Here’s your starter for ten in our Saturday slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
The tragic killing of six and injuries to thirteen others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, have received heavy coverage in the UK media, not only in response to the shooting itself but also following up the story subsequently. Yet other recent political deaths from countries around the world have received, at most, very little media coverage in the UK.
There are partial explanations – such as the murdered Nigerian politician being a local government figure rather than a national figure and the murdered Ukranian political party leader was leader of a small party. The murder in the Philippines received the most coverage in the UK, due I suspect to the tragic photo of the event. The murdered politician, Reynaldo Dagsa, was taking a family photo just as the murderer was pulling his gun, so the last act of Dagsa was to take a photo that shows his murderer pointing a gun straight at him. The killing of the Punjab governor in Pakistan received the most coverage, but even his death has received much less coverage in the UK than the US story.
So is it that the injuring of Gabrielle Giffords alongside the killing and injuring of others rightly justifies far more media coverage than other events? Or is that the media does not pay enough attention to countries such as Pakistan (a key country when it comes to events in Afghanistan and a country to which many people living here have close family ties) or the Ukraine (a country whose relations with Russia are important for our energy supplies and prices)?
Post your comments below…
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20 Comments
The UK media do cover the US much more than is really warranted, this has the unfortunate side effect that it creates the impression we are part of the US, making people more anti-EU. I think this is both a propaganda effort but mostly just lazyness. All news output from the US is already in English, US originated Spanish language footage is never used for example, its just cheap and easy to cut ‘n’ paste it into a news report.
Definitely! There is too much news from the US and not enough european news, there is so much happenening in Europe that just does not get covered > elections, national disasters, floods and moreover, the news from europe that does get covered is often trivial and anti european. Also, can we please have subtitles and the original sound track rather than talk over in english…what chance have Brits got to hear other languaages if its constantly dubbed!
Yes. If I take you back to 9-11 we had wall to wall coverage for weeks of the disaster. Of course, it was of enormous importance. 6294 people died very tragically. But the coverage was completely out of proportion with that for other tragedies with far greater loss of life – for example the Rwandan genocide.
I could not have put things better than Trevor Stables. i agree entirely with what he states but would amplify it by adding that the news media, indeed the wider consumers of news in this country, constantly make the esentially lazy assumption that anything of any note worth reporting, however trivial, happens within the almost hermetically sealed bubble that is the anglophone world.
Concerning the treatment of foreign languages in television news items: I am always amazed that the BBC manages to find someone, at short notice, with a suitably fake accent to talk over the original foreign language speaker. Far easier, cheaper, and less patronising, to use sub-titles.
The Anglophone bubble is indeed dominant.
It would help though if the foreign TV news services now available in the UK (Al-Jazeera for example) offered subtitling options. It is not only the deaf that would benefit.
“Concerning the treatment of foreign languages in television news items: I am always amazed that the BBC manages to find someone, at short notice, with a suitably fake accent to talk over the original foreign language speaker. Far easier, cheaper, and less patronising, to use sub-titles.”
Agree absolutely. Furthermore for anyone hard of hearing distinguishing the ‘talk over’ speech from the original foreign language can be quite difficult.
And I agree with the view that there is far too much US news on UK TV and far too little from other areas of the world.
No. It is more of a case that there should be more international news rather than less US news.
It is fascinating and very alarming the cultish fanaticism that is gravitating to the US tea party and the Republican party. Not only that, the Republicans are on course for winning the next general election. Is it really possible the UK government can have a “100% pro-American” foreign policy in this scenario?
Edis is absolutely right. Just look at the events of the past week. The floods in Queensland started to make the news bulletins fairly early on although they still weren’t covered very extensively until there were some dramatic pictures for them to show. The floods in Brazil – far more devastating in terms of lives lost – didn’t get a mention until the number of deaths reached three figures. The floods in Sri Lanka haven’t received much coverage at all.
Equally, coverage of events in Tunisia had been fairly low-key until yesterday.
Without a shadow of a doubt, we do. Its probably because we are exposed to so much American culture in magazines and TV, that we start to think it affects us. I have to remind myself that we have our own system and culture with its own problems and solutions. The Americans might be a bit mad sometimes, ut not to the level that we should start to go mad and worry. Let them all own guns and shoot themselves!
yes! I was thinking this only the other evening, probably in the wake of extensive jaw-jaw on the news about the colorado shootings, clearly a ghastly business, but meriting of 15 minutes of prime time news?
no doubt part of it is bbc journos preferring to spend our licence fee trvaelling stateside than in the 3rd world. always a pointless expense, since half the time they’re filmed in their hotel grounds anyway!
