This week more than 100 people died in Nigeria, mostly from machete wounds. Six Christians were killed in Pakistan because of a rumor. And India now has more starving people than all of sub-Saharan Africa.
But if you’ve been watching national U.S. news or reading the headlines of national U.S. newspapers, you wouldn’t know that. You’d know what kind of beer Obama drinks, the drugs that might have killed Michael Jackson, or the Bachelorette’s love life.
In recent weeks, out of the 54 stories that ABC reported on “World News with Charles Gibson,” only five of them had to do with anything outside of the U.S. ““ and I’m not sure if the one concerning lemurs entirely counts.
With the almost endless coverage of Obama’s “Beer Summit,” Sarah Palin’s odd behavior and Jackson’s medicines, national media outlets in the U.S. are increasingly characterized by their preoccupation with American celebrities from the Hollywood hills to Capitol Hill. While the media may have no legal obligation to report world events, they do have an ethical obligation to inform and educate their audience in a way that’s not superficial.
It’s ironic, then, that the USAID, a federal agency that promotes democracy around the world, said that the foremost role of the media “ensures that citizens make responsible, informed choices rather than acting out of ignorance or misinformation.” Apparently, the U.S. considers itself privileged in preaching such advice but not practicing it ““ I would hardly call knowing the ins and outs of Sarah Palin’s antics being an informed citizen.
Unfortunately, U.S.-centric attitudes in the news are nothing new and are at least partly a result of our isolationist history as well as our long-standing reputation as a self-sufficient nation. Given our dire financial situation and fragile political entanglements around the world, there is only more reason to increase worldwide coverage. Of course, prosperous times should certainly never obviate the need for international reporting ““ such news should always be available.
Not only do the American news media have tunnel vision, they also have the attention span of a goldfish, floundering from one hot topic to the next with little concern for the outcomes of previous news leads. Some events fade away from the media for so long that you almost forget they’re happening, especially when the media do happen to report on something international.
The war in Darfur, for example, started in the same year as the Iraq war but has garnered far less media attention despite the hundreds of thousands of fatalities it has caused. Similarly, the China-Tibet tensions were in the spotlight during the Olympics but have since mysteriously vanished. And global warming has hardly been in the press despite the urgency it presents.
Frighteningly, some reporters become so blind to the existence of international news that they invent their own stories. Instead of reporting on hard news stories from around the world, these people have become disseminators of the very misinformation the U.S. criticizes.
Nancy Grace of CNN did so when she wrongly and repeatedly labeled an innocent man as guilty in the 2002 kidnapping case of Elizabeth Smart. And who’s forgotten the “terrorist fist jab” that Barack and Michelle Obama shared during last year’s presidential campaign? That fanciful bit of imagination can be attributed to E.D. Hill of FOX News.
There is a place for such fiction, but we don’t need it in our news. Nor do we need mindless stories speculating about dead celebrities when there is a plethora of very much alive people across continents with valuable stories to share. And I’m sorry, Charlie, but we also don’t need journalists who say they report on the world when all they really do is report on one country.
The U.S. media cannot hope to retain a shred of credibility when they keep a narrow field of vision and allow themselves to succumb to sensationalism and bias. It’s up to conscientious journalists to take advantage of today’s technologically connected world and report on issues affecting all of humankind ““ not just a select few people.
As we cannot currently safely rely on our main sources of information, we must stay vigilant about world affairs by engaging in our own research and sifting through information from various sources around the world. Tedious though it may be, for now, it’s the only way to be truly informed.
E-mail Nijhawan at anijhawan@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.