VOICE OF AMERICA Bazetta native outlines broadcast career

People in various parts of the world are still unable to get balanced news coverage.
By SEAN BARRON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
CORTLAND -- When Kent Klein was 3 years old, his nursery school teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Klein told her he wanted to be either a race car driver or a broadcaster.
He chose the latter.
The Bazetta Township native said he grew up in a family that read the newspaper daily and closely followed television news about local, regional and world events. When he was a teenager, Klein was interviewed on "The Winifred Berry Show," a local talk show on what was then WHHH AM-1440 in Warren. His exposure to world events, as well as the interview, contributed to Klein's being put on a path that led to a position as an anchorman at the Washington, D.C.-based Voice of America.
That interview "may have cemented an interest in broadcasting for me," he said.
Klein returned to the area to speak to about 30 people Tuesday at the Viets House/Cortland Bazetta Historical Museum about his broadcasting career. Klein's presentation, part of the Morning at the Museum lecture series, also highlighted his 12-year career at the VOA, as well as some of the news outlet's history, objectives and coverage concerning the war with Iraq.
VOA background
Klein said that as Nazi Germany began using the radio to spread propaganda during the late 1930s, the Allies needed a way to respond. After the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided the U.S. needed a full-fledged international broadcasting network and on Feb. 24, 1942, the VOA began broadcasting from New York City. The VOA's job was "to get the truth out to people in Europe," Klein noted.
Eventually the VOA, the U.S. government's oldest news broadcasting outlet, began including educational programming, as well as airing features on sports and other special programs, Klein said. Now, most of the VOA's programming is on shortwave, AM and FM radio, as well as TV, satellite radio and online. Many people who listen in the U.S. still have to rely on shortwave radio, since the VOA is difficult to pick up in this country, Klein said.
War coverage
The VOA has devoted much of its airtime to the war in Iraq and has provided in-depth coverage of developments in that country since the war started in March 2003.
Klein said the VOA's charter put forth several principles to win the attention and respect of listeners all over the world. Its mission was to represent America as a whole, not any single segment of American society; present the policies of the U.S. government and allow responsible discussions and opinions on them; and provide consistent, accurate and authoritative news stories that requires two or more sources for verification.
"We would rather be a little slow than get something wrong," Klein pointed out.
Klein said that even after the Cold War, the VOA is needed because many people in various parts of the world are still unable to get fair and balanced news coverage. The outlet has 43 foreign language services, and many of those countries' best journalists had to leave to broadcast in their native language "since it was risky to broadcast the truth in their own countries," Klein noted.
Partly because of budget cuts, the VOA faced certain challenges in the U.S. Klein said that the outlet had about 2,500 employees when he started; about 1,042 employees and several hundred free-lance journalists now provide about 1,000 hours of news and information each week, he added.
Education
After graduating in 1979 from Lakeview High School, Klein attended Kent State University for two years before going on to graduate from Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, La., with a degree in communications.
While working as a reporter and talk-show host at radio stations in Maryland and Delaware, Klein said he first heard about a possible job opening at the VOA. He applied and passed a rigorous writing test, only to learn that a hiring freeze was in effect. Two years later, though, while working at a radio station in Wilmington, Del., the VOA called Klein and he was hired in February 1992.
On his first day on the job, Klein met his wife, Erin Brummett Klein, who began her broadcasting career at the VOA in 1987.