International House conference finds Americans really do care about global news

NEW YORK—Contrary to popular belief, newsmakers agree that Americans care about international news stories, but what journalists can’t agree on is when and how international stories should be covered.

At a forum Monday hosted by International House, with generous financial support from the Ford Foundation, some of the most influential names in news making discussed what is not being covered by the media and why?

“Anyone who has worked for a major news organization knows the litany of complaints you constantly receive from folks who feel like we aren’t covering the news or not covering it fairly,” moderator and International House President Calvin Sims said in his opening remarks.

The panel of five journalists ranging from television correspondents to journalism professors got into a heated debate over whether or not American audiences have an appetite for international news outside of a crisis situation.

“For the consumer, and what they’re looking for, I think that sensational news sells,” Kathy Chow, Executive Director of the Asian American Journalists Association, said. “We’re not interested in the in-depth, the why, until it hits home for us in our communities.”

Using the recent crisis in the Ukraine as an example, Chow pointed out that detailing history lessons, political pressures, and insight into foreign relations is just too much information to dump on the average consumer.

“Folks out in the fly over states, their most frequent answer to much of this is, ‘we don’t want to get involved we don’t even care,’” ABC News correspondent Jim Avila added.

Managing Editor of the New York Times, Dean Baquet, strongly disagreed. Baquet pointed out that to this day, the Times’ coverage of the 2011 Tsunami in Japan is one of the most read stories ever published on the paper’s website.

“I think that Americans, despite what everyone says, have a real hankering for in-depth international news,” he said. “I think that news organizations cut back on covering international news, because it’s more expensive than domestic news, and then said there was a lack of interest to justify it.”

Baquet attributed the interest and high readership of the detailed international stories published by the Times to the world being more connected than in the past, pointing out that many Americans have travelled outside of the country and have friends and family who live abroad.

The success of international news sites like the Guardian US support Baquet’s argument.

The Guardian went from being the ninth largest print newspaper in the United Kingdom to the third largest online English-language newspaper website in the world.

“Globally, the Guardian has an audience of nearly 40 million unique users, over a third of which are based in the US,” said Gennady Kolker who manages press relations for the Guardian. “In the two and a half years since launching Guardian US, we've grown over 33 percent.”

The paper has built an audience in the US largely by giving American readers broad international news.

“I’m not saying everyone is dying for it but I think this tells us that more people are dying for it,” Baquet said of the Guardian’s success. “There’s a bigger audience for international news than we give people credit for.”

But the Guardian and the New York Times are very different organizations than ABC News, where Avila reports.

“Where I work it is called World News and we cover world events, but still, in that 18 minute broadcast it’s going to be heavily domestic unless there is a flare-up somewhere,” Avila said.

“There’s no room anymore on our network, or the other two networks, for the feature story unless it’s about the royals,” Avila joked.

He also noted that, like it or not, there is dictum that on a morning show or evening news program there are very few process pieces leading up to major events and that on television news, what viewers will find are stories about the event or crisis itself.

The panel also addressed the limitations they face when pitching and covering international stories, based on the medium through which they deliver the news.

“Our mission is to give them [viewers] a headline surface. If they are looking for the process in-depth story they aren’t going to find it with us,” Avila said of ABC.

Broadcast corporations and print publications have different priorities. The mission of television news programs is to deliver headline surface news in the allotted time of the broadcast. This sets up limitations that print and digital publications don’t face in the same way.

The newest international broadcast corporation, Al Jazeera America, has tried to break this mold, but has had a difficult time pulling in the same ratings as its competitors that focus on more domestic news stories.

In the six months since Al Jazeera America’s inauguration, the channel has averaged just 15,000 total viewers in prime time, with only 5,000 viewers in the target 25-to-54-year-old demographic, based on Nielsen figures, according to Advertising Age. Such low ratings are considered by Nielsen to be ‘scratch.’

Is the solution then to put process pieces on digital platforms and save sensational or crisis international headlines for television news? The group was unable to come up with a definitive answer.

The panel also looked at issues closer to home, discussing the shortcoming in covering topics about poverty, race, high incarceration rates, and issues of sexual orientation–what Janine Jackson, Program Director for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, categorized as “anything standing between where we are and social justice.”

Jackson and Journalism Professor Dale Maharidge agreed that issues surrounding human rights and social justice are often hard for reporters to broach because they fear that their editors, peers, and audience will categorize them as advocates if they are passionate about writing for change.

The key, Professor Maharidge suggested, is in making sure news organizations employ reporters who have diverse backgrounds, cultures, and experiences so that the mentality of creating social change is something that is infused in a reporter’s mindset when they are covering different communities and breaking news events.

“Being a journalist, especially in this time of transition, is like being on a limited budget for one’s household,” Calvin Sims said after the forum.

The challenge then becomes how to tell stories in new ways, and on multiple platforms, which also means providing an array of different kinds of content even if it means not allotting as much real estate as one would like to topics such as international news.

“That’s what successful people do in managing their household,” Sims said. “They find innovative ways to provide nutrition, and clothing, and comfort, and everything else, and I think that’s what we as journalists are called on to do today.”