Voice of America Features Church

Voice of America, the official global radio station of the U.S. government, interviewed Church spokesmen and members in the Salt Lake City area during the week of October 20 and then broadcast the interviews to approximately 120 million listeners worldwide.

The broadcasts were transmitted to Voice of America headquarters in Washington, D.C., from a mobile unit in Salt Lake City. Tapes made during the interviews will also be used in several future broadcasts.

The Voice of America had earlier featured the Church in broadcasts when the mobile unit was in Palmyra, New York, in October 1985. “Yours is the only native American Christian religion,” Producer Irina Burgener responded when asked why her radio station was spending so much time featuring the LDS religion. “While we have featured other religions around the country, we have never before spent this much time on a single faith.

“We wanted to tell our listeners what the Church is and what it’s like to be a Mormon in Utah,” she said. “We intend to portray Mormonism as a social phenomenon as well as a religious one. I have to tell you that it’s unusual and gratifying to come to a place where there is so much concern for one another and so much emphasis on the family,” she added.