Foreign to TV News

A couple of days ago, an editor at a daily newspaper was explaining his paper's decision to go entirely local with the rationale that people can get thorough national and foreign news from the web and from television.

Yes, television, you know, that great source of information about Iranian politics, British education policy, the global impact of the weakened American dollar, China, really, anything that we need about the world. Or even regular coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

David Sullivan, on his new blog, That's the Press, Baby, notes that TV is where newspapers first ran into problems.

From IPS

MEDIA-US: Foreign TV News Fell to Pre-9/11 Levels in 2007
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jan 3 (IPS) - With the exception of the Iraq war, foreign news coverage by the three major U.S. television networks declined significantly in 2007, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

Indeed, the foreign news bureaus of the three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, had their lightest year in 2007 since 2001, suggesting that the era of expanded international coverage that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon is now over.