What's happening the wider world
I think it's dangerous to draw broad conclusions from a single example. Joe Davidson's complaint about how American media ignores the rest of the world does just that, using the ammunition depot explosion in Nigeria in January to make his point. But his perception is certainly correct. And (despite the fine words about how the US would no longer neglect the rest of the world after 11 September) I think the tendency is becoming more pronounced.
There is, of course, unprecedented access to alternative news sources, particularly through the Web. I linked above to The Guardian's comprehensive coverage of what happened in Nigeria, and I could have linked to another Guardian, based in Lagos, but its search facility seems restricted to the last week only. Weblogs, too, provide an alternative, often offering profound personal insight, well beyond conventional journalism.
But that doesn't compensate, in my mind, for the failure of mainstream news sources to keep up with the rest of the world. If one takes the medieval virtue of dulce et utile (delight and instruct), too many news providers are concentrating on dulce to the virtual exclusion of utile. My problem with concepts like The Daily Me is that such a construct tacitly accepts that people needn't bother themselves with things they wouldn't necessarily choose for themselves. Many people might have ignored a front page article in The Chicago Tribune about the Ikeja blast, but many others would have read it either by chance or because they attribute some kind of authority to the editors' choices.
2:57:46 PM 
|
|
