From: mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.olympics
Subject: Re: American Arrogance - US Monolopy?
Date: 13 Aug 92 17:08:42 GMT
Organization: NCR Engineering and Manufacturing Atlanta -- Atlanta, GA

In <1992Aug11.155002.14661@cmcl2.nyu.edu> petrescd@acf3.nyu.edu (Deivy Marck Petrescu) writes:

>It  seems to me that the point of view shared
>by many foreigners here in the US, must have a reason.
>"Anti-Americanism" some shout, well I disagree.
>The coverage of the Olympics sucked, but so does
>most of the coverage of the "American" media.
>This is a fact. How many people here hear or read  
>anything about their home country if there isn't a major
>problem there?  Be it a war, earthquake or the like.

What would you like them to say, Nothing major happened in Brazil today.
The news media in general, reports only the major events, good and bad.
I suspect the media in other countries are the same way.

>Someone called my attention, on a plane crash they
>say :"There were 3 Americans on board". What about the
>rest???

Every time I hear of such an accident they usually say "There were 20
people on board, including 3 americans."  What did you expect them to do
give a full break down of the nationalities of all the victims.

BTW, if one of the american victims was from the same state, they will
usually say, "There were 20 people on board, including 3 americans, one
of whom was from Georgia."  If that victim were local, then they would
also try to have some quotes from the grieving family.

Fact of life, the more local connections there are to any story, the more
interesting it is.  This is true in other countries as well.
So *please* give it a rest.

>I used to be like that. In France last year when Lewis broke the
>wr for the 100m the newspaper ONLY wrote about him and how great
>he was. I am not a frenchman. I  happened to be there and I witnessed
>the event. Don't forget that the french people are considered #1
>in chauvinism here.

Were there any french atheletes who had a chance of winning.  If not
I do not think your analogy holds.

>I do not   thing it is wrong to be biased or to show the sports
>that are popular here or the ones   the "Americans" dominate, this
>is normal and all countries would do it.
>What is wrong is not to show something that would otherwise be
>shown if the "Americans" are not there. This is wrong, and I
>dont understand how this could  be acceptable.

Excuse me but you just contradicted yourself here.  You seem to be saying
that it is alright for countries to cover events in which they dominate
but it is not alright for them to not cover events in which they do not
dominate.

To satisfy the second part, you would have to cover all sports equally,
but then that would violate the first part.

I think part of the problem is based on the size of the American team.
You have admitted that all countries tend to cover their own athletes first,
especially if those athletes are doing well.
After covering their own athletes, the other countries move on to athletes
in general.
For the US, by the time the media has finished covering our athletes,
there is not much time or space left for anybody else.
Do you feel that our media should spend less time on each of our athletes
than other countries media spend on theirs.

>The level of bias in the coverage of any event in the media
>here in the US it is of such magnitude  that eventually things 
>that are acceptable tend to become unacceptable.

Please explain what you mean here, what things?

>   Deivy
-- 
--Mark

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