“Putting news and information into denied areas of the world” is the reason Gary Thatcher says he wakes up every morning.

Thatcher serves as the Assistant Director at the headquarters of the International Broadcasting Bureau in Washington DC. The IBB is a federal agency and an external outreach of the United States government to other parts of the world. It is one of the biggest agencies of its kind internationally, with signals being broadcast in 44 languages through the Web, television, satellite, FM and short wave radio stations.

The IBB strives to inform and empower nations in states of war, dictatorship or censorship. It presents no propaganda or public relations schemes, only straight reporting.

“Originally, the Bureau was set up to put information in the denied places of the world. Now, it is the extensive outreach from the United States to foreign countries,” Thatcher said.

The IBB operates in 34 countries from Sri Lanka to Germany and even the Philippines. They have 1,455 broadcast affiliates across the world. The bureau’s goal is to bring free press, free speech, and no censorship to various regions of the world.

“The job is to tell people what happened and provide people with the information. We are not there to make people love us (the Unites States),” Thatcher said.

As for negative news, Thatcher said to report it “as well as you can.”

Thatcher also tries to provide information the countries are interested in such as cars, relationships or health to attract people to his broadcasts.

“If you make the news interesting and appealing, the people want to come back,” Thatcher said.

In some regions of the world, he has more than 50 percent of the population tuning in to his daily broadcast. Thatcher said the company targets the youth in many of the Muslim and Arab countries. He said this is because IBB believes youth are the future. The company looks at demographics to find things appealing to people under the age of 30 to put in the daily broadcasts.