i recently saw a documentary called "war made easy". In this documentary they were conveying facts that where already well known (to me as a european). Yet they where largely unknown to most americans. Also checked some of the reactions of americans on IMDB (not the brightest club of people though).

The reason was that the American media was anything but unbiased and as soon as the war started, stopped critically reporting the news. The reason was that the networks didn't want critisism of Amerika be "the face" of the network.

now i'm quite skeptical, but most "Americans" i have talked to do seem to have a very skewed view of the world (except the educated ones that have worked abroad). It really is weird to me that Americans largely don't have a clue about their position in the world with regards to other countries.

my question though is, how much of this is true? I don't have a extensive network of americans i talk to, but the ones i do talk to either confirm my suspicions, or agree with my views that as a whole americans don't know much about anything outside the us.

this quote will sum everything up nicely
"in most cases, foreigners will know more about America, then an American will ever know about any foreign country" -- Hugh Laurie

I would say all media is biased as they will always have funding from certain people that favour an ideology and will try to suppress or skew ideologies that conflict with it.

I think Britain and other European states are being bombarded with foreign news to make us feel more part of that world and removing a sense that we are separate nations while giving the sense we need to change the political construct of other states to mirror our own.

To be clear that has nothing to do with media bias. You could blame it on Americans being lazy or something. But I think it's actually a product of being the hyperpower.

Kinda like how you know more about, say, your countries favorite sports team than said sports team knows about the little local team you play with on the weekends.

Boy that sounds arrogant when I say it like that.... I know I know

Meh. Join up into a respectable federal EU or what have you and we'll give you more screen time.

Anyway what facts about the war specifically did you think got skewed? Generally here it's felt that the media, if anything, has been quite negative on the wars as their typical thing to report on is American casualties and costs.

I think you are absolutely correct here. I used to travel abroad at least three times a year, so I am intimately familiar with many of the gripes that Europeans have about Americans. They're favorite complaint was that America was ignorant about the world because not many of us might not know who's the prime minister of France, or Poland. Being ignorant of who these people are is nothing to brag about, but it's not terribly important either. I'm sure there's a heap of countries that Europeans are uniformed about, but I'm sure they don't get crap from the people of Nauru for being ignorant about the personalities of their government.

Perhaps the Europeans feel they deserve more recognition then what they get.

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"The greatest epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evils as what is best in us." -Nietzsche

Actually, it's the opposite. American media is biased, it is run by liberals. They want the war to end so they are portraying every event as bad, regardless. Most people either realize this and don't care or didn't care to begin with, but the ones who do read the news constantly also don't have a very good grasp on things because the news is biased - so all they're hearing is what they want to hear, more bad news.

I might read news if instead of drawing out my opinion for me, they gave me a straight line of fact and let me deiced my opinion for myself. If they said something like "general Petraeus has failed to do blank" instead of writing this: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Decis...ory?id=3581727

Is American Media biased? Well, depending on news the organization, they certainly do appear to be biased from a political perspective. MSNBC clearly leans liberal while Fox News clearly leans conservative.

As to if Americain media is skewed as a whole toward a pro-American world view, I don't know. I would suspect that we probably are marginally at least....simply because Americans are the ones reporting the American news.

Give some examples of the way foreign news organizations report some recent news (the war, humanitation efforts etc.) and then I'll tell you if there are any glaring differences.

Media does have a role in that. If the media just don't show as much international news as they show American "local" news then it's no wonder Americans don't know much about the rest of the world.

But on average America does tend to stand on it's own. A simple example of this is sports. In the whole world soccer is played and watched with much enthusiasm. Yet in America, American footbal, Baseball and Ice Hockey are the main sports. Even so much that they created a competition that rivals something like the world cup, such as the superbowl.

America doesn't seem to be bothered by others, or actually it doesn't seem they really care to participate in activities with other countries, unless they benefit from it. (yes it's a bit generalizing). For example, the us just doesn't pay any contribution to the vn, yet they still hold the most important seat in that place.

