Alisa Miller: The news about the news

136,247 views ・ 2008-05-21

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:18
How does the news shape the way we see the world?
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Here's the world based on the way it looks -- based on landmass.
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And here's how news shapes what Americans see.
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This map -- (Applause) -- this map shows the number of seconds
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that American network and cable news organizations dedicated to news stories,
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by country, in February of 2007 -- just one year ago.
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00:59
Now, this was a month when North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities.
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01:05
There was massive flooding in Indonesia.
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And in Paris, the IPCC released its study confirming man's impact on global warming.
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The U.S. accounted for 79 percent of total news coverage.
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01:22
And when we take out the U.S. and look at the remaining 21 percent,
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we see a lot of Iraq -- that's that big green thing there -- and little else.
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The combined coverage of Russia, China and India, for example, reached just one percent.
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01:42
When we analyzed all the news stories and removed just one story,
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here's how the world looked.
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01:50
What was that story? The death of Anna Nicole Smith.
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01:57
This story eclipsed every country except Iraq,
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02:00
and received 10 times the coverage of the IPCC report.
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02:06
And the cycle continues;
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02:08
as we all know, Britney has loomed pretty large lately.
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02:11
So, why don't we hear more about the world?
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02:14
One reason is that news networks have reduced the number of their foreign bureaus by half.
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Aside from one-person ABC mini-bureaus in Nairobi, New Delhi and Mumbai,
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there are no network news bureaus in all of Africa, India or South America
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-- places that are home to more than two billion people.
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The reality is that covering Britney is cheaper.
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02:48
And this lack of global coverage is all the more disturbing
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when we see where people go for news.
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Local TV news looms large,
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and unfortunately only dedicates 12 percent of its coverage to international news.
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03:03
And what about the web?
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The most popular news sites don't do much better.
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Last year, Pew and the Colombia J-School analyzed the 14,000 stories
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that appeared on Google News' front page.
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And they, in fact, covered the same 24 news events.
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03:21
Similarly, a study in e-content showed that much of global news from U.S. news creators
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is recycled stories from the AP wire services and Reuters,
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and don't put things into a context that people can understand their connection to it.
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03:34
So, if you put it all together, this could help explain why today's college graduates,
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as well as less educated Americans,
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03:41
know less about the world than their counterparts did 20 years ago.
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03:44
And if you think it's simply because we are not interested,
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you would be wrong.
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03:52
In recent years, Americans who say they closely follow global news most of the time
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grew to over 50 percent.
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04:01
The real question: is this distorted worldview what we want for Americans
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in our increasingly interconnected world?
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04:12
I know we can do better.
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04:15
And can we afford not to? Thank you.
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