Yes, yes and yes. We are far too obsessed with US news and then beneath that obsessed generally with the anglo-saxon world. We barely ever get news of whats happening in western europe unless it directly affects us, or one of the characters (shroeder, merkel, sarkozy etc) has become well-known after half a decade or so for the general public to hear about them.
I think this Anglo-centric view of the world in our media has also shaped our politics, theres absolutely no way that politicians could have peddled the ‘coalitions are chaos and nothing gets done’ line if we were more aware of European politics. Similarly, the public shouting for PR would probably be louder if people saw how effectively it worked in western european countries.
Do the media cover the US more than say W Europe because of some intrinsic bias or does it reflect what readers/viewers are interested in.?
Do news article on website about the US get clicked on more than similar stories about other countries?
Perhaps people in the UK feel closer to the US because of common language, culture etc?
There is no such thing as a “general election” in the United States. The Americans have entirely separate elections for each house of their legislature and the leader of their government. It is entirely possible, and not at all uncommon, for there to be distinct results for each of these elections. As in the recent elections, in which the Democratic Party won the upper house and the Republican Party the lower house.
I know of nothing that would support the statement “the Republicans are on course for winning the next general election” (sic). But then I do not get my news from Mr. Murdoch.
Prime news of late has rightly followed full news of the Queensland La Nina floods and tragic loss of life and Brazil where the poor built housing has caused even more tragic deaths from its over flowing rivers.
I agree that we are more aware of American news and less so about non English mother tongue countries and the UK has ensured a static situation in finding the response to put out any European language programmes or news in French,German,Italian or Spanish since EU membership in 1973.
I share concern also that as a Teacher myself there ought to be more attention given to the current crisis in the low numbers of pupils choosing modern languages, in our schools at KS4.
Since 2004, GCSE MSL was made optional and teaching of French and German, in particular, has gone into a downwards loop with 51% take-up in Nov. 2006 and in some schools now the numbers enrolling for KS4 Exams is barely double figures.
I do accept that the new National Bacculearate is shaped to recognise the MFL concerns in the Dearing Report etc. but the dearth of foreign languges with English sub-titles,even in terms of French and German films, does not assist to promote a plural languages approach for school children or the adult viewer, by our mainstream news and programme controllers.
This is relevant by the focussing of too much news on the news from English mother tongue countries i.e.US in particular is the main culprit
@Richard Norris Regarding subtitles. When the BBC feature Chinese people and they use subtitles, the tend to be somewhat ‘creative’ was how they translate it. If they dub over it, there’s no way anyone would ever know
Yes, and the same prurient – if not, greater – curtain twitching can be seen with one side of a regional conflict at the eastern end of the Medeterranean.
Part of it, undoubtedly, is commonality – or perceived commonality – of culture. That said, the ghastly events surrounding the shootings in Tucson were presented immediately in terms of the monster under the bed of the Tea Partyists when it pretty quickly became apparent it was one lone psych patient.
Lallands had a good number crunching discussion about relative murder rates between Scotland and Arizona, and I concur with one commenter that a stab vest in certain parts of Scotland would be a better investment than a bullet-proof vest in Tucson… but if a bunch of foreigners started lecturing me about my nation, I’d take umbrage just as (had I been a resident of Clark County) I might well have voted Republican in 2004 just to spite some clueless Guardian readers.
Face it guys, the Empire is gone, and no matter how much we resent those uneducated Yanks from taking over, there aint much we can do about it.
I’ll add that, where certain bods claim to be trying to buck the trend, they *still* present it in terms of America.
In the case of Tunisia, for instance, this would be to call Ben Ali “American backed” (‘cos, we all know, those non-Europeans can’t do anything by themselves). Wikileaks, which the same bods would defend implacably, has shown a more indifferent story.
…and you don’t even mention the death of the President of Poland in an air crash, last week.
But then neither did the BBC, CNN or Sky News.
Dave: You sure about that, or do you mean the publication of the investigation report in the death of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski in April? That report came out a few days ago – though even if that’s the case you mean, it makes the point still about how little coverage the report into the death got compared to follow up reports to US incidents.
No. USA is the most influential country in the world, arguably. Its politics hold lessons for our own and much of modern political discourse, especially within the liberal tradition, has been influenced or even invented in the US. The argument should be that we are as informed about the rest of the world, as we are of the US.