A thought about world news

I have been listening to Barrie Dunsmore talking about his book, There and Back: Commentary by a former Foreign Correspondent. He seems to be concerned with the weakening of the foreign coverage of American TV network news and American newspapers, and on the weakening of the knowledge of the American public of both current events and the background needed to understand current events. He does note the quality of the PBS news.

I have on my television, in addition to the three major U.S. networks and the U.S. news networks, access to BBC World News, France 24, Deutsche Welle, NHK and importantly Al Jazeera. I also have CSPAN for authors presenting their non-fiction works.

I still subscribe to my local newspaper, The Washington Post, which is one of the better papers in the United States. I get The New York Times email newsletter. I also subscribe to The Economist. But via the Internet I can easily see the Irish Times, the Guardian, and other papers. While I read four languages, I find that using Google News and Google Translate I can find and read other languages. I regularly download articles from All Africa, Time of India and other foreign sources.

And of course, I get news via Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In.

It occurred to me that Barrie Dunsmore is from a generation that wanted its foreign news from American foreign correspondents reporting from abroad, while I tend to prefer my foreign news from reporters reporting from their own countries. I also find it interesting to find reports from several international news services of important stories.

My basic point is that more and better news coverage is available to the average American today than ever before.

I agree with Dunsmore that such riches demand that Americans be more information literate than they were in the past. In the golden days of American major network news, the networks seemed to do a better job than they do now of editing the news to select the important, challenge the false, and put things in context. Today Americans need certain skills to find the best available coverage, and to evaluate alternative sources of a single story.

I read some of the same polls that show that the average American is less knowledgeable of the world and its history than he/she should be, and that the schools are not doing the job that they should be in teaching civics, geography and history. Nor do they seem to be doing a good job in imbuing young people with an interest in news and a desire to learn about the world.

I wish I had a solution that would help. We have a gourmet banquet of news available to news bulimics.