Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
Last night, City Journal hosted a dinner for me at the Cornell Club. It was organized by City Journal's ultra-competent administrative Commander-in-Chief, Taisha Camacho, who unfortunately came down with the lurgy beforehand and wasn't able to attend. But I wanted to thank her for all her hard work in putting it together--thank you, Taisha!--and to thank the Manhattan Instititute for inviting me--thank you, Manhattan Institute!
I didn't ask if the guest list was confidential, so I'll assume it was. But there's no harm in saying that it was an interesting group of people. Brian Anderson, also known as the best editor in America, told me I could speak about anything I wished. So I spoke about my concern that the advent of the Internet and other structural changes to the news industry--in conjunction with the recession--have brought about the extinction of newspapers and news shows that cover world affairs in a rigorous, competent way. There's no replacement for them in sight. I'm worried that this has created, for Americans, a highly distorted view of what the rest of the world really looks like.
You'll all recall that I went berserk after that GOP foreign policy debate that took a long detour through domestic policy and never really got back on track, apparently to the candidates' and the audience's great relief. I suspect this happened because Americans aren't hearing in the news about the very real, very serious, very nuclear foreign policy problems we're facing, and therefore don't appreciate that the next president is going to be making some of the most momentous foreign policy decisions in history. Was it reported anywhere in the US, for example, that last week Medvedev ordered the Russian defense ministry "immediately" to put the radar systems in Kaliningrad in a state of combat readiness? Or that he called for extending within six years the targeting range of Russia's strategic nuclear missile forces and re-equipping its nuclear arsenal with warheads capable of piercing the US/NATO defense shield? I'm certain that thirty years ago, every American would have heard about something like that.
One of the things I mentioned last night is that the Wikileaks cables revealed in the State Department a foreign news-gathering organization of vastly greater insight, sophistication and reliability than any contemporary American news outlet. This defies my ideological prejudices: They're federally-funded bureaucrats, after all. Why should they be so much better at foreign news gathering and analysis than professional foreign correspondents who are working in the private sector?
It hasn't always been this way. The quality of American foreign reporting has declined gravely--in both quantity and quality--since the end of the Cold War. Why, exactly? Why is Al Jazeera now so much better at covering global news--not just the Middle East--than FOX or CNN?
I think this is an important question, and I heard some interesting thoughts in response to it last night.
I'd love to figure out a way to solve this problem. I'd love to come up with a market-driven, private-enterprise solution to the problem. And then I'd like to solve it, and by doing so become fabulously wealthy, create tens of thousands of jobs, and make the world a better-informed, safer place.
What are your ideas?
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May '10
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
"The bearer of evil tidings, when he was halfway there, remembered that evil tidings are a dangerous thing to bear ...
And as for his evil tidings, Belshazzar's overthrow, why hurry to tell Belshazzar, what soon enough he would know." Robert Frost
If there were a market for it, if people wanted to know it, we would have it.
Better to invest in gelatin mines than news reporting, just don't try to use either for ...
Mar '11
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
The candidates were probably trying to avoid a Gerald Ford "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" moment. Ford was President already, and he still managed to mess it up. He made the other guy look good on foreign policy, and the other guy was Jimmy Carter!
I, for one, am overly reliant on the things on the Internet that are in English. I missed your points on Russia. During the week I only get to the wire services, and the only Russian news lately is that Putin's party won its election, but by less of a margin than one would have expected in a country where "fair", "free", and "election" rarely belong in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the spin on the stuff I do get to.
I'm not sure what the solution would be.
Aug '10
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
Skip to the fabulously wealthy part , don't look back at the bodies you trod on in your climb , and be sure to send your check directly to the Chicago office . We thank the City Journal , surely our best American magazine, for expanding your distribution. It is a combination of academic rot and too much media cross ownership that continues to dumb us down . The latest video game did $ 750million in sales in the 1st week .
Apr '11
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Why, exactly? Why is Al Jazeera now so much better at covering global news--not just the Middle East--than FOX or CNN? [...] What are your ideas? ·
You're right. But you can say it because you're a minor celebrity. Darn it. Popularity matters. If a corn-shucking Texan like me reports that Al Jazeera and Russia Today have better world news coverage, the neocons on this site would swarm on me like hornets. No matter that I've lived and run businesses on three continents.
Americans don't care about the world. Everywhere else is a suburb. Nation-building is thought a kind of urban renewal. Americans want a European welfare state and an all-powerful Executive. Simultaneously, they want individual liberty, limited government, and low taxes.
