The Global News Village is Listening To Everything You Say

Among the odder questions one is asked in Washington (of all places!) is, "You mean people in Scotland/Hungary/Australia/Brazil are interested in this stuff?" It never ceases to surprise me that people in this city should be surprised that the rest of the world is interested in, and follows closely, what happens here.

Anne Applebaum addresses this subject in her Slate column today. Satellite television, cable news, the internet (and the English language's dominance of said tubes and pipes) and so on have combined to blur  - and often eliminate entirely - the line between domestic American news and news of worldwide importance. Hence, every newspaper in the world, it seemed, dispatched reporters to Blacksburg last week. The news is global these days.

This is something American politicians have - as Applebaum suggests - yet to come to terms with. In the age of the internet and YouTube there is no such thing as a purely domestic and international audiences. Voters and interested parties around the globe hear everything the President or the leading contenders to succeed Bush say. You can no longer say one thing for domestic consumption and another for a foreign audience.

So, for instance, while John McCain's "Bomb Iran" song may, as I suggested, help him in the Republican primary, it has very bad consequences should he actually win the Presidency. Millions of people around the world will, at the very least, assume that if this is not actual US policy then it is what the new President would like to have as American policy. That in turn has consequences in terms of the range of options - and ease with which they can be pursued - available to the White House.

(I don't mean to pick on McCain: the other candidates' have the same problem. Each time John Edwards tosses some red meat towards liberal protectionists in the Democratic Party, the rest of the world hears a threat to its own jobs and future prosperity and begins to suspect that the United States cannot be relied upon as a trading partner.)

Now for a spot of special pleading! Candidates for the Presidency might want to rethink how they deal with the foreign press. No-one expects McCain or Clinton or whoever to grant the same level of access to the foreign press they reserve for the NYT or WaPo, but a little more consideration and tact would go a long way. After all, international journalists play a part in determining how an American president is perceived internationally. And if the last six years have taught us anything it might be that perceptions do in fact matter in terms of the part they play in deciding how helpful foreign governments are likely to be when asked for help by the United States. Perceptions and public opinion decree how much room for manoeuvre foreign governments have in terms of accommodating the US. Clearly, candidates cannot - and should not - be expected to tailor their every word to how they think the international audience is going to react, but just remembering that there is an international audience would be a useful start.   

This is all, of course, just a small part of the job the United States needs to do in terms of selling itself overseas. But every little helps. As I say, no-on in their right mind thinks that granting more access to the foreign press is a magic bullet for thi sort of thing. But it can't hurt and it might even do a little good. It's certainly better than considering the international media "about on a par with lice."

Even better, politicians on the stump might try and remember that what they say in the campaign has an impact on what they can do should they actually win the Presidency.

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[Mulberry Alexa]

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