Time Magazine is a great yardstick to measure the way news media treats the typical American reader. The cover page on Time, always a source of great conversation, is a testament to the hot topic of the fortnight. What's shocking, is that the hot topic in America, is never the hot topic across the rest of the world. As if this weren't strange enough, the hot topic picked for American audiences is bent on being dumb and targeted at the subintellectual. While the rest of the world is talking about terrorism, or a probe on Mars, the American edition of Time has a centre-fold on how stress affects working moms.
This method of news coverage finds its way into local news channels, and the likes of CNN as well. News is extremely localized, headlines only cover what happens within the US, any international story that makes it into prime time slots are short snippets of the actual story, and cover only how it affects American audiences.
And then there are features on how the American population is blissfully unaware of anything outside their comfort zone (read the capital of Spain, the currency of Peru or even the origin of Simon Cowell.) And you wonder, who is to blame? Our relatively landlocked geography, or our landlocked local news channels!
This method of news coverage finds its way into local news channels, and the likes of CNN as well. News is extremely localized, headlines only cover what happens within the US, any international story that makes it into prime time slots are short snippets of the actual story, and cover only how it affects American audiences.
And then there are features on how the American population is blissfully unaware of anything outside their comfort zone (read the capital of Spain, the currency of Peru or even the origin of Simon Cowell.) And you wonder, who is to blame? Our relatively landlocked geography, or our landlocked local news channels!
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