JasMadrid, I totally agree with you. Americans are quite nationocentric. The masses pay barely any mind to international news that does not in some way effect them. Even when it does, there remains a ho-hum attitude. The media know this and they cater to it. They also know that the eye and the ear of the American is fickle and easily bored, so they do pepper their reports with sensational words to grab our attention. Once one story has worn out, all attention shifts to the next BIG story, regardless of the pain and suffering that remain from the last story. (e.g. I haven't heard the word "tsunami" for months now, although clearly their strife and story remains.)

It's demonstrated by the coverage of the Iraq war....it's a WAR for crying out loud and it has been reduced to a couple of sentences like "24 marines were killed today. Insurgents take a stronghold in Tikrit" and then on to Tom Cruise impregnating Katie Holmes. As a consumer of the news but also someone who craves more international coverage, it is very frustrating.

The rest of the world knows more about the rest of the world than most Americans and they are interested in it. Every time I've been in Europe (most recently Madrid last July) the average European could name more cabinet members than the average American. That is very sad. If you were to ask an American on the street to name the heads of state in 3 other countries, they could probably only name "Tony Blair" and only him because our news has been full of his name over the war.

As to the issue of images, I feel torn. I worry that too much airing of bodies bouncing as they hit the ground or dead soldiers or bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans desensitizes us to it. On the other hand, should't we see it, in all its horror, take it in? Shouldn't we be made to face it? To the posters before who used the starving faces of children as an example, I agree. The sentence "people are starving in Ethopia" does not have as much effect as the indelible image of a hungry, globe-eyed child. To show that child's face is not sensationalism, it is reality.

I too was struck by the difference of the international news channels while in Spain compared to those in the States. We claim to have a free press but it is not free. It is sanitized, propogandized and compartmentalized. And most Americans are satisfied with that and sit idly by.

Well said, Lynette.

"The sentence "people are starving in Ethopia" does not have as much effect as the indelible image of a hungry, globe-eyed child. To show that child's face is not sensationalism, it is reality."

I think any person who lives in Spain for some years will remember this phenomenon:

Some years ago, a well known TVE program ("Documentos TV") show a documentary about the inhuman conditions in Chinese orphanages. They told how many families in China were forced to have only one child, and when the newborn was a girl, they abandoned her. Those families didn't want a girl as unique child for social reasons. So those orphanages were full of little girls (mostly) and some boys.

The documentary show with all harshness (and a hidden camera, because filming in those orphanages was not allowed) how those poor children "lived" in a dreadful place that I can only describe as Hell. The images were truly terrible. I was a young(er) guy of those that never used to cry... but watching that indescribable documentary I dropped my tears. It was tough to see, really tough to see. You couldn't believe that was possible to treat those little children like that. I was young, I lived well and was happily unaware and I've never noticed before that the world could contain something like that. It opened my eyes.

The fact is: since they broadcasted the documentary, there began a cascade of adoption solicitation from Spanish families, who wanted to adopt Chinese girls from THOSE orphanages. They did want not only to adopt a child, but to save the little girls from those inhumane situations. Adopting a Chinese girl was then more difficult, arduous and yes, expensive, that adopting children from other countries (the adoptions from China are a bit easier today). But people had seen the Chinese orphanages with his own eyes and without softened images, and they wanted to save at least one life from that torture.

And I think: would a single phrase about Chinese orphanages have had the same effect? Of course not. People would have heared the words to forget them some time later.

So those harsh images really helped to save a number of lifes. Today, parents of Chinese girls (although those girls are growing up as Spanish so they're Spanish now) organize meetings in many Spanish cities, to share their experiences, etc.

So a harsh image DOES give MORE information than a bunch of phrases from a newsreader. We're genetically builded to answer to human suffering... but we need to SEE that suffering. A number, a statistic, a phrase, an abstract idea ...don't affects us as much as a suffering face.
You can forget a statistic, but you can't forget a suffering face so easily. So, avoiding images of what's really happening in the world (during a war, for example) is psychologically equivalent to putting your head underground like an ostrich.

If more people could see the real and true effects of a war, for example, they would change their perspective about what a war means, and about what a war makes to people: civilians, soldiers. If they could see what effects the hunger and diseases have, they would be more concerned and worried about that.

I know that TV bulletins are, sometimes, more sensationalist than the necessary about some isolated facts (i.e. suicides, common crimes, etc.). But I think that the opposite (not showing harsh images) makes you live in some kind of glass bubble. Just my opinion.

One thing I did notice about the spanish tv coverage of Katrina was that they did continuously show stock footage of the same things. Which meant that not all the video shown was of the most current conditions. Even weeks after the worst of the flooding was over I was still seeing images that they had shown over a week earlier including clips of dead bodies shown previously. IMO, that is more about poor reporting than realism.