COVERING THE FOREIGN NEWS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100140010-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 18, 2006
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: July 1, 1970
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2006/11 'l PT( l,&APEARfia-01314R00
JULY 1970
COVERING THE FOREIGN NEWS
By .Marry Schwartz
PARKE11 by Vice President Spiro Agnew's critical' re
marks last fall, there has been much discussion of the new
media in recent months, particularly as regards their ob
jectivity, their concentration of ownership and the like. Thes
'
questions must be regarded as important regardless of one
political views. They deserve even more probing and wider ex-
amination than they have received to date. But to confine the
debate to the issues raised by Mr. Agnew is grossly inadequate,
for there are other equally or even more fundamental matters
that need airing. How large are the resources this nation devotes
to keeping itself informed on current events? How are they dis-
tributed by the media as a whole and by the major media sepa-
rately as among major areas of attention? Are changes in the
amount or distribution of these resources required to create a
better-informed citizenry capable of making more intelligent
decisions? It is strange that in this land of numerous and. wealthy
foundations so little effort has been made to provide a compre-
hensive overall picture of the organization and operation of the
news media and an evaluation of how well they perform their
functions. This article is intended to serve as a contribution to,
the needed larger discussion..
Domestic news, of course, usually dominates the media
quantitatively. For most Americans, events in their local com-
munities, their states, and finally in the United States as a whole
are normally of greatest interest. A time of war is the great ex-
ception to this generalization. The young Americans fighting in
Vietnam make that story of primary importance for this country's
media, an importance enhanced by the violent domestic con
troversy about that struggle. There are other special foreign
situations that from time to time command major public in-
terest here: a war in the Middle East, a major purge in the
Kremlin, the opening of a world's fair in Montreal or Osaka,
the Olympic Games in Mexico City. But these are the exceptions.
Even in this age of instantaneous communication, supersonic
airplanes and ballistic missiles, most foreign developments are
of secondary interest to domestic news for most Americans-and
correspondingly for the majority of citizens in other countries.
This has one advantage tor anyone interested in American
journalism (using that term in the widest sense to cover all the
media). Foreign news coverage is a smaller and more manage-
able area for examination than domestic news coverage. Thus
most individual newspapers, magazines, radio stations and tele-
vision stations do not have, foreign correspondents of their own.
They rely for their foreign news on the wire services and-in
the case of network-affiliated radio and television stations-net-
work correspondents. Most newspapers and stations that have
no foreign coverage of their own defend this lack by arguing
that their readers.have relatively little interest in such news. The
corollary of that lack-.'of' interest is lack of knowledge-some-
times quite an appalling?lack of, knowledge. Little more than a-
de a-de o, for exam~ le 'a sapple, study by The New York
Approved -or F-elease 2006/12/19:'CIA-R?P88-01314R000100140010-9