Americans can't think straight, especially about on-balance issues. The view from outside: Americans are narcissistic, stupid and lucky. The view from inside: Americans are industrious bad-asses victimized by American statist propaganda and hobbled by weak general education.
Americans don't care because they don't understand. They can't even find Europe or China on a map. How are they going to think about Iran?
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
You're right. But you can say it because you're a minor celebrity. Darn it. Popularity matters. If a corn-shucking Texan like me reports that Al Jazeera and Russia Today have better world news coverage, the neocons on this site would swarm on me like hornets. No matter that I've lived and run businesses on three continents.
Americans don't care about the world. Everywhere else is a suburb. Nation-building is thought a kind of urban renewal. Americans want a European welfare state and an all-powerful Executive. Simultaneously, they want individual liberty, limited government, and low taxes.
Americans can't think straight, especially about on-balance issues. The view from outside: Americans are narcissistic, stupid and lucky. The view from inside: Americans are industrious bad-asses victimized by American statist propaganda and hobbled by weak general education.
Americans don't care because they don't understand. They can't even find Europe or China on a map. How are they going to think about Iran? · Dec 6 at 5:08am
See, you see this as a problem. I see this as an untapped market niche. That's why I'm an American.
Sep '10
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
See, you see this as a problem. I see this as an untapped market niche. That's why I'm an American. · Dec 6 at 5:31am
The Romans may have looked at the Vandals and the Goths the same way, but implementation took longer than expected.
Mar '11
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
Will you let the Ricochetoisie know when to start submitting our résumés? I'd prefer the London bureau myself.
Apr '11
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
See, you see this as a problem. I see this as an untapped market niche. That's why I'm an American. · Dec 6 at 5:31am
Well, the English are also a nation of shopkeepers. I mean that in a good way. Perhaps you're more Oxford than University of Texas?
Let's look at it like a market. We have potential customers that are: (1) unaware of the problem, it's risks and costs; and (2) unaware of solutions to the problem, the benefits and savings.
I contend that (1) is nearly impregnable. So, we bypass (1) not solve it. We do to global news what the networks have already done to national news - turn it into entertainment.
We do global infotainment. Jon Stewart for the World? I feel queasy just thinking about it.
Nov '10
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
This morning, I read my subscription copy of The Economist and updated myself on recent Russian-Georgian relations and the future for retailers in India. People who know the regions it reports on complain of some inaccuracies, but I suspect that it covers the World better than any other UK newspaper. Being a weekly, it does this from a smarter perspective than the competition (newspapers being the second hand of history and all that).
I'm about to cancel my sub because I can't afford it, but The Economist is, famously, read by more millionaires than any other periodical---and I can't imagine the vast sums advertisers pay for space between reports on Congressional redistricting in Texas and 3D printing in Cairo.
So at least one media company reports across the globe well and lucratively. But its market is a small number of affluent and discriminating customers who will only hand over a premium to a source with a record of credibility. Even after it embarrassed the main UK TV broadcasters with its coverage of Libya, very few Britons would choose Al-Jazeera over the BBC or ITN or Sky. The Economist was founded in 1843.
Apr '11
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
The way to get people to care about foreign events is you have to generate the proper reality show narrative. You cast various foreign leader in different roles and then assemble a "narrative" that is both dramatic and engrossing. Above all it is important that you reduce all people, nations, and events into the most two dimensional way.
May '10
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
PooterGeek beat me to it- I think the solution is a joint venture of The Economist and PJMedia.
Aug '10
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
You're going to need alot of chain to drag the Economist back to the center.
Mar '11
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
We have always been an isolationist nation at heart and with the end of the Cold War that is reasserting itself. There are excellent domestic sources for foreign affairs coverage, STRATFOR easily trumps almost any you can mention, yet they serve niche markets. Most Americans are simply not interested and with our economic situation becoming more dire by the day, that is unlikely to change.
May '10
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
flownover
You're going to need alot of chain to drag the Economist back to the center. · Dec 6 at 9:14am
Depends on the issue, and their news reporting is still very good- far more even-handed than any US news mag has been in years. And that is also why I linked them with the right-leaning blogger conglomerate, PJMedia.
Oct '10
Re: Covering Foreign Affairs: My Dinner With City Journal
To quote the term, We do global infotainment, is the nail on the head statement of the day. This model has become an addiction to news viewers.
A few meager programs remain to stir some interest for the general U.S. population in events at an easy to absorb level, yet do little to inspire the viewer.
This may be snide, but one finds it true... Children tend to enjoy learning, Attempting to school adults, as it were, is quite another.
Ever try to take a lollie pop away from a well you know....