Transatlantic Media

The Times of London reported in this article as news that Sarah Palin has linked her electoral success to Kenyan pastor whom Palin ‘says helped her to become governor of Alaska founded his ministry with a witchhunt against a Kenyan woman who he accused of causing car accidents through demonic spells.’ While her connection to Muthee is far less significant than that of Barack Obama to Reverand Wright, its interesting to point out that the British papers have not only joined the American one’s in the muckracking expedition into Sarah Palin’s life, but have beaten them to the punch insofar as this story.  For now, it has not appeared in any major American media, exception the Comedy Central satirical ‘initiative’, ‘Indecision: 2008.’

The media in the two top Western financial centers, London and New York, differed in emphasis in their reporting of Sunday’s dramatic turmoil on Wall Street - including the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers - with the British media tending to highlight the human side, while their American counterparts stressed the enormity of the blow to the U.S. and global financial systems.

London

British newspapers paid particular attention to the sorry plight of the employees of Lehman Brothers and other faltering financial organizations, including two pieces in the Guardian.
‘Wall Street jobs cull begins as Lehman rescue bid fails’ The Guardian, September 15, 2008

‘Wall Street crisis: Lehman staff tell their stories: Lehman Brothers employees on both sides of the Atlantic describe their shock, anger and sadness at the collapse of the bank’ The Guardian, September 15, 2008

‘Shock and tears as staff sent home’ Times of London’, September 15, 2008

‘Meltdown Monday: Stock markets tumble and thousands lose jobs’ The Telegraph, September 15, 2008’
‘Shocked Lehman staff told to “move on”’, Financial Times, September 15, 2008

The Telegraph ran a human interest piece on how U.S. Treasury Hank Paulson had risen from farm-boy to the pinnacles of international finance while keeping his heart in the agricultural Mid-West. The piece included the following comment:

‘A comparison was recently drawn in the Telegraph between the ordinary Americans being saved in the Freddie-Fannie bail-out and the po-faced couple standing in front of their clapboard homestead of Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic. Actually, the analogy could be taken further. See Mr. Paulson, particularly when he’s wearing his glasses and looking especially solemn, and one is certainly reminded of Wood’s pitchfork-clutching farmer. The farmer would probably approve of the financier.’

The Times, in assessing the spreading impact of the financial upheaval, managed to find an Australian strategist who imaginatively compared the crisis to Lord Voldemort, the evil character in the Harry Potter novels who keeps returning from the dead.

‘Analysis: ‘Black Monday’ threatens London’, Times of London, September 15, 2008

As might be expected, the Financial Times devoted extensive coverage to the crisis and its global repercussions, including the following:

‘Kill or cure for Wall Street malaise’ Financial Times, September 16

‘Dragon of moral hazard is going to take some impaling’ Financial Times, September 17

New York/Washington

The most interesting feature of U.S. reporting was the Washington Post’s decision to lead its print edition with no fewer than three single-column stories under a large headline that simply announced “Massive Shifts on Wall Street.” This clearly reflected the changed priorities of the Post’s new Executive Editor, Marcus Brauchli, a former senior editor at the Wall Street Journal, who had only been a few days in his job. Under his predecessor, Len Downie, the Post tended to play down economic and financial stories, often relegating important developments to the business pages. The three headlines from that print edition are linked below.

‘Troubled Bank to File for Bankruptcy’, Washington Post, September 15

‘A New Architecture for the Financial World’, Washington Post, September 15

‘Weekend Merger Struck with Bank of America’ Washington, Post September 15
The New York Times did well with an interesting reaction piece from Europe, pointing that while Europeans often display schadenfreude at bad news from America, they found little cause for joy in the latest developments, because the Wall Street crisis so clearly threatened European prosperity as well.

‘In Europe, Concern on the Faces of Investors’ The New York Times, September 15, 2008

The Wall Street Journal echoed the concerns of British newspapers about the fate of Lehman Brothers’ employees, with a strong emphasis on human interest.

’25,000 People Worry About Their Futures’ Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2008

But the WSJ also took a broader look at the serious financial implications of the crisis with a report that began “The American financial system was shaken to its core on Sunday”

‘Lehman Files for Bankruptcy, Merrill Sold, AIG Seeks Cash’ Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2008

The financial crisis ousted reports on the devastating Hurricane Ike from the top headlines in most major American papers, except, understandably, in Texas, where Ike wrought the most havoc.

