Americans are pretty exceptional. One way is that we are largely uniformed about the world. This is largely because we live in a society where our schools do not focus on the world, and where our media tend to ignore it as well.
So this report from Truthout will probably not surprise you:
If people outside the United States are looking for answers why
Americans often seem so clueless about the world outside their borders,
they could start with what the three major U.S. television networks
offered their viewers in the way of news during 2013.
Syria and celebrities dominated foreign coverage by ABC, NBC, and CBS
– whose combined evening news broadcasts are the single most important
media source of information about national and international events for
most Americans. Vast portions of the globe went almost entirely ignored,
according to the
latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report.
Latin America, most of Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia
apart from Afghanistan, and virtually all of East Asia – despite growing
tensions between China and Washington’s closest regional ally, Japan –
were virtually absent from weeknight news programmes of ABC, NBC, and
CBS last year, according to the report, which has tracked the three
networks’ evening news coverage continuously since 1988.
Out of nearly 15,000 minutes of Monday-through-Friday evening news
coverage by the three networks, the Syrian civil war and the debate over
possible U.S. intervention claimed 519 minutes, or about 3.5 percent of
total air time, according to the report.
That made the Syrian conflict and the U.S. policy response the year’s
single-most-covered event. It was followed by coverage of the terrorist
bombing by two Chechnya-born brothers that killed three people at the
finish line of last April’s Boston Marathon (432 minutes); the debate
over the federal budget (405 minutes); and the flawed rollout of the
healthcare reform law, or Obamacare (338 minutes).
The next biggest international story was the death in December of
former South African President Nelson Mandela (186 minutes); the July
ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and its aftermath; the
coverage of Pope Francis I (157 minutes, not including an additional 121
minutes devoted to Pope Benedict’s retirement and the Cardinals’
conclave that resulted in Francis’ succession); and the birth of Prince
George, the latest addition to the British royal family (131 minutes).
The continued fighting in Afghanistan came in just behind the new prince at 121 minutes for the entire year.
Here are your top 20 stories of the year. Notice that the number one story is one of violence. Surprised?
And here are the top crime stories of the year:
Reuters