Does Anyone Care? The State of International News Coverage Among U.S. Media

Description

U.S. News organizations now offer less news coverage from overseas compared to the time immediately following 9/11. The further we get from that tragedy, the more audience interests turn toward issues that hit closer to home such as health care and jobs. With the war in Afghanistan, are media consumers staying current on all of the news from overseas and, do they care? Do local and national media do justice covering news from around the world? Terry Likes interviews local and international experts focusing on the significance of international news and its vital role for those living in the United States.

Interviews

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman and senior advisor, United Nations Development Program

A great deal of research exists which shows a lack of international news coverage among U.S. media.

“We live globalization. Be it the air you breathe, the toys your child plays with, the food you eat, the medicine you take, the job your husband may or may not have lost. There’s an international side to every one of these daily issues,” says Cyndi Stand, the Director of overseas news coverage for CNN International. Having decided the audience in post–Cold War America cares more about celebrities, scandals, and local news, many news executives have reduced the time devoted to foreign coverage by more than 70% during the past 20 years. Many say interest in news from overseas peaked after 9/11. “When you were to ask local viewers what is it you want to see on your local news anything that pertained to terrorism, anything that was a potential threat to their safety, still ranked extremely high, as high as education in their local schools,” said Sandy Boonstra, the news director for NewsChannel 5, WTVF-TV, the CBS affiliate in Nashville, Tennessee. Boonstra adds, because media consumers seek instant gratification and have short memory spans, the demand for global news coverage has waned. “We still report what is happening because the United States is still involved in a war overseas. So, we still report on the war but I would say the demand for international news has lessened over the years,” says Boonstra.

No matter your source for news, studies show the major U.S. television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS have slashed the number of foreign bureaus and correspondents. Some blame not having enough foreign news on cost and geography. “Covering America is already expensive enough and difficult enough. I think that technology is enabling a greater coverage of foreign news. It now can cost less to send reporters abroad,” says Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman and senior advisor for the United Nations Development Program. To combat this, Dujarric says a number of U.S. networks have what they call “digital” reporters. One-person overseas bureau correspondents who file stories for the web, radio, and television, doing what five or six people would have done 10 years ago. “We’re already seeing a bit of that, reaping a bit of those rewards by seeing more reports with greater ability to cover foreign news on a number of the television networks,” says Dujarric.

Chris Cramer used to work as the managing director of CNN International and once served as the Head of Newsgathering for the BBC. “We’re not on an island, we’re not isolated. If the events of the last 5 to 6 years have taught us anything at all, it should be that we ignore the rest of the world at our peril so, for me, it’s about trying to work out as an intelligent industry how we cover the entire world,” said Cramer. Dujarric says it is wrong to assume that people do not care about international news. “So I think it’s important that journalists try to cover stories and be ahead of the curve and look at the global trends. Whether it’s immigration, health, terrorism, and look at trends rather than breaking news just involving U.S. people overseas,” said Dujarric. Cramer agrees. “I’ve yet to come across anyone in the world, who is not passionate about the rest of the world,” said Chris Cramer, former managing director of CNN International.

If you have noticed less foreign coverage and more Hollywood news of late it may be due to the fact that covering the entire world is getting too expensive for some news organizations. “We have an obligation to report and write those stories that are not necessarily high up on the public’s agenda. There should be more foreign coverage and less feature stories or certainly stories about celebrities,” says James Stephens, who has worked at the Chicago Tribune, Jet, and the Defender and is now an associate professor at Tennessee State University.

“Now is not the time to cut back on foreign news coverage,” says Alan Griggs, a former television news reporter, news director, and current professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. “I sit there and I have to shake my head because at a time when it is so crucially important for news organizations to cover these conflicts in an expansive way and yet, because of business decisions, we’re getting journalists withdrawn from the area. Sometimes the organizations believe that it is for safety, but the reality is most of them are facing unprecedented business pressures and that is having a negative effect on the war coverage,” says Griggs. He says entertainment will often win out over hard news as a story of choice because features offer an escape for the audience. Griggs says traditional news media now sometimes lose out to tabloid sources, especially when entertainers or athletes become the news. “I was fascinated by the fact that the lead news organization, if you will, in announcing Michael Jackson’s death was TMZ and not the network newscasts. So, TMZ, solidified itself and gained credibility in terms of real news by being the first to report this major event and, frankly, I was blown away by that. We have reached the point where a gossip internet site was the first to report this major development,” says Griggs.

Shrinking news budgets mean less foreign coverage and fewer resources spent on investigative reporting. The former editor of the Des Moines Register and current director of the University of Southern California School of Journalism, Geneva Overholser, told CBS the potential loss of daily newspapers is a clear and present danger to our civic life. “Newspapers have been the predominant source of original reporting, about what is going on in city hall, in classrooms, about Washington, about the international scene. There will be a time when we have to stand up and say ‘wait a minute’ and it's getting pretty close,” said Overholzer.

Can the depth of the newspaper and the immediacy of the web, TV, and radio be merged and profitable? While new technology such as smaller cameras and laptops to send audio, video, and pictures make it easier to report from overseas, does it ease the tremendous cost of positioning a reporter in a foreign country? “That’s only one piece of the coverage and everything mentioned previously is equipment. It takes a person to write and produce the content to disseminate that information,” says Tennessee State University Professor James Stephens.

Lipscomb University Professor Alan Griggs says we saw technology make it easier to transmit video via citizen journalism during the riots in Iran. “How did we get the video? Twitter. How did we get the news and information that was coming about? From that service, as opposed to any other professional news organization. So, I would like to think it has made it easier but the reality is I think it is going to go up against that big, huge, hard wall of business decisions and because of that we are seeing a lack of news coverage from the war zones that we really badly need to have,” said Griggs. He says he is not sure, after months and years of war coverage, whether people are desensitized to news about the conflicts. “I do think because of the economy, because of the joblessness, because of all the concerns wrapped up in that, people tend to be more concerned during times like that with what’s going to happen to me,” said Griggs. Tennessee State University media Professor James Stephens adds it is a matter of an age-old question, weighing what the public needs to know versus what they want to know. “There are so many things on the agenda the public has a very short attention span and right now the public, they’re concerned about jobs, they’re very concerned about health care, the population is aging, how am I going to survive, put food on the table, keep a roof over my head, and if you break that down, those are the issues the public is concerned with right now,” said Stephens.

Research shows a decline in the traditional TV and newspaper audience. Professor Alan Griggs says our society is fragmented into niche coverage and the audience will move toward what they care about. “This is not a new problem. The evening newscasts have been dwindling in numbers and viewership for quite a while but with the advent of immediacy on the internet and blogs and citizen journalists, people have learned not to wait around to see what could be twelve hours old or older, they are going to go to the immediacy. I don’t think news organizations have not figured out how to deal with that yet.” All interviewed for this article agree that, for now, the economy and health care will lead most broadcasts. As the nightly TV newscasts continue to experiment with managing the decline of their viewers by trying to build their online video audience, a foreign emphasis might be the ticket.