By Nicholas Proch
This past week, every channel, website, and newspaper had nonstop coverage of the events that unfolded in Chile. For thirty-three miners, coming out from more than two thousand feet below the surface was a life changing event. For the rest of the world, it was entertainment, coffee shop talk, and possibly more gripping that any fictional television drama can be. During those few days the audience from the United States was fully vested in the heroic tales of the survivors.
With countdowns on every station pertaining the amount of Chileans left in the mine, it became an event worth watching. This country’s focus has always been on the national level and notoriously not beyond our borders. It could be because we are such a large nation and that we have so much of our own news to cover. Every city, large or small, has a news syndicate of some sort. For newspapers, the city of New Britain has the New Britain Herald, Hartford has the Hartford Courant, and Boston has the Boston Globe. Each television network channel has a local broadcasting studio which primarily focuses on Connecticut stories.
While each of these outlets will occasionally cover the international stories, it will take an earthquake in Haiti, a tsunami in Sri Lanka, or for coal miners to get trapped in their mine in Chile for it to happen. For an American news reader, the practice of demanding international news isn’t a common occurrence. Most want to know how political decisions will affect them, who is committing crimes in their area, and who won the baseball games that night. This is overly concerning.
It’s worth comparing the European media structure to the American in that we were and still are organized differently. The countries in Europe are much smaller than the United States and are very close to one another, both geographically and politically. In fact, almost all of these countries share a common currency. The Euro binds these countries together economically, which in politics and news can be the strongest bond. Each country cares about how the other is affecting their money, causing close attention to be paid to international stories.
While the U.S. is much bigger and doesn’t share a currency with any other country, this is not a good excuse to not be internationally focused. Our country has insurmountable debt with several countries, we are fighting two wars, and we are spending copious amounts of money trying to rebuild impoverished nations. The average American seems to turn a blind eye to these issues and can’t look past the borders that define this nation.
There are those who follow every detail that happens in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but they are a minority. They are usually investors or those with ties to these countries. They should be a majority, not a minority. We are often criticized for trying to make a profit off of an international disaster, such as the catastrophe in Haiti. Hardly anyone in the US paid any attention to the small island in the Caribbean until that day. It took thousands of deaths for anyone to bat an eye at the undeveloped country.
Why should we have paid attention to them? They don’t offer anything to this country economically or politically, and they certainly couldn’t help us in a time of need. Even though this might seem rational on some level, this shouldn’t be the way that we think. It should be up to the citizen to be informed on a world issue. If one cannot rely on their local or national news to provide them with what they need, then they should read foreign news. The BBC has some of the best international coverage, and is very accessible on the web.
When we are thinking about how great it is that the Chilean miners escaped their mine, and we continue to follow their stories, we should remember to not stop there. The culture of American news will not change overnight, but the audience can. If we start looking beyond the comfort of our borders, whether they are national, municipal, or communal, those delivering our news will have to listen.