It's America's state-sponsored propaganda network. It wasn't even allowed to broadcast to Americans until last decade. Despite the label, it's been a pretty good source, though admittedly with a pro-US bias. Now it looks like it's been DOGEd.
It is americas foreign propoganda program. is was intentionally made hard for americans to listen to. That it was hard to get at meant the types of people who want to control government propoganda didn't care and so it turned out to be a reasonable source of low bias information.
The difference is that public broadcasters like NHK, BBC etc are usually set up to be nominally independent from the government, usually through a license fee enforced separate from taxes.
Together with "Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty" - it was the main source of information not controlled by the party for people behind the iron curtain.
Radio Liberty was employing variety of native journalists living abroad but with the intention to talk about their native countries and cultures.
The amount of influence it had on the generation is hard to overestimate. It was also shut down recently by the DOGE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...