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2003 NFPW Conference
The foreign press view of the United States
With satellites, telephones and computers, the world is interconnected as never before. Yet Americans get a much different world view from our media – especially the major networks – than people in many other countries. A panel of distinguished journalists from around the world enlightened us and encouraged us to cover more world news in the United States.
Gautam Adhikari, a global consultant with the National Endowment for Democracy and the World Bank, also has been executive editor for The Times of India, a White House correspondent, a U.N. correspondent and is frequently seen on CNN International. His message told American writers and society to look beyond our own country.
“When you’re inside the U.S., you Americans think that you are exceptional. The rest of the world should want to look like you. This is not necessarily a society that is closest to paradise on earth,” he said.
Adhikari stressed that writers need to cover more world issues. “TV today is run almost exclusively by large corporations with a lot of other interests. There’s a trend for more entertainment and much less news,” he said.
Luis Costa Ribas, the Washington Bureau Chief for SIC Television in Portugal, concurred. “Everywhere I have been around the world, there is more interest in international news than in the United States. Americans live in a tunnel,” he warned. “You ignore the world at your own peril. Friends today can become enemies tomorrow.”
Ribas thinks U.S. citizens are slowly taking more interest in world issues since the start of the Iraq war. “The U.S. did not have to care as much about the rest of the world, but now it will,” he said. “You look the other way until something directly impacts American lives.”
Panelists were critical of the self-imposed censorship of war coverage in the United States by American media. They blamed it partially on the change in our media from covering serious news to now covering “info-tainment.”
“The American coverage of war was unacceptable,” Ribas said. “The media was not showing American soldiers getting killed. Why not? The idea in the media is that if you want to be patriotic and help the effort, you don’t show things that upset people. The real world upsets people. You are not going to have less by ignoring the facts.”
Panelists also discussed foreign perceptions of Americans in the Iraq war. “One-third of England’s population thinks George Bush is more dangerous than Saddam Hussein,” said Elaine Monaghan, the Washington correspondent for The Times of London.
“People around the world perceive George Bush as trigger happy. The U.S. is the 800-pound gorilla. What George Bush decides impacts the world,” Ribas said.
Adhikari added, “A debate on foreign policy was raging across the world long before the Iraq war. What was the U.S. policy? No response. The U.S. is resistant to covering and caring about international news.”
Americans took a verbal beating in this session, but it was interesting and eye-opening to view perceptions of renowned journalists from other countries.
– Kim Jondahl
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