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.
