Overuse and misuse of the verb “to see” are spreading like a pandemic through much of the U.S. and British media. The habit is more than just ugly and unnecessary; it betrays a sloppiness of thinking that is dangerous among journalists, who should be masters of succinct and clear expression. How often do U.S. broadcast […]
“Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi,” writes columnist Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post, “has been accused of bribery, tax evasion, corruption and subversion of the press.” He makes embarrassing jokes and is at war with the Italian legal establishment. His wife has left him on the grounds that he consorts with prostitutes and holds orgies […]
Once again, with a couple of honorable exceptions, the U.S. media failed to deliver on a major story about the European Union, which groups America’s closest allies and trading and investment partners. It’s true that EU stories are often hard to make interesting, but the American media has never really tried to do so for […]
The European media and political leaders are reacting to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama with official welcomes, hope, puzzlement, and some hostility. In France, the daily newspaper Le Parisien writes lyrically: In the four corners of the world, the award of the Nobel Prize to the American President Barack […]
The U.S. and European media are focusing heavily on the disastrous defeat of the Social Democrats, and an apparent shift of the electorate to the center-right, in their analyses of the German elections on September 27, which reinstalled Christian Democrat Angela Merkel as Chancellor. Many commentators also use the German results as a peg to […]
Germany should overcome its Puritan ethic and wean its economy off a “destructive addiction” to industrial exports – in the interests both of Germany itself and of the rest of the world – writes Reginald Dale of the CSIS Transatlantic Media Network in the September issue of the magazine Industry Today. But while this is […]
Europeans are growing increasingly disillusioned with President Barack Obama’s failure to show international environmental leadership, with fears rising that high-level negotiations on climate change in Copenhagen in December may break down as a result. The European media is full of reports that the United States is once again regarded as the main obstacle to a […]
Critics are slamming the fake, provocatively sexy, video sneaked onto YouTube by the Danish state tourist board, VisitDenmark, in an underhand manner earlier this month. But the controversial marketing ploy is seen by its sponsors as a huge success. The video shows a young blonde Danish woman, “Karen,” with her baby, “August,” saying she wants […]
Kevin Myers, a provocative columnist for the Irish Independent, has stirred up a hornet’s nest in Ireland with a piece slamming the late Senator Edward Kennedy for drunken, “oafish” behavior and calling “Irish-America” infantile and revolting. His piece is entitled Kennedys Were Leaders of the Most Nauseating and Sentimental of any Ethnic Minority in U.S. […]
The political tone of U.S. coverage in the London Financial Times usually falls somewhere between that of The Washington Post and The New York Times – that is to say mainstream Democratic tending to liberal. Most of the analysts the paper quotes are from Democratic or liberal institutions and it often knocks conservative viewpoints. So […]
The French newspaper Le Monde casts doubts on forecasts that a wave of new "green jobs" is on the way, as claimed by both the French and U.S. governments. The left-of-center paper queries President Barack Obama’s pre-election pledge that he would rapidly create 5 million "green jobs" in the United States and French President Nicolas […]
This blog has previously drawn attention to the failure of the American media to verify claims of U.S. world superiority when a little checking would show such pretensions to be untrue, or at least doubtful. Now it is the turn of conservatives opposing Democratic health care reform proposals to benefit from the media’s blind eye, […]
Anti-Americanism may be resurfacing in Europe after a pause in rhetorical attacks on the United States after Barack Obama won the presidency in November 2008. “The highly vaunted transatlantic honeymoon may be coming to an end,” writes Soeren Kern, senior fellow for transatlantic relations at the Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group in […]
What is it about Denmark that seems to antagonize right-wing American commentators so much? Fox News pundits Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham are particularly prone to lashing out at Denmark, even though they seem to know virtually nothing about the country. In April, Ingraham suggested that President Barack Obama was probably closer to the president […]
Two distinguished Brits have delivered verdicts on the United States after spending time in the country – in one case 13 years, in the other quick visits to eight cities in two months. Needless to say, the verdict of the zip-through-the-cities traveler, Chris Patten, a former EU Commissioner who is Chancellor of Oxford University, is […]