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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Media’s Retreat From Foreign Reporting

We’re Missing the Story  (Anjam Sundaram) from the New York Times 
"...the 24-hour news cycles we watch rarely give us the stories essential to understanding the major events of our time. The news machine, confused about its mandate, has faltered. Big stories are often missed. Huge swaths of the world are forgotten or shrouded in myth. The news both creates these myths and dispels them, in a pretense of providing us with truth."

This author misses the larger trend here ... which is the retreat from meaningful news coverage everywhere. As Mark Sumner notes at Daily Kos, "We've exchanged news coverage that was short, but meaningful for coverage that is constant but empty." The MSM's MAIN mission now is to generate viewers, readers, and clicks, and the only difference between news organizations is the strategy they use to pull those metrics.

Al Jazeera America has reporters on the ground all over the world, and their news is by far the most internationally oriented. They also have far less commercials, great documentaries, interesting and engaging progressive talk shows, and reality shows based on current events. No other television news comes close, including the BBC.
Posted by - hopeandespair

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