INTERNATIONAL NEWS

What Makes “Global” News?

In a day and age where information travels incredibly fast all over the world,
international news is becoming somewhat of a hot topic in the media.

Wars, natural disasters, tyrants and their regimes, are fascinating to those who are
both in fear or want to help. With 7.6 billion people and 195 countries in the world,
that seems to be grounds for a lot of “news” to come through our networks. Yet
international affairs, outside of the U.S. and some select European countries do not
usually make it to our television sets or newspapers. So where exactly does our
global news come from and how is it chosen?

All about First-World Location:

First, it is important to understand how news networks are set up in locations
around the globe. According to van
Ginneken, the world’s largest and major
influential news-gathering organizations
and media broadcasters have their
headquarters located in: New York City,
London, and Paris. He also states that these
media centres are very dense, meaning
news and events closer to these cities, gets
processed and relayed faster and more commonly than news outside their realm.
(Ginneken, p. 129. 2009)

Aside from these three cities being ground zero for all
news networks, there are many foreign correspondents
who report back directly to these centres. Their locations,
however, are somewhat of an obstacle. Ginneken says,
“somewhat less than a third of agency correspondents are
stationed in North America, somewhat more than a third
are in Western Europe, and roughly the remaining third
cover the entire rest of the world: Eastern Europe, Africa, the Arab world, Asia,
Oceania, and Latin America.”(Ginneken, p. 131, 2009). This means events in
foreign locations with closer proximity to these media hubs, will give them a
higher chance of making it to American news.

What Sells a Story?

For international news to make it to America’s news networks, it must first be a
story that sells. Ginneken claims, “no matter how international such news-
gathering networks are, they always cater primarily for the home audience of one
nation,” he also states, “due to the battle for ratings, this leaves only room for a few
hyped-up, snappy foreign news flashes which inevitably project an extremely
stereotypical image of the outside world.” (Ginneken, p.131, 2009)
Sells: A story that “sells”, is photographs or videos of terrorist groups beheading
innocent civilians, a suicide bomber blowing up vehicles in busy crowded streets,
or the war-riddled region of Syria and the thousands of child refugees:
Does Not Sell: A story that doesn’t sell, is a small group of Muslim schoolgirls
winning an international robotics competition, Pakistan hosting their first ever
Biennale art show, or the rise in female police officers in patriarchal Afghanistan.

In order for foreign events to become major network news, there must be an
extremely scandalous aspect about the event. Very dramatic and eye-catching.
Unfortunately, by broadcasting only certain details of these scandalous stories
around the world, the media creates a bias among Western viewers towards people
from non-Western countries.

What We Could Stand to See More of:

I believe the media could pay more attention to
the events in Central Africa and South America
for humanitarian crises reasons. Although the
media is no stranger to pulling on heart strings
to benefit the cause of some area in particular
that needs relief, it seems as though they
sometimes promote a few “token” locations as if
to stick with some kind of celebrity trend.
One place I would like to see more
media coverage, (and this is totally
for my own fascination and
curiosity) is the people of
Antarctica! Although it is not a
country, there are approximately
1,000 people who live there year
round, as well as up to 4,000 people
during the summer months.

There are bars, arrests, foreigners

living together in tight spaces, and
other typical human scandalous
behavior, yet nothing is ever mentioned
in the media, probably because the
bulk of them are world-renowned
scientists but still. Antarctica does
have its own online newspaper, The
Antarctic Sun, but not much is known
about what goes on there in everyday
life. It’s fascinating!
Works Cited:
Gilleken, Jaap van (2009) Understanding Global News. SAGE Publications Ultd.
London.