Posted by Joe on: 08.14.2007 /
Growing up in the UK, I was always given to understand that ‘our’ news sources were reliable, dependable and objective. The BBC represented the pinnacle of news journalism.
Going abroad I suddenly saw for myself that the news that others saw was not the news I saw. I became aware that my diet of news was very self-centred, so that important issues to others were under-reported or ignored altogether. I realised - by reading news from other perspectives on the internet - that I was being fed a form of propaganda which coloured my understanding of what was happening in my own country and the wider world.
There was a very interesting example of this last week. Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, was reported in Haaretz, the liberal left-of-centre Israeli daily newspaper, to be considering a new peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was repeated around the world. Soon afterwards his office issued a press release saying that he wasn’t thinking of anything of the kind, but was barely mentioned in the international media. It appeared that he had invented an amazing magic trick where he could appear to be offering and not-offering something at the same time.
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Comment by: benjamin ady
1 08/14/07 3:53 PM | Comment Link |Joe,
wow–great topic and questions. Growing up without a television (and still not having one) kind of gave me a different perspective on news than a lot of people in the west, perhaps.
When I spend two years abroad in ‘99 and ‘00, one thing I learned about “American” news sources was that English speakers from other countries found them … ridiculous in their americocentrism. I came to have a bit of this perspective as well.
For some reason I’ve never found the onion funny. Lark is a bit funny, but not *that* funny.
my google home page has headlines from BBC, Google, and Human Rights Watch.
Places and issues which I have to search for/watch on purpose or I’d hardly ever get any news about them include Uganda, Zimbabwe, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, extreme poverty, South Africa, refugees, IDP’s, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, sex tourism.
Comment by: Jim Henderson
2 08/15/07 1:51 AM | Comment Link |When we lived in Hong Kong in 1983 I discovered how insulated life in the US actually was. Cricket, Asian Alliances, Interdependence, African business people (not just dictators). I have never recovered from that first foray into internationaland. I wished I could have spent my life in India or Hong Kong just soaking in the reality where WE trumps ME.
I get most of my news from reading ther local paper thru everyday and listining to NPR while driving.
It works for me
Comment by: Rachel
3 08/15/07 12:28 PM | Comment Link |I watch the ABC World News broadcast most nights and I am definitely aware of how US-centric it is. Although they have done several stories lately on Darfur and on extreme global poverty and I have been very happy about that. I also like to watch the Lehrer NewsHour on public television. On Sundays, I sometimes watch BBC World News and European Journal. And my very favorite news show that I watch every week is Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. It is a truly global program and it is so incredibly interesting. One show I have watched a few times is Global Exchange with Fareed Zacharia. Fareed does a good job of presenting diverse viewpoints and he has a lot of African, Asian and Middle Eastern guests. I haven’t watched that show very regularly because it is on Friday nights and if I’m home, I tend to want to watch more frivolous things on Friday nights. But I should start to watch it more because my tv news sources are still mostly very Anglo.
Also I get a lot of international news from Bread for the World, World Vision, Sojourners and Evangelicals for Social Action - all groups that I support and get magazines, newsletters and emails from. For several years, I got the Voice of the Martyrs magazine about persecuted Christians. I learned a lot about other cultures and about religious repression from their magazine but I have to admit that a while back I wimped out and quit receiving it because it was so disturbing. I kind of felt like I had soaked in what I could for a while. I also get Christianity Today which has a lot of international stories - all from the evangelical viewpoint, but quite diverse nonetheless. I get a lot of information from the local newspaper as well. I like to read the editorial writers, especially Nick Kristof who I admire and respect enormously. And I troll the internet for news stories about stuff I am curious about. I try to listen to diverse voices but I think that my news sources are still overwhelmingly US and/or Anglo-European.
Comment by: Martin Gugino
4 08/15/07 7:51 PM | Comment Link |Today, I watched the Stepford women on CNN cover the mine disaster. If the mine had to pay the families of miners who died, I believe that the mines would be safer.
Comment by: Helen
5 08/19/07 7:12 AM | Comment Link |I’ve noticed that what is reported as news varies a lot from country to country.
