I’ve heard a million times from my non-American friends that the reason we (myself excluded, of course) don’t follow international news is that we just don’t give a damn about what goes on in other countries. I’ve always accepted this as a fact, but defended my fellow countrymen by arguing that when you’re in most powerful country in the world, it’s easy to feel you don’t need to know about the rest of the world; we’re more geographically isolated than other countries; most people in the world are the same way and it’s only Europeans who consistently follow international affairs and even then they only follow news that affects them; blah blah blah.
But I just ran across this study, which says the the number one reason Americans don’t follow the news is that they lack the background information to keep up. About 2/3 of those surveyed who reported they had a low to moderate interest in international news cited this as a reason. A minority of this group (45%) aren’t interested because it doesn’t affect them. Even in the “core international news audience” 30% say that they don’t always have the background to follow international stories, and this group tends to be well educated.
My first instinct was to blame American’s poor education for the problem, but the last statistic leads me to believe there is something wrong with the news reporting. I hope there’s some solution other than “dumbing down” the news. What’s they problem and how could it be solved?
I think it’s a cycle. We don’t read/listen to then new because we don’t get it. We don’t get it because we didn’t we didn’t read/listen to the news earlier.
Consider also that many Americans spend considerable amounts of time keeping up with sports news. There is a lot of it produced, coverage of numerous sports at all levels, and that’s what many people dedicate a lot of their news-absorption efforts (and capacity?) to.
I think, if you’re referring to European news, that it would be the equivalent of a foreigner paying attention to the news that goes on in every single US state (there’s a lot of foreign countries out there) - it’s just not practical. We’ve got kids, jobs, RL problems, and a few hours in the evening to get our lives in order and relax - to track the news in the USA, let alone the world, would be hard for most people.
The important stories from the world make it though the filters to our evening and national news broadcasts.
I agree, a large part of it is news reporting. Until recently via the internet, it’s actually been quite difficult to find international news for most people. A typical large city American newspaper gives international news maybe one or two pages. And most of what’s covered is the international reaction to something America is doing or not doing.
And consider that geography not only separated us physically but electronically. We (most Americans, at least) don’t get radio or TV stations from neighboring countries with different issues and agendas.
My thought has always been that the average American is very stressed. My attention to the news is directly influenced by how stressed out I am. I come from from an average 10-12 hour day of work, and think, well I could flip on CNN, or I could just pop open a beer and watch a no-brain-required Adam Sandler type movie. Guess which one happens more often. Most of my friends are the same way. There is so much going in our lives that, right or wrong, I take the attitude that if I am not absolutely required to know it then I’m not very inclined to bother to learn it. And with America’s size and self-sustaining capability, international events are just something that falls into the don’t effect me, and arn’t required to know category.
Most of the people I meet from other countries(except Japan) just seem to have a much lower stress level (although most of them I meet are on vacation at the time, because I can never get both the time and money together at the same time to travel around the world myself, so my sample set may not be representative)
I believe Americans don’t follow international news because they don’t have it readily accessible to them through the various outlets. CNN, MSNBC and Fox News cover world news but only how it affects America and America’s policies. The only good station worth listening to out where I live is the local NPR station and the news carried by them covers more than local murders or some celebrity’s urine turning blue or jingoistic saber rattling but it actually covers stories that’d never meet the ears of the average American giving real world news rather than America’s world news. If Americans were shown world news like that on a daily basis they’d probably be more aware of global events. I blame the media for being too commercial, NPR for being too dry at times and Americans being more interested in when the Olsen twins will be legal wink wink
Visiting my relatives in the U.S., I was truly shocked by how remarkably difficult it was to get access to international news. Honestly, I was amazed that there was practically no global news perspective. Few sources were easily available and all I can say is “Thank, God for the Internet!”
I wanted to know what was going on in the world and the Internet was the only way I could do it.
To echo everyone else, I care about world events, but I’d rather not watch them with our news coverage because there’s such a pro-U.S. slant on everything to the point where it is really national news happening offshore.
Stations like E! and Comedy Central don’t help either, much as I like them…
That would be funnier if it weren’t such a widely held belief.
I think everyone else has made valid points. But I think the study I linked indicates the problem isn’t that Americans don’t want to know about international affairs. For some reason, the media either isn’t providing the information or is presenting it in a way that turns people off. We always hear that the crappy news is just filling public demand. I don’t think the evidence is there to support the market forces theory.
My thoeries about the perception that Americans don’t follow international news … well, we do, but first off,
Consider that the United States has the population of several large European nations combined. The area close to home is still part of one country; in Europe, you might have several countries a few hours drive away.
