14 May 2008

The bad news about the news: Alisa Miller on TED.com

Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, talks about why -- though we want to know more about the world than ever -- the US news media is actually showing less. Eye-opening stats and graphs. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 4:29.)

Watch Alisa Miller's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.

Read the transcript >>

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How does the news shape the way we see the world? Here's the world based on the way it looks based on land mass. And here's how news shapes what Americans see. This map -- (applause)

This map shows the number seconds that American networking cable news organizations dedicated to news stories, by country, in February of 2007 -- just one year ago. Now, this is a month when North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities. There was massive flooding in Indonesia. And in Paris, the IPCC released its study confirming man's impact on global warming. The US accounted for 79% of total news coverage. And when we take out the US and look at the remaining 21%, we see a lot of Iraq -- that's that big green thing there -- and little else. The combined coverage of Russia, China and India, for example, reached just 1%. When we analyzed all the news stories and removed just one story, here's how the world looked. What was that story? The death of Anna Nicole Smith.

This story eclipsed every country except Iraq and received ten times the coverage of the IPCC report. And the cycle continues: as we all know, Britney has loomed pretty large lately. So why don't we hear more about the world? One reason is that news networks have reduced the number of their foreign bureaus by half. Aside from one-person ABC mini-bureaus in Nairobi, New Delhi and Mumbai, there are no network news bureaus in all of Africa, India or South America -- places that are home to more than two billion people.

The reality is that covering Britney is cheaper. And this lack of global coverage is only more disturbing when we see where people go for news. Local TV news looms large. Unfortunately [it] only dedicates 12% of its coverage to international news. And what about the web? The most popular news sites don't do much better. Last year, Pew and the Colombia J-School analyzed the 14,000 stories that appeared on Google news' front page. And they, in fact, covered the same 24 news events. Similarly, a study in e-content showed that much of global news from US news creators is recycled stories from the AP wire services and Reuters, and don't put things into a context that people can understand their connection to it. So -- if you put it all together, this could help explain why today's college graduates, as well as less educated Americans, know less about the world than their counterparts did twenty years ago.

And if you think it's simply because we are not interested, you would be wrong. In recent years, Americans who say they closely follow global news most of the time grew to over 50%. The real question: Is this distorted world view what we want for Americans in our increasingly interconnected world. I know we can do better -- and can we afford not to? Thank you.

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Ned Baker – May 20 2008

Disappointing clip. It could be a prelude to an interesting discussion, but in itself contained almost no useful content. Miller never even alluded to the real challenges confronting journalism that have lead to the closing of those foreign news bureaus. There is a fascinating debate going on today about the future of journalism -- is Alisa Miller aware?

The worst moment of the video was the conceited, knowing laughter of the audience following her mention of the narrowness of news media. I wanted to smack the smug smile off the room's figurative face! And I'm one of the ones who think old media should rightfully die off!
Hans Gutbrod – May 18 2008

answer to my own question: the software/map template is
worldmapper.org -- very impressive.
Hans Gutbrod – May 18 2008

does anybody know where that map can be found? And is there a software that allows updates to it? I have been searching (with good Google skills) for an hour, but no luck so far.
Joe Dickinson – May 15 2008

I am really disappointed with the "news" talk on ted.

What is it that we accomplish by knowing about the world exactly, knowing information doesn't necessarily result in anything "good or bad" about the information, and the information will pass.
I want to say how poorly the idea of "knowing" about current events in the world is important. It's NOT important to know the catastrophies of the world, shit happens.

It is only important to know current events on the world when we as "users" of news seek it out, and happily cnn, foxnews, google news provides that informatio redily to those that want it.

How much more useless information do we really need to be part of our lives, to feel connected.
The outsourcing jobs that are in India, directly affect my work, and that is news that rarely gets reported. The illegal aliens that affect people all around me rarely gets reported. Why is that being LEFT OUT of our news, and crap that happens in Africa, a 3rd world country seems to be more important?

Anyway, this is the first TED video I have seen so far that I thought was totally worthless.
Jugglers are much more interesting.