Sometimes I listen to the news on public radio. If I haven’t been listening to the radio lately I’ll skim CNN or yahoo to see what the top stories are. When I check news I realize that the reporting may be biased and also that what news I find out about is controlled by their decisions about what to report. So, I don’t assume I’m getting dependable, reliable, objective information. But I’m fairly confident that nothing huge will be omitted from CNN and yahoo.
Sometimes I hear about news through blog entries - since bloggers sometimes blog about news stories. I remember first reading about Princess Diana’s death on a discussion forum where people were expressing their sorrow on hearing the shocking news.
I try to keep up somewhat with the news but I’m sure lots of people are better informed about it than me.
Comment by: Steve S
6 08/19/07 2:00 PM | Comment Link |No TV, so I get my local news via the online version of the Newspaper. National and International news comes from the same place, and from NPR at work (I work in a truck all day). Occasionally when NPR doesn’t have anything interesting, or when I get the hankering to get preached at, I turn to the local Christian station, but I can’t stand their news reporting.
I got disusted listening to the theme music for Jay Sekulow Live… how un-christian can you get? Freedom
So I have to really censor my “Christian” intake…
I do recieve Voice of the Martyrs, but that isn’t really ‘news’ so much as individualized stories, although it does give some broader perspective…
Comment by: Rachel
7 08/19/07 5:55 PM | Comment Link |Helen, I think it is so good that you are aware of those issues. We all need to ask ourselves those questions as news consumers.
Comment by: martin gugino
8 08/20/07 5:54 AM | Comment Link |Does this mean that the top priorities of the editors of Yahoo and CNN are the same as yours?
Comment by: joe
9 08/20/07 6:00 AM | Comment Link |define ‘huge’
Comment by: Martin Gugino
10 08/21/07 6:59 AM | Comment Link |Oh, Helen! You meant that stories CNN and Yahoo miss are missed by other US major media.
I thought you meant: “All the news that’s fit to print“.
Comment by: Martin Gugino
11 08/21/07 7:45 AM | Comment Link |Back in the middle 80’s (as best I can recall), the Catholic forum on Compuserve was full of stories about the wholesale murder of Catholics in East Timor by the Indonesian army. There was no coverage at all in the US corporate media, although the war, essentally, had been going on since 1975. President Ford visited Indonesia the day before the attack began. [wikipedia] Amy Goodman covered the story, but I was out of that loop at the time. I started out to say that the lack of coverage may have been biased by the US Governments tacit approval of the slaughter (which is a scary, dark extension of the “US-centric” comment), but maybe it was just run-of-the-mill indifference to foreign news, and killings in Southeast Asia.
Comment by: Rachel
12 08/21/07 8:50 AM | Comment Link |Martin, I think that sometimes there is this insidious, underlying idea that THOSE people are always fighting and killing each other and continuing their age-old tribal conflicts, and that it’s really too bad and quite tragic, but it’s not new and it’s not remarkable, therefore it’s not really news.
I remember when I took a Journalism 101 class, we were taught that one of the criteria for determining news value was novelty. Our teacher quoted the classic axiom, “Dog bites man, that’s not news. Man bites dog, that’s news.”
So I think that deep down we feel that war and murder and tribal conflicts in the Two/Thirds World aren’t really novel and so we really don’t want to hear about them, because if we reported all the conflicts we would have to hear about bloody and awful things all the time and that would be quite depressing and upsetting, especially if we had to see it on the news right before supper.
Comment by: David H
13 08/21/07 9:27 AM | Comment Link |My newspaper covers the New York/New Jersey metro area and we don’t write extensively about every murder. There are too many and those that occur in the inner-city are judged by our suburban readers according to the criteria Rachel states — those people are always shooting each other; it’s just about drugs. We joke (w/ the black stuff journalists call newsroom humor) that murderers are aware they are being judged and put in a degree of difficulty or shoot for style points so they can make the front page. Otherwise their bit of mayhem wouldn’t attract any attention.
On the global stage Americans appear to have similar indifference much of the time. It takes huge effort by those doing the killing and those who wish it covered to attract press (and audience) attention. Genocide is so common, apparently, that there must be a degree of difficulty, that special twist before the majority of Americans will pay attention.
Comment by: Rachel
14 08/21/07 9:51 AM | Comment Link |Bravo to the incomparable Nicholas Kristof for relentlessly reporting on Darfur!