The European media devoted heavy coverage to the relatively lenient prison sentence (five and half years) for terrorist offenses given to Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden's former driver, by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay August 7. But while the European media has been virtually unanimous in denouncing Guantanamo and everything to do with […]
One of the more irritating habits of some journalists is to describe a recent event as “little noticed.” By this they mean that they alone appreciate its significance and can exclusively reveal it to the world. Frequently, however, the event has in fact been reported elsewhere but these reports have gone “unnoticed” by the egocentric […]
In a delightful series of articles from across the United States, Frankfurter Allgemeine's Washington correspondent Matthias Rub has been taking the pulse of the United States three months before the election. Rub shows that not all reporting from rural America has to be marred by popular stereotypes and old clichés. Starting from Washington D.C., Rub […]
Transatlantic media coverage immediately after of the collapse of the World Trade Organization's Doha Round of trade talks in Geneva July 29 provided a wide range of different perspectives on the same story. Commentators blamed the failure variously on the United States, India, or China, or a combination of some or all of them, with […]
During Barack Obama's visit to Europe, several European media outlets took issue with the coverage of his trip by the U.S. media. But while American pundits were debating whether the U.S. media were too biased in favor of Obama, a number of European journalists found their American counterparts excessively cool toward him. "Obamania? Not in […]
Marco Vicenzio, Director of the Global Strategy Project in Washington, DC and Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association recently published an article titled "Diplomacy in word and deed' in the July 28 edition of the Boston Globe. He points out that the major objective of Obama's trip to Europe was to emphasize his ability to […]
While much of the European media is consumed with insatiable "Obamamania,' Christoph von Marschall, bureau chief of Berlin's daily Der Tagesspiegel, describes how the foreign media has been almost completely denied access to the candidate. He writes: "As a German correspondent in Washington, I am accustomed to the fact that American politicians spare little of […]
A surly New York waiter seeks to promote his forthcoming book, “Waiter Rant,” by accusing the British of failing to leave proper tips in a blog run by the British daily, the Guardian. John Murray fingers a retired couple from Leeds in Yorkshire, whom he describes as “wonderful people” and “polite and well mannered.” He […]
A commentary in the left-of-center British daily, the Guardian, July 21 struck a salutary note of caution amid all the frenzy surrounding Barack Obama's tour of Europe. It warned that, while transatlantic relations are likely to improve under the next U.S. administration, Washington's demands on Europe will almost certainly increase -regardless of whether Obama or […]
Earlier this year a dramatic accident at an illegal street race in a Washington DC suburb killed eight people and sent five others to hospital. The reaction of local law enforcement? A crackdown on illegal street racing. In the Polish city of Lodz, police have taken precisely the opposite approach. They have co-opted illegal races, […]
Whether American or British journalism is “better” is a complex and probably unanswerable question that would require many thousands of words to address exhaustively. Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs writer of the Financial Times has a crack at it in a 900-word column July 15 (“American journalism, still a model”), and doesn't much like the […]
Perhaps this is no more than proof of the old adage that journalism is a career for young people, who necessarily have less in their memory banks than their elders. In a dispatch July 16 (“Crises force Bush to embrace intervention“), the Financial Times quoted the following words as told to the Washington newspaper Politico […]
In a report July 8, the Washington Post took on the easy target of EU food regulations, ridiculing rules such those defining the bend in Class 1 cucumbers, the size of onions, and the ripeness of peaches. Such seemingly absurd regulations are frequently derided in the media, especially in Britain, but supported by a majority […]
An article in the Norwegian daily Bergens Tidende on July 4 again demonstrated how parts of the European media are struggling to present a non-biased picture of the U.S. presidential election despite their support for Barack Obama. The article sought to analyze the most important battleground states and discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the […]
Anthony Julius of the Mischon de Reya law firm, well known for his work on behalf of Princess Diana and Deborah Lipstadt (an American historian accused by historian David Irving of libel), recently wrote an opinion piece for the The Times of London accusing an imperial United States of throwing its weight around even on […]