Watching American News Overseas

For all it’s faults, when you sit in the United States and watch CNN you are impressed with two things: 1) The ability of CNN to be quickly on the scene of almost all breaking news events (unless it is detrimental to CNN’s political philosophy, of course); and, 2) The clarity of CNN’s political leanings which makes the lack of objectivity almost forgivable.

When you are overseas and looking for a U.S. news program so that you can get the “American” perspective, there is normally only one choice: CNN. What you get, however, is anything but a true “American” perspective. To the contrary, what you get is a very slick, multi-cultural presentation of the news that the extremely liberal CNN management wants to portray to the rest of the world. It does no service to the United States of America. To the United Nations, perhaps but to America, none at all.

My first night out in Manila, still suffering from jet lag, my wife steered us to a rendezvous with a couple of old friends. Both are well-educated and well-traveled with one from Asia and the other from Europe albeit with a couple of Asia decades under his belt. The conversation quickly moved to the American political scene and the questions and comments were heavily influenced by the lack of objectivity in CNN’s reporting.

The first question had to do with the townhall meetings and it was clear that the view presented to the rest of the world was exactly what Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid wanted everyone to believe: That the crowds were paid for by the insurance companies. Fortunately, I was able to quickly dispel that misconception.

The second dealt with the September 12 march on Washington. Again, their view of the numbers was tremendously skewed by the reporting. “Thousands” was the impression they had from CNN while some of their email acquaintances were saying that it was “a million” or more. They wanted to know the truth because even though the only American news source broadcasting 24/7 is CNN, they are not naïve enough to believe that it does so objectively.

The discussion continued for over an hour and then we were joined by an Italian who had been doing business in Southeast Asia for over a decade. A multi-lingual gentleman of the old school, he quickly joined into the discussion and was most interested in the opposition to President Obama’s health care proposals. He favored the Italian health care system as it provided care without cost to the general public.

He explained the Italian system this way: You basically have three choices. The first is to go to the government hospital and line up for treatment and it is absolutely free. The second is that you need emergency, life saving treatment and you are allowed to move to the head of the line and get the treatment immediately. The third is that you can pay—he tossed out the figure of Euros 25,000.00 to Euros 30,000.00 to get to the head of the line immediately—unless you know a doctor that can move you to the head of the line for free. He said that the system usually worked just fine and if it didn’t, “If we are rich we can go to Switzerland or Germany for treatment, or, if not so rich, we can go to America. The Italian system works very well that way.”

We all laughed and agreed with the Italian that the Italian system had its strong points.

The conversation that evening made it clear that the carefully managed, state-controlled news media that is CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, despite their slick manipulation of facts and urbane presentations, is seriously failing to indoctrinate everyone in the world as to the failures of the United States. While President Obama’s election was hailed because they, too, liked his speeches, the educated foreign public is growing as disenchanted as conservative America with the “Great Apologist.”

They clearly want an America that leads and not one that rends its’ clothes.

Your thoughts?

More soon.