A Passionate Response, and My Reply

First of all, we do not live in a democracy, so it would be ridiculous to expect that our media serve as a democratic institution. The media actually functions in much the same way that government does. It is a pluralistic system of competing interests. As there is an audience, a program will arise and as there is a program, generally an audience will arrive. If this fails to occur than the idea or media has little saliency in the polity.... And, as for the polarization of the media; is that not a little more intellectually honest than the preposterous notion of an unbiased news source? I actually prefer the more candid, up-front bias. Just as it was in the old days...

European news coverage is no more broad than that of America. Most nations have only one major newspaper. The United States can count at least 5 papers all over a million in circulation.... In fact, a good bit of the "broad" international reporting that you speak of comes from Reuters and the AP, all of which are posted in every major newspaper throughout the world. Here is an interesting note, however, of all the major western countries, the US is the only with no tabloid style paper in the top 5. Do you consider Camilla, the Page Six girls, and French popstars to be a broad news gathering experience? Once more, your vaunted BBC can be heard on NPR. Does the BBC broadcast American news programs to its listeners to give them another perspective? NO, what you consider to be broad coverage are reporters who all work from the same organization, but report from different parts of the globe.

...The fact of the matter is that it takes a certain kind of person to have broad interests outside of their own lives and communities. There is no greater number of those in Europe than in America. And for those in America, there are 400 cable channels, thousands of online newspapers, BBC on NPR and streaming 24 hours a day, and millions of websites great and small.

Of course Europeans complain that the world and media are to America-centric and that we do not have to learn about them as much as they about us. But, isn't that common sense? We have been a dominant power for 60, some say 100, years. It is only reasonable that we receive more coverage. We have a much greater impact on the world. We give more money, by a gross proportion, than any other nation. We consume more resources, we import more, we export more, we have been the leading source of technological advancement. I could go on and on, but like Tony Bliar said, the measure of the country is the number of people trying to get in rather than leave. If we are so narrow, why do the aristocracies of the world send their children here for education? Why is the United Nations here? Why the financial and political center of the world? Simply having those institutions would seem to mean that there are a variety of sources from which the citizens can, and do I might add, learn.

I will not deny that many Americans are ignorant about other cultures and geopolitcal struggles. But, it is a fallacy to think ignorance and exceptional American trait.

I think what you are talking about is developing a more informed citizenry rather than the facade of too few and too narrow media sources. And I imagine you would rather like to have control of what exactly those people digest from the media.

I don't think the idea of US democracy or its meaningful application in our everyday lives is ridiculous at all, and I'm sure you don't either. And while I'm interested to hear your many views, I'm not interested in arguing or defending points that 1) I never made, or 2) that I in fact agree with since they don't bear on anything I said. For instance, I never said anything about Americans having less access to other sources of information than anybody else (the central thrust of what I understand to be your response); my argument was that the programming which serves our communities is less sophisticated and less broad by comparative standards due to (I think) uniquely high levels of media consolidation and lack of regulation in these markets (again, comparatively). (E.g., It's generally recognized that the "spectrum of debate" in the US--liberal vs. conservative--is ridiculously narrow compared to other places, which incorporate a much wider range of political views.) Other than that, nothing much to add to what I've already said.