By Andrea Banda
Assistant Opinions Editor
One morning during early October, I turned the television on to CNN to listen to the news as I ironed my clothes and made breakfast. News of the first sniper shooting in the Washington, D.C. area had just hit and dominated coverage for a little over an hour. I had the television on for a little over an hour, and the only news I heard about was regarding the sniper shootings.
A few days later I followed the same routine. It was the morning that the 13-year-old boy had been shot outside of his school in Maryland. It was the second time that I had to resort to using CNN.com to search for other news stories, because all the television covered was about the sniper attacks.
Although the sniper attacks are indeed catastrophic and tragic to America, it makes me wonder if all the American media cares about is America. When you turn on the television news or read the front page of a newspaper, it seems that more times than not the headlines are about American news.
Personally, I’d rather hear more about international news than the fact that no new news has been reported in the seventh hour of the day on the sniper attacks. While we are so preoccupied with the sniper attacks, we must not forget that there are other problems going on in the world.
Argentina is in an economic crisis and the poverty in that nation is on the increase. The struggle between Russia and Chechnya continues, with rebels launching attacks almost daily. Two Algerians have recently been sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the 1995 bombing in Paris that killed eight people and injured 44. Libya has agreed to pay the victims of the 1988 terrorist attack on Pan Am 103 flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, $5 million each.
Is the American media really single-minded?
On most local newscasts there is only a brief segment of the program dedicated to international news. Usually, to obtain a better awareness of world events, we have to dig deep into the pages of a newspaper and watch national news instead of a local broadcast. Even in a national forum, it seems that most of the news in some way has ties to America.
We constantly hear about Iraq and Israel, which technically is considered international news. However, their tie to America is quite strong.
The situation in Iraq is frequently reported because of the American standpoint on Saddam Hussein’s government and the issue of biological weapons. Israel, considered “the little America,” is our pet project that we stick up for when everyone else attempts to bully it.
Maybe if the American media broadened its horizons and reported on more international issues, the American public would become more aware of world affairs. And maybe we’d also realize that the rest of the universe does not revolve around America. Although we do have a great impact on world affairs, our existence does not make the world go round. Societies flourished and people ate, drank and were merry long before the United States of America ever existed.
This single-mindedness of the media appears to be a symptom of the concept called ethnocentrism. While the events that happen within American borders are indeed significant and worthy of coverage, the never ending coverage on these few events provides Americans with a narrow view of the rest of the world and promotes the idea that the rest of the world is inferior to the American world.
The two minutes of coverage on world events compared to the hours of sniper coverage or “Showdown with Saddam” exemplify the ethnocentricity of much of the American media. Ask someone who has been on a Pepperdine International Program, the news in other countries seems to provide coverage on events in many different countries, not only the country the program is broadcast in.
Through this technique, it also seems that citizens of other nations are more informed on world events than Americans.
Finally the sniper coverage is toning down as suspects have been arrested and news broadcasts are reporting on other topics in the morning than just these attacks. Hopefully, this will bring more opportunities to hear about international affairs. If not, we’ll have to continue digging through newspapers and news Web sites.
November 07, 2002