The Plight of Foreign News in the U.S. Mass Media: an Assessment

Abstract

If it were possible to convert news content into calories, today's daily foreign news diet served by most U.S. newspapers and broadcast outlets would waver on the borderline between undernourishment and starvation. This is rejected in the amount, scope and type of international news being disseminated by a majority of the American mass media, particularly from the Third World countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.To serve the public fully, it should be recognized that reponsible overseas reporting must be truthful, comprehensive and well balanced, representative of the entire international scene and not merely a few events and occurrences chosen essentially according to the same criteria used to select domestic news. This means reporting not only from the perpetual hot spots, such as the Middle East and Northern Ireland, and prominent world newshubs, such as London, Paris, Tokyo, Rome. Moscow and now Peking, but also from regions where the universal human struggle for existence and simple gratifications is waged on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the current state of the art in the United States is more reflective of the former examples than the latter reality. This is especially the case when comparing the foreign news output of U.S. newspapers to that of the print media in other regions of the globe.In a study of 60 daily newspapers published in nine countries representing the capitalist, socialist and non-aligned worlds, the U.S. press ranked last in the percentage of total editorial space (excluding advertising) devoted to foreign news. This data, analyzed simultaneously in Philadelphia, Pa., and Budapest, Hungary, revealed that the U.S. newspapers surveyed devoted less than one half ( 11.1 percent) the space to foreign news than did the sample papers of Western Europe (23.6 percent) and the non-aligned (22.8 percent) countries, and less than one third the space than the East European papers (37.5 percent) studied.' I In his survey of foreign news on U.S. television evening newscasts between 197?-76, Professor Al Hester found that predominant emphasis was given to three news categories: military-defense. domestic government and politics, and crime-terrorism. Receiving merely a minuscule amount of air time were * The writer wishes to express his deep appreciation to Dr. Walter Skurnik of the Department of Political Science, University of Colorado-Boulder. for his helpful comments and stimu-IaUng discussions on the topic.

News Borrowing Revisited: A 50-Year Perspective

“…Critics have long complained that international news coverage is saturated with conflict and its collateral economic, diplomatic, and humanitarian consequences (see Shoemaker, Danielian, & Brendlinger, 1991;Sobel & Riffe, 2015). To the extent that coverage of "distant events in unpronounceable places" (Kaplan, 1979) is exclusively on conflict and "bad news," while coverage of achievement and progress is minimal, Americans' views of the world may tend toward the stereotypical and negative (Asante, 2013;Fair, 1993;Knickmeyer, 2005;Wiley, 1991).…”

“…Still, although American news operations may have rationalized reducing international news coverage because of audience disinterest, others argue instead that the cost of overseas bureaus and staffs has simply become prohibitive. Estimates were that it cost US$50,000 annually to maintain a correspondent in the 1960s when the decline in overseas correspondents began and nearly US$100,000 by the mid-1970s (Neilan, 1975), rising to US$150,000 by the late 1970s (Cook, 1978;Kaplan, 1979;Legum & Cornwell, 1978;Rubin, 1977). More recently, Constable (2007) wrote that a bureau in a foreign capital costs more than US$250,000 annually and as much as US$1 million for "a large, security-conscious news operation" in places like Baghdad (para.…”