It is always frightening to realise how inward looking Americans can be. And, all too sadly - no doubt because they are so poorly served by the media, across the board - most Americans are lamentably ignorant about what is happening outside their own borders.
The New York Times reports on the latest survey by the Pew Research Centre on what Americans are having "served up"to them news-wise:
"As the Obama administration conducted an Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review this month, the news media did too, and the coverage came peppered with question marks.
The same week that ABC News scheduled a series of segments titled “Afghanistan: Can We Win?,” Katie Couric of the “CBS Evening News” devoted six minutes to a special report, “Can This War Be Won?”
A recent headline atop New York magazine repeated a question asked by dozens of opinion writers this year — and last year, and the year before — “Why Are We in Afghanistan?”
The questions reflect the complex nature of the Afghan war, and of the news coverage.
The grueling war there, where a day rarely goes by without an allied casualty, is like a faint heartbeat, accounting for just 4 percent of the nation’s news coverage in major outlets through early December, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the Pew Research Center.
That is down slightly from last year, when the war accounted for 5 percent."
The New York Times reports on the latest survey by the Pew Research Centre on what Americans are having "served up"to them news-wise:
"As the Obama administration conducted an Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review this month, the news media did too, and the coverage came peppered with question marks.
The same week that ABC News scheduled a series of segments titled “Afghanistan: Can We Win?,” Katie Couric of the “CBS Evening News” devoted six minutes to a special report, “Can This War Be Won?”
A recent headline atop New York magazine repeated a question asked by dozens of opinion writers this year — and last year, and the year before — “Why Are We in Afghanistan?”
The questions reflect the complex nature of the Afghan war, and of the news coverage.
The grueling war there, where a day rarely goes by without an allied casualty, is like a faint heartbeat, accounting for just 4 percent of the nation’s news coverage in major outlets through early December, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the Pew Research Center.
That is down slightly from last year, when the war accounted for 5 percent."
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