At the tip of the Iberian peninsula lies the small rectangle of Portugal, my mother’s country of origin. Each time I pay a visit to Portugal, the world grows increasingly more political, and the clear differences between Europe and America become difficult not to compare.
Certain European bluntness may appear shocking to an American who might be accustomed to communicating ideas more softly; however, I think that this cultural custom may impede American audiences from getting everything they should out of the media they consume.
The media coverage of the Ukraine war was one of the first things I noticed on this annual assessment of my environment. Regardless of which news channel I chose, they all seemed to have time slots dedicated to reports on the war. RTP 1, SIC Notícias and CNN Portugal all had expansive daily coverage, covering subjects regarding elite political figures like Volodymyr Zelensky, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, while also depicting the difficulties of civilians and soldiers.
I would watch firsthand accounts of Ukrainian civilians speaking to journalists, videos of Ukrainian soldiers in battle and honorary events for the casualties. The videos were gruesome, showing bloody wounds, corpses lying on the ground, injured children and Ukrainian troops being rounded up to be shot by the Russians.
I immediately found this shocking and very strange. In the United States, the war is rarely discussed in daily life, and whenever there is media coverage on the war, it is typically centered around diplomatic relations rather than on the people most affected. Such graphic coverage would unlikely be publicly displayed, and as a consequence, little about the daily struggles of Ukrainians is commonly known.
Although there is no formal research on this subject, I observed clear patterns between the types of reporting in Europe and America. I will concede that it is difficult to provide equal coverage to all news. News outlets have to balance a variety of areas, like fashion or sports, in addition to balancing domestic and international current affairs.
I believe that the division between foreign and domestic coverage is already unbalanced. However, even in coverage of international news, American media outlets still make their stories centered around the United States in some manner. Logically, American news has extensive coverage on international news that is more pertinent to the U.S., such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the lack of focus on issues that have less involvement with this country is detrimental to the American public.
Much of the American media does not make it a priority to educate its audiences on these matters. This is a disservice to the people and prevents a large part of the population from having easy access to international news, thus limiting their worldview and perspectives.
When searching on the websites of newspapers and news stations, no stories on the Ukrainian war are immediately displayed: examples include notable newspapers like The Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Los Angeles Times. In the Chicago Sun-Times’s News and World column, they display three stories, all three on domestic affairs. Similarly, in the Los Angeles Times’s News and World column, eight out of the nine reports were on domestic issues.
Conversely, on the front page of France 24’s website, a popular news station in France, was a large box with Ukrainian war stories and a link in bold capital letters reading “WAR IN UKRAINE,” leading to more stories. Some may argue that a European news station would obviously display those stories due to their geographic proximity to Ukraine and because their citizens are more directly affected than those of a nation like the U.S.
However, right below the “War in Ukraine” link box is the same style box titled “WAR IN GAZA,” a conflict that is not necessarily as pertinent to France. In the BBC News, a British broadcasting station, reports on the Ukraine war are as openly displayed as American and Canadian news, national news, and the war in Gaza. A similar pattern is also seen in Die Welt, a German newspaper; ERT News, a Greek news station; and Postimees, an Estonian newspaper.
The war against Ukraine is a violation of international law and a disruption to order. The invasion of a peaceful country by a world power is a global threat, and three years later, it continues to demand as much attention as it did at the beginning of the attacks. With an estimated 1.4 million troop casualties according to the New York Times, the Russo-Ukrainian war is the deadliest in Europe since World War II. Despite its consequences not being deemed important to the U.S., American citizens must know the scale of this menacing conflict and why it could pose dangers to the world as they know it today. It is the media’s duty not to leave their people in the dark regarding such a pressing matter.
