Thanks to the Internet - with some help from blogs - growing numbers of people are discovering a media reality known previously only to journalists - and the select group of people who both pay close attention to news and also travel regularly in and out of the U.S.
Last week if you bought or subscribed to Newsweek outside the United States, you received a magazine (the October 2nd issue, to be precise) with this cover story, "Losing Afghanistan," about how U.S. efforts to keep the Taliban out of power may be failing. If you got the October 2nd issue inside the United States, however, you received a magazine with a cover story about the celebrity photographs of Annie Leibovitz.
John Yunker at Global by Design, a site dedicated to "web globalization news and resources," has this to say about the reasons why a story about America's failings in Afghanistan couldn't be on the cover of a magazine being sold in the U.S. - and the implications of Newsweek's cowardice:
Annie Leibovitz will likely move more issues off the newstand than a war that is not going particularly well these days. And those folks who buy the Annie Leibovitz issue will still get the Afghanistan feature — which is an end that should justify the means.
Localization is, after all, about adapting your product to the needs and wants of your customers. However, when this product is news, everything gets a bit more complicated.
The plain and simple truth is that newspapers and news magazines have become more and more like People Magazine. And, sometimes, the truth hurts.
The Guardian in the UK found Newsweek's split personality worthy of a brief story which began thusly:
For some, the world is a tough place, where armed insurgents threaten at every turn. For others, is simply divine, a cuddly, celebrity-strewn nirvana where success is just a camera click away.
The Guardian asked Farid Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International to explain why:
Newsweek's international editor, Fareed Zakaria, said that in the US, Newsweek was a mass market magazine with a broad reach, while overseas it "is a somewhat more upmarket magazine for internationally minded people".
It's not just Newsweek. This split personality between domestic and international editions extends to TIME, CNN and most other U.S. news media who actively market their journalism to overseas audiences. I wrote about the difference between CNN and CNN International two years ago in a paper for a Japanese online symposium titled Priorities of American Global TV: Humanity, National Interest, or Commercial Profit? CNN U.S.A. the TV channel has, for the most part, become a waste of time for somebody trying to figure out what's happening in the rest of the world on any given day beyond Iraq and (seasonally) issues related to Israel-Palestine. CNN International, as I was able to reconfirm when in Asia this summer, still covers a good spread of news around the world - most of which doesn't appear on CNN U.S.A.
Ok, market forces, different audiences with different demands, what's the problem you say?
Well, first of all, when American media makes less and less effort to inform Americans about what's going on outside our borders, our leaders can more easily go around the world doing things that damage our nation's global integrity - and we don't need to be burdened with that knowledge! How convenient for us!
Second of all, as I tried to explain in that paper I wrote two years ago, most of CNN's advertising revenue comes from domestic prime time shows (and fyi, most of Newsweek's ad revenue also comes from domestic sales, not foreign sales). What this means is that when it comes to allocating budget money to send reporters to cover an international story, the priority goes to stories that will get major play in the domestic editions. CNN International is the budgetary poor cousin to CNN U.S.A. - and the relationship between Newsweek International and Newsweek's domestic edition is similar (I know because I worked there once, briefly, long ago). The "star" journalists in these organizations focus their efforts on the domestic editions because that's the priority for their bosses. For the foreign correspondent, getting your stories "in domestic" as often as possible is the key to your career advancement. In this way, the news reported by these so-called "global editions" to global audiences is still shaped and prioritized by the tastes, preferences, and biases of American audiences.
(Hat tip to Boris)
Foreign policy is complicated for most Americans; it involves trying to understand people who are not "like us" as Trent Lott so sensitively put it recently.
What can you expect from a country which elected as its president someone who a mere nine years ago said to Prince Bandar: "I'm thinking of running for president, but I really haven't the foggiest idea what to make of foreign policy." And just four years and six years afterwards, he was in charge of invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and he still hasn't the foggiest idea of what to make of foreign policy. No matter though, five years after the invasion of Afghanistan, most Americans can't even point it out on the map (except for the vets, of course)!
Why bother with Afghanistan and Iraq when we have more important things to worry about, like Paris Hilton, American values and sexual escapades in Congress to worry about? After all, these wars have only cost close to 600 billion dollars, the lives of several thousand Americans (not to mention thousands more Afghans and Iraqis) and completely blown the budget for future generations of Americans...
H.L. Mencken had it right when he said "The US is the greatest show on Earth."
By the way, who do you think is going to get booted off "Dancing with the Stars" this week?
Posted by: Paul Denlinger | October 03, 2006 at 06:46 PM
America is no longer a democracy and the people do not have a choice.
What is a democracy? Sure, there are elections held every four years, and yes, I agree on election day, America is a democracy. But on the other days it is not.
Having elections is not enough to be called a democracy. Even Stalin and Hitler had elections.
I like the definition from the constitution of Communist China. It states: "Article 2. All power in the People's Republic of China belongs to the people."
This is what I consider to be a democracy. But America is not in my book. It is controlled by money, lobbyists and those with money buy their way into getting legislation approved. It is no longer a government by the people but by those that feeds it.
When my Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir was able to secure a meeting with President Bush, I was SO SURPRISED. Later, I found out that someone had alledgely paid one million dollars to a lobbyist called Jack Abramoff, to secure that meeting.
I only wonder how many governments and organizations in this world had also paid such money for the US congress to pass favourable laws for them. What about the average American who has no money to pay lobbyist? How is he left out? Well, in all honesty, he is still important - on election day that is. But he is controlled, for we know he only has 2 choices, if he is fed up with the Republicans, he will move to the democrats, but he will be predicatably one of the 2 groups. There is no 3rd group or 4th group. In Economics, it is called a duopoly. This is why I say, Americans don't have much political choices. If you don't like one way, go the other and if you still don't like it, then too bad. It is no wonder tat election turnout for America is even less than that of Iran. More people turnout to vote for or against Iranian President Ahmadenijad during the last Presidential election than GWB. Alexander Hamilton's nightmare has come true.
Posted by: mahathir_fan | October 05, 2006 at 07:15 PM
What I get from your excellent post, as well as the outstanding piece two years ago, is that news is another one of those things that don't work as a commercial enterprise. That puts it in with justice, medicine, love, and religion. (Hmm. Would a complete list include everything that really matters?)
Posted by: quixote | October 06, 2006 at 06:10 PM