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VOA Director Amanda Bennett offered a full-throated defense of her agency in a lengthy statement issued Friday.

"One of the big differences between publicly-funded independent media, like the Voice of America, and state-controlled media is that we are free to show all sides of an issue and are actually mandated to do so by law as stated in the VOA Charter signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976," Bennett wrote on VOA's website. "We are thoroughly covering China's disinformation and misinformation in English and Mandarin and at the same time reporting factually -- as we always do in all 47 of our broadcast languages -- on other events in China."

Bennett added that VOA has "literally carried hundreds of stories on China's response and narrative," linking to nearly two dozen articles from recent weeks. Moreover, she added, "data from the graphic cited in the White House press release was drawn from Johns Hopkins, which is used throughout the world."

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