In an earlier era before there was cable and fragmented audiences, all three networks would have used their technology and talent to the maximum in covering the Hong Kong story. Times change and there is nothing that says news decisions shouldn't too. However one assesses the differing news judgments concerning the Hong Kong transition, it is further evidence of declining media interest in foreign affairs. The Size of the Decline A survey by the news agency executive Claude Moisy for the Joan Shorenstein Center showed a drop in time devoted to foreign news on network TV from 45 percent in the 1970s to 13.5 percent by 1995. And TV networks increasingly employ stringers or make deals with foreign providers to gather the news more cheaply.
Foreign news is even scarcer on radio.
In Washington, D.C., nineteen radio stations rely on one or the other of two news-packaging operations for minimal headline services. In newspapers, foreign news dropped from 10.2 percent of the newshole in 1971 to 6 percent by 1982, according to a National Advertising Bureau study. Other surveys indicate further decline in the years since. A California State University journalism professor, Michael Emery, in 1989 found only 2.6 percent of the non-advertising space in ten leading American newspapers devoted to news from abroad. As for the newsweeklies, Hall's Magazine Editorial Reports found that from 1985 to 1995 the space devoted to international news declined from 24 percent to 14 percent in Time , from 22 percent to 12 percent in Newsweek , and 20 percent to 14 percent in U.S. News and World Report .