I know the facts are probably different, but that is the image America is projecting to the rest of the world.

p.s. if you don't know the prime minister of Britain, France or Germany you should be ashamed. Those are next to China and Russia the most important countries in the world.

p.s.2. I think America is no longer the hyperpower they used to be. The sooner they understand that fact the better they'll be off.

Well bear in mind that America is a whole lot bigger. Therefore there is a lot more news going on in America. Really states to us are like nations over in Europe in a lot of ways. And are a lot more relevant due to being part of the same country and closer.

Also we're involved in with a wider range of countries while Euro countries are probably Euro centric in their news. I'm saying that Chili probably gets about equal billing as Ireland. How much does Chili get covered over there?

Again a function of size. It's not like we just made up different sports to be different. The popular ball sports were largely developed after America existed, slowly solidifying from different rules at every university to the sports we know today. Soccer, likely due to the fact that of all the emerging ball sports it requires the least equipment, spread around much of the world. But there were simply enough teams already playing the American versions over here it didn't take hold, and it would be too far at the time to practically play with Europeans. If we were a small nation we would have jumped on the bandwagon in order to have people to play with though.

I'd say that's an accusation you could level at every nation at a general level.

Actually the problem, in my opinion, that Euro nations can't get together to actually contribute to the UN. You simply do not act in concert and therefore do not act in a meaningful manner. Hence why a federal EU would make such a difference.

That way when the security council passes sanctions you won't have France still trading with the country. And it won't be the case it is now where if a country breaks UN resolutions or international law the deal is that:

A. The US does something about it
B. Nothing gets done.

Hmmmm. Little Euro centric are we? Japan has all three beat at least in GDP and really I'd say in general.

Do you know who the leader of Japan is? Do you even know whether they have an Emperor, President, or Prime minister without looking?

So maybe that's it. You're Euro centric, people here are more focused on the US. It seems less multicultural because every freaking state isn't a different nation or two with a couple autonomous zones stuck in it like how things are over there. On this side of the pond knowing the Governors is a lot like knowing Presidents over there, and, from a news point of view, much more relevant to people here. Do you know many American Governors?

(FYI I know about Brown and Sarkozy. Most Americans won't though. And, feel free to point out where I'm wrong, but I'd say Germany hasn't done anything in their current President's tenure that would merit reporting in America)

That's absolutely 100% true. We really don't care.

Well, that's also true. We influence the world a lot, but we really don't care about what we do outside of the United States, but as far as the image we're projecting, could it also be the people projecting it? Most European news has an anti-American and a liberal biased.

It's like, America is a co-worker that does some paper work wrong every now and then, but you never get to see this person, and while you send them letters telling them to correct what's wrong, they still mess up every now and then. What type of opinion do you have about that type of person? Probably not too good, but what if you have another co-worker (the media) who is constantly telling you that because this person is messing up on paper work the company is going under. You suddenly have a new perception of this person, far worse than before.

The truth is, America is not going to destroy the world with capitalism or by disobeying the United Nations. We're not going to affect your lives that much, and we're not that much different from you. I definitely think Europeans are smarter (and possibly better at paper work) than the average American, but you IQ, especially your political IQ, does not ultimately determine who you are. You could probably live your life (very much like the average American) with out knowing a (*)(*)(*)(*) thing about politics and you might even be a happier person, too.
I do not know those people, and America is stronger now than it was several years ago. We're simply not flexing our muscles. Our economy is booming and so is our defense budget. Mr. T would pity the fool who disagrees and tries to attack us. They had better have drank their milk.

The American media is biased,and most of the public doesn't realize it. I know that almost everyone on this site will, because using this site means you are probably somewhat intelligent, but people believe too much of what both CNN and FOX, though more of the former, say. Why the former? Because FOX is something of an island of conservatives in a sea of liberal televised media, that's why.

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