Talking about America, people often think of its economic and military strength, but in fact, its media strength is also of great international impact and becomes one of the most surprising forces of the United States.

It is just like the advertisement from Wall Street Journal that "The United States is growing at a speed of 10 billion words per minute", which implies the US influence is expanding with the expansion of its media.

The US government is very clear about this. Late former US President Dwight Eisenhower once said that one dollar put in media means five dollars in national defense. When Richard Nixon was President, his administration paid more attention to the external broadcasting of "Voice of America" (VOA). VOA indeed played an important role during the war in Kosovo, the Gulf War and those in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After the Iraq war, Iran has become one of the targets of the US special "care". This was reflected in VOA's program adjustment.

To popularize the argument that Iran is becoming the US biggest strategic threat in the Middle East, VOA announced to increase its Persian language program from one hour to four hours. It will close Russian, Albanian, Bosnian, Serbian, Macedonian and Indian language broadcasting starting from 2007 and strengthen its work in Arab and non-Arab Muslim regions. It's not exaggerating to say that VOA's program is a "barometer"of the US foreign strategy.

Moreover, the US mainstream commercial media have greater international influence, and it is them that are actually treated earnestly by the US government.

In order to win the "news race" fought in thoughts, psychology, information and image, the US government has invested large amounts of human and financial resources and taken a series of measures for the purpose of influencing the press and guide the public opinion.

From daily press release to special reports, from developing personal relations with media persons and their bosses, to "controlling" media with news sources, the purpose is to consolidate the US advantages in the highly competitive world news arena.

Meanwhile, the US think tanks have also played a considerable role in the fight for a right to voice. Over the past few years, in many important decision makings concerning the US interests, one can always trace them to proposals and theories raised from the think tanks. The voices of American scholars and think tanks can also be easily heard. People in those think tanks have formed interactive relations with the government, the public opinion and the masses of people.

Highly on their own initiative and market-oriented, they don't cover up their aim to influence policy-making and media but in many ways openly pass their views and strategies on to decision makers and the public and further influence the international public opinion. This kind of close collaboration between government, the press and think tanks helps the United States exert a huge amount of energy in its foreign publicity.

The article on the third page of People's Daily, March 2, is authored by Zhang Guoqing, a research fellow with the Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and translated by People's Daily Online.