in my opinion

It's Hard to Find Positives in International News and Images

By Bryden McGrath

A simple look inside a newspaper’s international section will reveal that the majority of articles and images are overwhelmingly negative. In the September 20, 2009 edition of The Seattle Times, at least six of the ten international stories were negative while just one of the ten could be deemed positive. The stories consisted of negative subjects such as substandard living (“Garbage piles up in Cairo after swine-flu pig slaughter”), violence (“Thai protests”), terrorism (“Somali terrorist killed”), and the negative portrayal of another culture (“As leaders scold, Russia drinks itself to death”).

But most of all, the images jump out. The one positive international image was of a Volkswagen car in Germany that could travel 62 miles on a liter (one-fourth of a gallon) of gas. Negative images included garbage in the streets of Cairo, a knife-wielding Thai villager attacking protesters, and a photo of two Russians drinking vodka to “kill hangovers.” Most surprising was a story on a U.S. Embassy security firm that was raided in Pakistan for having unlicensed weapons. This negative U.S.-related international story was unsurprisingly buried on page A15.

International news is presented in this way every day. Most coverage involves disasters, wars, protests, human rights violations, and political corruption. When the international news presented isn’t along these lines, unusual stories pop up, such as a story about Nigerians upset about their portrayal in the box-office hit ‘District 9.’ Undoubtedly, there is real violence throughout the world that is important and relevant. But the amount of negative international news fed to the public leads to the belief that the world is a scary place. That belief leads to something even scarier: people and cultures being isolated from the truth.