USIA stands for the United States Information Agency. It was a US government office, alive from 1953 to 1999, whose job was to explain America to people in other countries and to make them think well of it — what governments call public diplomacy, and what critics simply called propaganda. It ran cultural centres and libraries abroad, arranged student and teacher exchanges, showed American films, and was for years connected with Voice of America radio. It grew out of the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union were competing for the good opinion of the rest of the world. In 1999 it was closed and its work moved inside the State Department, so a student today will only meet USIA in history books, old documents and the life stories of people who studied in America on one of its programs. Say the four letters separately, U-S-I-A, and use "the" in front of it, as with most agency names.

美國新聞總署（1953–1999 年的美國政府對外文化宣傳機構，1999 年併入國務院）