The American and European television news media

Essay by zozon3College, UndergraduateA+, March 2004

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Looking at a news report on the TV today is very different from a news report in Europe.

The news on your local channel is much less serious and is made to be entertaining like just a

regular TV show. A European news broadcast still shows the cold hard facts. The differences can

be traced to culture differences between the two continents. Americans wonder why the majority

of the world population was so against the war on Iraq, yet just watching the European news you

can find out. The history of Europe is also much different than the American one, it is a much

older country also.

Just looking at the surface of news broadcasts in Europe there's already one big

difference: there's only one person reporting the news. The U.S. always has at least two people

reporting the main news. To an American this is normal, they like the jokes that are being told

between the reporters.

To a European the news broadcast would be a joke to them, because news

should remain news. Not to say that European news has just serious negative news, there is

positive news. However if you saw a report on infidelity on the news, Europeans would find the

whole news a joke. Another difference is the international news is first on European news

broadcasts, while local news is first in the states. Only a small part on the news here that you

catch on the local channels is international, if any. Why has the American news become like

another show one watches? "Perhaps the major difference between Europe and the U.S. is the

role of public broadcasting. In Europe, most public broadcasters still capture significant

audiences." (Johan de Koster, 31 may 2002, rnw.nl). American audiences don't want boring

news, they want to...