From: rgopu@cs.tamu.edu (Rangarathnam Gopu)
Subject: Article on news coverage by US networks
Organization: Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 16:43:19 GMT

Saw this article in "Television quarterly". The author is Bernard Redmont,
a former CBS news correspondent, and currently in College of Communication,
Boston Univ.

I am just posting extracts:

******************************************

A whimsical New Yorker  magazine cover some years ago depicted a New 
Yorker's view of the US. It showed Manhattan covering most of the page
and  a tiny strip at the Western edge for the rest of the country.

You could portray television's view of the world correspondingly. A 
TV Mercator projection would feature the US blanketing nine-tenths
of the globe, Europe representing a tiny strip at the edge, and the
Third World - meaning most of the earth - getting a microscopic blip,
if it's seen at all.

When it comes to international reporting, we are a provincial nation for 
the most part. The conventional wisdom among the moguls of the TV 
management is that, barring blockbusters like coups and earthquaks,
Middle east crises and war, "foreign news" drives ratings into the
cellar.

.......

... the pace of what we see has packed up, possibly due to the influence
of MTV and commercials. Surveys show that sound bites are getting shorter
often too short for an international story to make sense.

Visual imperatives dominate the nightly news, and professional judgement
doesn't always win the call. Often striking events take place without
striking images to illustrate. Last spring, NYT's Walter Goodman noted
that, " anyone who judges the newsworthiness of events by the pictures
on the nightly news is likely to come away with a dim comprehension 
of recent goings-on in places like Lithuania, Nepal, the Arab villages
of the West bank and other hot spots."

....

Once in a while circumstances combine  to make it  possible to tell
an important Third WOrld story well, and rivet us to the screen with it.
This was the case with the Aquino victory over Marcos. You had a bad
guy, Marcos, and a heroine, Cory Aquino. You had a revolution - 
violence and conflict and suspense. You had an American angle - US
bases. You had excellent communication facilities available. You 
had a comfortable Manila hotel with a US satellite ground station 
for feeds. And everybody involved in the story spoke English.

It was an ideal event for Tv, and it got blanket coverage - 
while it lasted.  It turned American public opinion against an
American client, Marcos.

But try  to get a Phillipine story on the air now ......
.....

INVISIBLE THIRD WORLD
----------------------

Racism, bias, the cost of coverage - all lay a role in limiting
Third WOrld coverage. The capsizing of a British ferry gets more
attention than a devastating earthquake in Ecuador.

A network correspondent in Asia wanted to do a story on a 
cataclysmic monsoon in India. The producers back home retorted,
"Why should we care about a bunch of wet Indians!"

CNN, however, appears to understand that the Third WOrld is
fascinating, exciting - and important, besides. It is expanding
abroad, while the networks contract.

The video revolution may have created a global village, but it 
also has served in many cases to accentuate differences and
exaggerrate stereotypes. Robin Wright has noted that the Iranian
revolution was covered a decade ago largely in terms of American
hostages rather than in its own context.

When a few whites are massacred, it's a story, but when 10,000 
Africans are slaughtered, nobody cares. Thousands of Lebanese
have vanished, but all we hear about are a score of American 
hostages, and not very often at that.

.....

More courage, vision and commitment are needed, to refute 
H.L. Mencken's cynical comment that, "no one ever went broke
underestimating the intelligence of American people."

....

American producers, editors and top brass don't give US viewers
enough credit for appreciating thoughtfulness. Perhaps more
soul-searching among the network executives will help.

....

Television is a business and exists to make a profit. It claims 
not to have any mission to enrich public consciousness and interest.

....

"...to get meaning and  analysis we mostly had to go to the 
newspapers and the weeklies."

....

Latin America, in fact, gets little consecutive coverage when there
are no big headline events.  We cover the pro-democracy movement 
in Eastern Europe, but hardly any at all in Chile and Brazil. These
2 latin countries held their first free presidential elections
in 16 and 25 years respectively, the first since US inspired coups
had upset their democratically elected governments. Network 
coverage was trifling, withou the needed on site coverage. Why?

...

A local news director confide to John McManus of Santa Clara U., in
California, that 2 series on stories on Central American nations were
censored at his station on grounds that viewers might switch channels if
they thought the station was showing American foreign policy in a
negative light.
 
**********************************

The author seemed to generally have  a better opinion of CNN and
PBS than he had of the 3 networks. Another piece of info I stumbled
on is that CNN spends 100 million dollars less than any of
the networks for news reporting, annually. For 24-hour coverage!

Note: I have quoted verbatim from his article [Vol. XXV Number 2 1991]
Typos mine.

Gopu

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