A report by Tom Arango in the New York Times, "World Falls for American Media, Even as It Sours on America,' says that while the image of the United States around the world remains negative, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project (released in June), the viewing of American movies and television has dramatically increased. From 2003 to 2007, domestic American box-office sales rose from $9.2 billion to just $9.6 billion, while foreign sales shot up from $10.9 billion to more than $17 billion.The same thing is happening with television. The hours of American programming on major European networks, for example, rose by about 25 percent between 2000 and 2006, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory, which is part of the executive branch of the European Union. And, according to Gerhard Zeiler, chief executive of the RTL Group, Europe's largest broadcaster, American TV series are now much more often shown in prime time than in 2000.
In the Middle East, where polls consistently show starkly negative views of the United States, Arango reports that "American culture is blossoming." Unfortunately, Arango's main purpose seems to be to bash the Bush administration and he makes no real attempt to investigate the reason for this phenomenon , or even to ask whether there is a causal connection. Could it possibly be that the more people see of "American culture," the less likely they are to respect the United States?
Only in his final paragraph does Arango come close to tackling the subject, with a quote from Amahl Bishara, an assistant professor of anthropology at Tufts University who recently spent two years studying the media in the West Bank. "There's an acute understanding of the difference between the U.S. government and the American people," she said. "And they look at U.S. entertainment as just that, entertainment."
