Public broadcasting CEO explains why Americans are so ignorant of the world

Ever wonder why your fellow Americans seem to know so little about the rest of the world?

Alisa Miller, president and CEO of Public Radio international -- the other big public radio entity in the U.S. besides National Public Radio -- offers a theory in this talk, delivered earlier this year for the TED conference which takes the amount of press coverage given various subjects in 2007 and places them on a world map.

Miller correctly notes the distortion of the media's fascination with celebrities such as Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, along with a fixation on Iraq and the Middle East, with relatively little attention paid to China, Russia and other important countries across the globe.

I do think she glosses over a major point, however. In her tally of regular news sources for Americans, she notes that the two most important outlets are local TV news and the local daily newspaper -- which suggests that the audience is most interested in news which directly affects their world.

Yes, covering Britney and Paris is cheaper. But the audience has also indicated it is most interested in news which seems most relevant to them; hyper local news about their immediate world or news which entertains and shocks them. As important as it is to know about Darfur and Tibet and the country of Georgia, I doubt many Americans feel directly affected by the events in those areas. (a recent Pew Center poll also notes that Americans' knowledge of current events hasn't changed much in 20 years)

Much as I like this talk, I think Miller glosses over the impact of news organizations focusing more intensely on the news the audience wants vs the news us professionals think they need.

Check it out for yourself and see what you think:

Comments

[joe hillman]

>>>The information is out there, we just need to go find it. Sitting at home and having it spoon fed to us by Walter Cronkite once fit the bill, not anymore.<<<

bravo!

[Oscar]

It really is a catch-22. If the msm exposes Darfur or poverty in Mexico then their audience complains about it not being for them; however, if they do stories on prostate health and age issues critics contend that they are dumbing it down.

The information is out there, we just need to go find it. Sitting at home and having it spoon fed to us by Walter Cronkite once fit the bill, not anymore. What really is hurting this industry is the lack of curiosity on the part of the people.

[joe hillman]

MSM playing and thinking like MSM.

i'll use a sports analogy:

whining about bspn is tiresome. people complain that bspn only cares about yankees/red sox/favre/patriots/brady/lakers/kobe/duke/north carolina.

true, that's an accurate gripe about bspn.

but in the age of sports-specific season televised packages, satalite tv, broadband and highlights streamed online by several sites, complaining about bspn is like continually eating at a restaurant and complaining about the food.

in other words, just because bspn broadcasts it doesn't mean you have to watch it. there are choices now.

as the second decade of the 21st century nears, just because various network and cable news outlets broadcast enfotainment doesn't mean there aren't any sources for real news.

people actually have choices now. imagine!

btw, i have no idea how i survived without having alisa miller around to tell me how to think or what to read.

[ShelaghC]

Another thing to keep in mind about Americans and news - News divisions being lumped in with entertainment.

As a result, news agencies and programs, which used to have the luxury of ignoring ratings or profits now are forced to supply sensationalism in nightly broadcasts or face the axe.

Rachel Maddow in her Air America radio show once remarked after a week-long vacation in Canada how refreshing it was to listen to news that truly was about *the news* that affected the people in that country and the world, unlike the crap we're subjected to here.

Lara Logan, guesting on The Daily Show (one of the few truly reliable places on television for news), remarked that if she were forced to watch US news, she would "blow her brains out."

The average viewer in the United States has become thoroughly indoctrinated with having Brangelina and Britney dominate the news cycle.

Who cares about the boring Iraq war, global warming or one of the most important elections in the history of this country when Lindsay Lohan's sister might have had a breast augmentation or "Tropic Thunder" has just knocked "The Dark Knight" out of first place in the box office?

I can't remember the last time I seriously watched a so-called "news" program to catch up on current events instead of checking in with Google News and all the other resources available on the internet.