Heil: In 1948, right after World War II, Congress enacted a law creating the U.S. overseas information and cultural program. Among the law's provisions was a clause prohibiting the dissemination in our country of any informational material produced by a U.S. government agency. That included VOA. Some in Congress were afraid that one or another political party might try to use the government's radio arm to propagandize the American public. But you could always hear VOA on shortwave in the United States, and today, you can read its texts and hear or watch its programs on the Internet. There is a growing feeling that the so-called domestic dissemination prohibition in the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 is outmoded and outdated, and some legislators are taking a fresh look at it.

Q: How has VOA adopted to the vast geopolitical and technological changes in the world media scene of the last fifteen or twenty years?

Alan Heil: Quite honestly, it has not been an altogether smooth ride. Before 1989, a majority of VOA listeners heard it on shortwave and lived behind the Cold War's Iron Curtain. Today, the media in many—but not all—of the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have opened up. Listeners there have a choice, and clearly get much more news of the world than they did in the heyday of jamming. VOA has had to adapt. It was the first international broadcaster to offer an Internet service, as long ago as 1994. It is investing much more of its resources today in satellite-fed programs to local FM stations, in television, and in developing ever more sophisticated Web sites. At a time of tight funding, change can be slow, but I believe it is inexorable—even in a federal agency such as the Voice of America.

Q: What do you see as the key issues facing U.S. overseas broadcasting today?

Alan Heil: There are many. They can be described in general as programming and structure. In programming, the great debate is over the "mix" of what goes on the air or TV. Should fast-paced news clips and entertainment soundbites and music directed primarily at youth be dominant to gain audience share? Or should the mix contain more thoughtful, in-depth news and public service programming�the hallmark of the VOA's and BBC's successes over the years? That debate, since 2001, has been raging with increasing intensity among American international broadcast professionals.

As far as structure goes, U.S. international broadcasting today consists of a half dozen different networks. They are, in addition to the Voice, which is the largest, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV Marti to Cuba, and the newest siblings in the system, Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television in Arabic along with Radio Farda in Persian. One observer recently called it "a mansion of many missions." Most professionals at VOA today believe there must a more efficient way of organizing all this—one overarching broadcasting network with a strong news and analysis capability bringing all these voices of America together—sharing staff, information, and technical resources under a single roof.