As this blog has documented, Barack Obama has received extensive, and mostly positive, coverage in Europe. Just as he is planning a trip to Europe, however, many in the European media are for the first time strongly criticizing some of his policy pronouncements, particularly those seen as signaling a move to the political center for […]
Steven Erlanger, one of the New York Times’ best foreign affairs writers, filed a delightful report June 30 from a French village in Provence, Collobrieres (population 1600), which has reintroduced the French franc, alongside the euro, in order to boost business. The mayor is quoted as saying, “We lost something with the franc; we lost […]
The New York Times reported in an interesting article from Paris June 17 that Barack Obama's political success in the United States is helping to give hope, and a new sense of identity, to blacks in France. The report erred, however, by referring twice to incidents of vandalism and rioting in France with the clear, […]
Some supporters of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty are making wild, and so far unsubstantiated, allegations that American “neocons” were responsible for the treaty's defeat in the Irish referendum June 12. France's Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet went farthest, stating that “Europe has powerful enemies on the other side of the Atlantic, gifted with considerable financial […]
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson visited Norway last week looking for foreign investors, and the local media back home reported his trip as a success. According to the El Paso news station KVIA, Richardson had succeeded in convincing Norway's largest energy company StatoilHydro to come to New Mexico to explore investment opportunities, apparently in natural […]
European media outlets reported extensively when flooding of the Mississippi river caused major damage in the U.S. Midwest last week. Much of the European reporting linked the latest floods to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which received huge amounts of negative media coverage in Europe and was widely used to accuse the Bush administration of insensitivity […]
On June 11, Tom Baldwin and Gerard Baker of The Times of London reported on an exclusive interview ("President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war') with President George Bush at a U.S.-EU summit meeting in Slovenia, in which Bush expressed regret about what The Times called his "gun-slinging rhetoric" in the build-up […]
A Pew Center report entitled "Media Pivot to November, Iraq Debate' outlined trends in media coverage during the week of May 26-June 1, the period just before Barack Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination on June 3. As his victory appeared increasingly inevitable, Obama featured in nearly 66 percent of campaign-related news stories, against 45 […]
The trial of five terrorists accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks is making headlines in Europe that are unlike those in the United States. Journalists from Italy, Germany and Britain – along with Canada and Pakistan – were among those present when the trial began at the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba on Thursday, […]
The German newspaper Die Welt published an article with the headline, "Mit Bush, verlieren die Deustchen ihr Feindbild' ("With Bush, Germans lose their bogeyman'), which argues that Bush's prestige has deteriorated so much that Germans no longer think him important. According to Die Welt, this explains that lack of planned demonstrations during the German leg […]
In Europe, the performing arts are generally funded by public subsidies and most people believe that support of the arts is a government obligation. It is the opposite in the United States. American cultural institutions are primarily funded by individual donors, foundations, and private enterprise. The New York Times reported this week on differing perceptions […]
The continental European media swelled with excitement as Democratic presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, clinched the nomination. Here are some of the headlines: ‘Elections US – Le message Barack Obama’ – ‘U.S. Elections – the message of Barack Obama’, France-Soir (France) "Barack Obama premier Noir à pouvoir etre élu président' , "Barack Obama first black with […]
In a column in the Suddeutschen Zeitung, one of Germany's leading dailies, the German Marshall Fund's Constanze Stelzenmuller discusses Barack Obama's popularity among German politicians and the German population in general. She writes that Obama's popularity in Germany has reached levels that domestic politicians can only dream of and is comparable only to that of […]
A report in The New York Times today describes water shortages in Spain as a "national crisis.' Scientists say that Southern Europe and especially parts of southeast Spain are drying rapidly to near-desert conditions, a process that some experts call "Africanization' and which is accelerated by tourist resort development and water-thirsty crops. The dramatic article […]
While both European and American media continue to devote heavy coverage to the Democratic presidential primary race, there has been hardly reporting on the campaigns' activities in Puerto Rico, the semi-autonomous American territory – partly because Obama is now seen as the almost inevitable Democratic candidate and Puerto Ricans cannot vote in the actual presidential […]