Friday, March 28, 2008
Insular thinking
It all makes sense now. The reason why the average American knows so little about the world. I've been watching a lot of news on ABC and FOX and it's suddenly occurred to me that they have absolutely no world news section! Oh there's a sports section and a weather section and a finance section but no world news. Everything is US oriented and in fact pretty much all of the news that I've seen has to do with the mid-west ie just that middle portion of the US where Chicago is situated. What is up with that?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
There is a similar attitude in Austria. It really has to be BIG international news for it to be on ORF 1 or 2. It is very localized and very foucused on Austria. They do try to include some news about the rest of the world, but rather reluctantly.
The other approach I noticed was that any international event is described from an Austrian viewpoint - for eg, when the tsunami hit indonesia a while ago, the focus of all news was how and when the autrians on holiday there were getting back (i was slightly flabbergasted at this). Another interesting example: on easter there was a news snippet on how catholics (a tiny, very small minority) in iraq where being victimized.
I am not sure if this is how they try to make sure that peeps can identify with the news, or if it's just national pride coming into play.
On American insularity - Wole Soyinka said a few years back that it pained him when speaking to even his "educated" American friends at how insular they were and at the general lack of global historical and geographic understanding. He said it was not uncommon to hear his American friends wonder whether Africa was still colonised by the British! or about the "Yugoslav war that was taking place in Asia against the Chinese communist".
Still I admit, its generalising - its a big country with 300 million ppl - and its more to do with their global impact that we find it easier to stick the insular cliche on ALL Americans - but the gung ho We are Right "fair and balanced" approach of Fox News certainly doesn't help.
You can find myopic uninformed types everywhere - SA too - and no matter how often you remind yourself not to be pompous and condescending, you sometimes can't help but wonder for example when someone expresses a view about that "island of Tibet that China wants to invade" - you wonder why it's so unfair that everyone wasn't exposed to Tintin when they were little!
Post a Comment