Americanophobia in the European and Canadian Media

Since quite some time ago, I was told to believe that the BBC is the most reliable media outlet there is. And unlike American media, it was not guilty of bias. These things, I was even told by my fellow Americans. Some non-Americans will say that the American media is known for commentary, whereas the BBC and the CBC were known for just simply “stating the facts“. Well, YOU decide for yourself.

AMERICANOPHOBIA IN THE EUROPEAN MEDIA PART I:

AMERICANOPHOBIA IN THE EUROPEAN MEDIA PART II:

I’d like to say, however, that it would be unfair to make sweeping generalizations about the British, Canadian and German public as not all of them are taking the bait that easily. As a matter of fact, some Europeans are banding together to fight against the misinformation, lies, and hyperbole that promote Americanophobia. With that said, the David’s MEDIENKRITIK-ONLINE was created.

A shrill yet influential segment of the German media has repeatedly sought to exploit and exacerbate transatlantic differences. This weblog is a watchdog site dedicated to the documentation of anti-Americanism in German media and the negative influence it has on Germans’ perceptions of the United States. German media coverage of the United States is frequently marked by one-sidedness, ideology, stereotypes, clichés and factual errors. Consider the words of ZDF’s Washington, DC Bureau Chief Eberhard Piltz, one of the most influential correspondents in the German media today:

“ZDF Bureau Chief and Correspondent Eberhard Piltz, felt that ideology was a major impediment to quality coverage of the United States. Piltz spoke of “prejudice” and described it as “an intellectual arrogance that thinks that the American way of life, feeling, taste and thinking is inferior and not authentic.” He complained that many journalists see “the U.S. through an ideological lens,” and that “most of them grew up with the leftist, socialist dream and now they look for scapegoats.”

The CBC is notably, just as guilty of both distorting the facts and promoting hate. Critics of the CBC call this the “Garrison Mentality”.

[A]nti-American bias at the CBC is the consequence of a “garrison mentality” that has systematically informed the broadcaster’s coverage of the US. Garrison mentality was a term coined by Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye. He used it to describe a uniquely Canadian tendency reflected in our early literature, a tendency, as he put it, to “huddle together, stiffening our meager cultural defenses and projecting all our hostilities outward.”

The breakdown of neutrality versus bias is described here:

In total there were 2,383 statements inside the 225 stories that referred to America or the United States on CBC in 2002. As with most news coverage, the largest number of statements was neutral; they constituted 49.1 percent of the attention. Thirty-four percent of the attention to America or the United States was negative, over double the 15.4 percent positive descriptors. Only 1.6 percent of the statements were considered ambiguous.

The main issue, constituting 27 percent of the coverage, was relations between Canada and the United States. Within this category 41 percent of statements were neutral. Of the remainder, statements were over twice as likely to be negative as positive regarding Canada/US relations (39 percent versus 18.9 percent).

In the comment section of this blog, one Canadian noted the following:

It is good to see someone is doing objective content analysis on the Canadian media. The Americans certainly put us to shame in this regard.

The conclusions, though, are not surprising. I just about gag every time I see Neil MacDonald’s mug on The National.

It’d be nice to see similar analysis of political bias at all the networks this year. We already know the conclusion, but some numbers would back up the case.

Just as any other country on the planet, in the US, we have several news stations: CNN, FOX, ABC, MSNBC, NBC and more. Some networks are devoted to the right, some to the left. If you want the liberal slant, I recommend CNN. Intelligent people, however, collectively agree that ALL news stations should just state the facts and let us decide for ourselves!

In the US, there’s an ongoing virtual civil war between the right and left. The right typically criticize CNN for biased left-wing news, and the left typically criticize Fox (calling it “Faux News“) for it’s right-winged agenda. I watch both. But I can assure you that neither any of these stations take swings at Canadians. We could have, though, following the 9-11 terrorist attacks when many Canadian grade schoolers, adults, and even one political candidate were celebrating and cheering after watching the planes fly into the WTC and pentagon. It was a day of victory for Canada. But we never aired this in the US or tried to embarrass the Canadians for this type of behavior. And yes, I’m fully aware not all Canadians condone the deaths of innocents over a failed foreign policy.

The most opinionated “news” is Republican talk radio in the US – which one is to expect commentary. I mean it’s talk-radio after all. They take swings constantly at the liberals or as they call it “stupid liberals”. But they only make fun of the Democrats in office in the US and the left-wing general public therein. But if you ask a republican in the US, they’ll tell you that our media is predominantly left-wing-focused. I can’t say that there’s any truth to that, though. Republicans just basically claim that they never get enough exposure over here. In any event, our news (while it IS biased) doesn’t promote hate – nor is it mean.

What does this all boil down to? Money. Bad news = entertainment/anger = money in the bank for the networks. Just think about it this way: Would you spend your time listening to American news if it were depicting us in a positive light?