VOA News

The Voice of America sets out to be exactly that, and although it's government-funded and wholly American in thought and deed, it is at least chartered to deliver the news reliably and objectively. And as a radio station it has been reaching out to the international listening community since long before I was born, sharing a similar venerable respectibility with the BBC World Service.

Aside from reporting the news and what its charter describes as "significant" American thoughts and opinions, the VOA also has a mission to spread wider understanding of American English as a language, and this is reflected by the considerable space on its website which is given over to presenting the news for learners and providing many resources for both students and teachers.

Being a web presence now, it can and does spread into the areas of individual blogs. Videos and podcasts, though you can also listen to live radio streams.

It's a conservative presentation, unexpectedly so for an American media site, but somehow more reassuring that way. If anything, I find it oddly un-American, delivering the world news in an unadorned style that makes the BBC look positively outlandish. And it has considerable depth, though I suspect the name alone will have discouraged many readers outside of the States from including it amongst their regular news providers. If you're one of those, you might like to check it out.

American readers used to plenty of froth in their daily news may be disappointed, however; a site search for "jennifer aniston" returned "US Businesses Challenged to Cut Energy Waste" and "British Soldiers Train for Deployment in Mock-Afghan Village" in the top six results, suggesting that light entertainment may be a bit thin on the ground around here. Well, you can't have everything.