The vice president of CNN International, Tony Maddox said “We’ve had a year’s worth of international breaking news, and we’re only halfway through March." From the uprisings all over the Middle East, to the tsunai that struck Japan its been a very large news year. The New York Times says "television news coverage of foreign events this year is at the highest level since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks 10 years ago..." The amzing part of it is, is the fact that media outlets have been able to keep up with the daily turn out of events and have been able to report on scene. Technology has improved so much in the past decade that it has helped get interviews with people that would have been unreachable only a few short years ago.
The two outlets that have benefited most from all this has been Al-Jazeera and CNN. With all of the chaos in Middle East Al-Jazeera was able to capture the stories unlike anyone else, bringing them to the forefront on Middle East covereage. Even Americans and Jews who consider Al-Jazeera to be vehemently anti-semetic and anti-American have turned to them for the best possible covereage.
CNN has also benefited from the surge in headlines recently, which has propelled them ahead of Fox News in ratings in the past few days. CNN, who usually finishes second to perenial cable news power-house has surpassed Fox in terms of viewership due to their extraordinary coverage in international news.
Although a conservative, i have conceeded that CNN and Al-Jazeera have done an excellent job covering these recent events.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/business/media/23msnbc.html?ref=television
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/business/media/21press.html?ref=television
The amount of international news this year is probaly going to end up in the area of a decades' worth of sensational international breaking stories. CNN and Al-Jazeera will no doubt continue to prosper this year. The situation does support one method of compensating for perceived media bias: consulting a variety of diverse and often opposed sources in order to form a larger picture.
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