COVERING THE FOREIGN NEWS.

FOREIGN news; JOURNALISM; NEWS agencies; MASS media; TELEVISION stations; RADIO broadcasting; DIGITAL media

This article discusses the mechanism by which foreign news are collected and disseminated. Domestic news usually dominates the media quantitatively. For most Americans, events in their local communities, their states, and finally in the U.S. as a whole are normally of greatest interest. Foreign news coverage is a smaller and more manageable area for examination than domestic news coverage. Thus most individual newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television stations do not have foreign correspondents of their own. Americans who want to be well informed on foreign affairs can be, of course. They have available not only the diverse and abundant reports of the best domestic newspapers and magazines and of the electronic media, but also a large fraction of the information available to the rest of the world. Short-wave broadcasts from numerous foreign countries can be heard clearly here; their reception is not jammed and is determined only by the quality of the receiver and by atmospheric conditions.