Think about this … someone in Las Cruces, New Mexico can probably name the mayors of New York, Chicago, and maybe Washington or Los Angeles. However, someone in New York has no clue who the mayor of Las Cruces is, nor would the fact have any sort of impact on their lives.
The US is a lumbering giant among nations, and its collective actions have a far greater impact upon the rest of the world than … oh, Portugal. Someone in Portugal might be able to name the US president, along with the Russian prime minister and French president. A typical American can also name the leaders of many large influential nations. However, Portugal isn’t really among them, so few people know who the Portuguese prime minister is. Unfortunately, we’re labeled as “geographically illiterate” because of it.
There really is a lot of international news in the US media, but it’s of certain countries that are very influential, the source of many immigrants to the US, or former adversaries. You’ll see a lot of coverage of events in France, for instance, compared to Spain. The following countries seem to get a disproportionately large amount of news coverage in the US media, compared to other countries that may have a similar populaton, include in no particular order:
United Kingdom
Canada
Mexico
France
Germany
Russia
Poland
Japan
China (PRC)
Israel
Egypt
South Africa
Zimbabwe
Saudi Arabia
Vatican
Panama
Cuba
Haiti
Influential countries that seem to get very little coverage in the US news media include, IMHO:
Brazil
Spain
Italy
South Korea
Indonesia
Thailand
The Phillippines
Australia
New Zealand
India
Chile
Sweden
Norway
Finland (except the obligatory “Look how backwards America is … folks in Helsinki are buying Coke from a vending machine using a cell phone” story that airs every couple of weeks)
In the distant past, I subscribed to a cable system that included SCOLA, a channel featuring foreign home market news broadcasts. The foreign broadcasts seemed far more insular than those of the US; when international affairs were mentioned, it was of countries that were important to them. News broadcasts from France had far mroe extensive coverage of events in former French colonies in Africa then of former English colonies, or even the United States. News broadcasts in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan included no coverage of events beyond other Arab states.
We get lots of international news. If a ferryboat anywhere in the world founders at a loss of a thousand lives, we will hear about the American couple on board, and a trust fund will be set up for their children back in Iowa.
I’m not sure at all that it’s true that Americans are less interested in international news less than people of other nationalities are. I certainly don’t think that Irish people are any more aware of what’s going on in remote places than Americans are. The Irish are aware of American news because the media treats America as the most newsworthy country in the world, and they’re aware of British news because a huge chunk of the media they read/watch actually is British, but this doesn’t reflect a particular interest on the part of the Irish people for “foreign” news. I don’t know many Irish who would be any more knowledgable about, say, Latvia, Guatemala or Togo than the average American would.
There’s a lot of truth in previous posts, but another point on the coverage issue: the mainstream news media here rarely, if ever, gives any meaningful historical context when reporting current events. Therefore, the average American has no context into which to fit the information, especially if it involves a country outside of Western Europe, because the average American primary/secondary education ignores everything east of Germany (except for two sentences on Hiroshima). But that’s a whole other rant.
My local paper initially put the Bali bombing story on an inside page – until one of the injured people turned out to be from North Carolina, when it suddenly became front-page-worthy (bumping the continuing saga of Misty Clymer and Rebecca Revels). Aaargh.
It’s a vicious cycle. People aren’t interested in international news because the American media don’t treat it as important, and the media don’t treat it as important because their market surveys say nobody is interested.
But how much attention do Americans pay to serious domestic news ? Very little. I doubt a majority of Americans could identify who the Attorney-General or National Security Advisor.
Most Americans seem to be more interested in sports and celebrity news than serious news of any kind, domestic or international.
As for availaibility, public radio and public television provide excellent international news every day for free including BBC broadcasts. If people are interested, the news is there.
I have always been impressed with the BBC’s lack of ethnocentricity. They have stories on alarming suicide rates among women in rural China while covering the War on Terror and while reporting in detail on cricket they tell you how Shaq returned to the NBA carrying the Lakers to a win. That sort of commitment to think not of the country or region but of the world we live in is what is lacking in mainstream US media.
Howell Raines, NYT Executive Editor, on C-Span was commenting that American papers were cutting down on overseas staff while they were the only main paper increasing it. One would think in the post 9/11 world, the media outlets would start reporting more, especially on predominantly Muslim countries and more importantly, place stories in a historical context. Except for Ashley Banfield on Location very little has materialized.
I have trouble getting decent national news coverage here, let alone international. A typical headline in the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Cincinnati Travellers Inconvenienced: WTC Bombing Closes Airports Across the Country
This is only a slight exaggeration. The media outlets here bend over backwards to find a way to tie things into the yokels. I guess their belief is that if it’s not about us or someone who might be our neighbor, then it’s unimportant. There is an undercurrent of nationalism in US news that makes me very uncomfortable as well.
very little has materialized.