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All the world's a TV screen
By
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - So far as US television
network news is concerned, 2002 marked the "Year of the
Islamic World", according to annual statistics compiled
by the authoritative Tyndall Report, which released them
Thursday, January 2.
Leading the list of the 20
top stories on the network news in 2002 were the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, the aftermath of the
September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon and
the subsequent US military campaign in Afghanistan, and
the general war on terrorism, including the manhunt for
Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders.
Together, those stories accounted for about 60
percent of the 5,622 minutes the three network news
programs devoted to the top 20 stories last year,
according to the report.
Each of the three major
networks - American Broadcasting Corp (ABC), National
Broadcasting Corp (NBC), and Columbia Broadcasting
System (CBS) - devotes about 22 minutes each evening to
national and international news. And polls show that
most of the US public relies primarily on television, as
opposed to newspapers, magazines or radio, for most
information about international affairs.
In
recent years, network news has lost ground to cable
news, such as Cable News Network and Rupert Murdoch's
Fox News channel which, according to another Tyndall
report, tends to be more right-wing in political
orientation and far more opinionated in its
presentation.
Still, network news represents an
important benchmark for determining how the US public
sees the rest of the world.
Like the end of
2001, when the network coverage was overwhelmed by the
September 11 attacks and their global repercussions,
2002 was one of the rare periods since the 1991 Gulf War
that international news dominated network news coverage.
In 2000, for example, only three major
international news stories, aside from the Sydney
Olympic Games, made it into the top 20 stories: the
Elian Gonzalez custody dispute between his US and Cuban
families, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the
suicide bomb against the USS Cole near Yemen. These
stories combined for a total of less than 1,000 minutes
out of a total of 5,560 consumed by the top 20 stories
that year, or well under 20 percent.
The news'
international focus was reflected as well in the
percentage of airtime given last year to correspondents
reporting from abroad, 2,100 minutes, or almost 40
percent of the total. In 2000, the figure was about half
of that total.
The international focus clearly
aided the administration of President George W Bush. It
shoved to the margins precisely those stories and
issues, such as health care, the environment, education
and, perhaps most potent, corporate abuse, mismanagement
and fraud, on which Democrats were counting to give them
a lift going into the November mid-term elections.
Thus, Enron Corp's collapse, which ranked number
five among the top 20 stories in total minutes, claimed
400 minutes, most of them at the beginning of 2002
immediately after the corporation went into bankruptcy.
In fact, the entire issue of corporate malfeasance
totalled only 512 minutes during the year, or slightly
less than 10 percent of total coverage.
The
stock market bubble and related stories accounted for an
additional 279 minutes, putting the category of
"economy, finance, and business" into second place
behind "terrorism" among the 15 top issues covered by
the networks in 2002.
But the number of minutes
devoted to the economy was only slightly more than in
2000, while the time claimed by "terrorism" rose
seven-fold compared to 2000. The Tyndall report also
found that the time devoted to "wars and armed
conflicts" in 2002 was twice that given the issue in
2000, reinforcing the image of the world as far more
violent than just two years ago.
With a total of
996 minutes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict topped the
other 19 stories. Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
was named "the most newsworthy man of the year,"
claiming more attention than Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat or Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
The aftermath
of the Sep 11 attacks and of the ouster of the Taliban
in Afghanistan ranked second and third, followed by
Iraq, which claimed 428 minutes through 2002. That total
does not include UN weapons inspections which claimed
325 minutes and the number seven ranking on its own,
increasing total coverage to some 750 minutes, right
behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
After
the Enron, sniper and inspection stories, the next
biggest include the stock-market bubble, the Catholic
paedophile priests scandal, and "domestic terrorism
preparedness" (not including airline security) at number
10.
The next 10 are a mix but remain dominated
by the war on terrorism, for instance the manhunt for
al-Qaeda suspects, which ranked number 11, and followed
by news ranging from the manhunt for bin Laden
specifically and the "global effort" in the war on
terrorism.
Two other international stories
ranked 16 and 17, respectively. The abduction and murder
of 'Wall Street Journal' reporter Daniel Pearl in
Pakistan received 112 minutes, three more than the
nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan.
"It
is kind of emblematic of how television news likes to
personalize and Americanize stories by devoting more
time to one person, an American, as a victim of
terrorism over a story that could potentially result in
a nuclear war and the deaths of millions of people,"
said Jim Naureckas, an analyst at the media watchdog
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
The only
environment-oriented story that made it into the top 20
was the series of wildfires that ravaged parts of the
western United States last summer. It was ranked 11. The
total number of minutes devoted to environmental stories
came to only 236 for the year, compared to 617 minutes
previously.
Despite the US media's focus on wars
and conflicts last year, their kind of coverage left out
key stories, according to groups like Medecins Sans
Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which has just put
out a list of the 10 humanitarian disasters
"undercovered by the US media" in 2002.
These
stories included a man-made famine in Angola, civil wars
in Liberia, Sudan, and Somalia, and a dramatic
intensification of the civil war in Colombia. All of
these brought a very high toll in infant mortality.
"These stories must be told," said Nicolas de
Torrente, director of MSF-USA. "In MSF's experience,
silence is the bet ally of violence, impunity, and
neglect.
"Media attention to dire crises can
have a tremendous impact on mobilizing the resolve
needed to bring solutions. But for most Americans, it is
as thought these vast human catastrophes do not exist,"
he added.
(Inter Press Service)
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