Archive for January 2008
hypothesis
Has American foreign reporting been focused on the wrong issues for the past 20 years?
This semester, I start work as a research assistant. My professor’s hypothesis: The U.S. news media is not covering global issues in a way that most Americans can understand or want to know about, leading to a general lack of interest in foreign affairs on the part of the American public.
He has brainstormed three angles of approach: the American public, the American press, and the foreign public.
- What are the global issues that concern people? What are the elites interested in? versus the general public?
- By contrast, what are the issues that end up on the front page or on the air?
- What do foreign bureaus do? What’s their agenda? How do they go about covering issues?
- What do foreigners want Americans to understand about them?
Further, what are the important events of the last 20 years? And at what point did the press discover each event’s importance?