While some Americans questioned whether Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin could hold high office and simultaneously look after five children, an article in the New York Times, ‘Wage Gaps for Women Frustrating Germany’ examined the difficulties faced by German women who want both a family and a high-flying career. The article blamed sexist attitudes and a general tendency for women to be passed over for promotion once they have children – and often choose flexible, part time hours, partly as a result of inadequate public child care facilities.

The article could have made its case more strongly by pointing out that the most powerful woman in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, has no children. On the other hand, the article also fails to mention that Ursula von der Leyen, the well-known minister for family affairs, has managed to succeed in politics despite having seven children – two more than Mrs. Palin.

The article reports that German women complain both at lack of promotion and at gender inequality in wages, although it does not go into the issue of whether German women are paid less than men for exactly the same work.

Although Germany offers some of most generous maternity (and paternity) leave in Europe, the lack of child care seems to be a major reason why German career women are reluctant to have children. Minister von der Leyen has introduced plans to finance private child care and make more places available in kindergartens.

That, however, is unlikely to be enough to alter a deep-seated German cultural belief that women ought to stay home and have children, rather than seek professional success – a phenomenon to which the article might have paid greater attention, particularly as it reflects a view also expressed by some American critics of Mrs. Palin.

The Times of London is this week publishing excerpts from a book by its chief foreign commentator, Bronwen Maddox, In Defence of America, due for release September 11.  The first extract, ‘America is not an environmental villain,’ which appeared September 1, argues that although the United States emits the second highest amount of greenhouse gases per person after China, it is in fact a country that holds environmental values close to its heart.

The second excerpt, ‘Why America needs a post-Bush makeover,’ published September 2, offers a laundry list of suggestions aimed at helping the next U.S. administration improve America’s world standing and strengthen its alliances.  Maddox’s recommendations include, ‘give a nod to co-operation,’ ’stop demonizing China,’ ’stay engaged in Iraq and the region,’ ‘consider talking to Iran’ and ‘drop the phrase “War on Terror” and shut Guantanamo.’’

While the first excerpt gives a relatively fair shake to environmental regulations and the environmental movement in the United States, and to the misperceptions of this reality abroad, the second reads more like a standard European wish list for American reform. Many of her proposals are in fact already being advocated by the two leading Presidential candidates, although John McCain might not go as far as Maddox would like in talking to Iran, for example, and Barack Obama is less likely to “stay engaged in Iraq.”

Generally, however, Maddox believes that her suggestions are unlikely to be adopted and, even if they were, would produce demands that Europe would be reluctant to meet:

 ‘Any successor of George W. Bush will want to seem different.  But Europe is going to be disappointed if it expects all the things it has disliked about Bush to fall away at the same time.  That won’t happen – and shouldn’t.  Europe will no doubt get something of what it wants in a president who sounds keener on working with other countries - but that could bring Europe itself a new discomfort.  It would produce demands – for military spending, for trade concessions - which Europe, in turn, might not want to meet.’

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 it, interpretations of the sentence varied widely.

The British leftish daily the Guardian and the German conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung both reported the argument that the verdict could help legitimize the military tribunal. From Washington, the Guardian’s Elena Schor reported that

“… supporters of the tribunal process asserted that Hamdan’s acquittal [on some charges] by the jury of six military officers immunized the Bush administration from criticism that Guantanamo defendants are deprived of basic legal rights.”

Similarly, Frankfurter Allgemeine Washington correspondent Katja Gelinsky cited both John McCain, who said that the verdict “shows that the jurors have carefully weighed the evidence for and against,” and prosecutor Lawrence Morris, who said it confirmed “the fairness and justice of the tribunal.”

The tone in the Guardian and the Frankfurter Allgemeine was similar to that of an August 8 article in The New York Times. While acknowledging that the trial had raised critical questions about the military tribunals, The New York Times reported that “military prosecutors here said the sentence proved that the Bush administration’s system for trying detainees was legitimate and fair.”

A different line was taken by the Times of London’s Washington correspondent Tim Reid, who concluded that Hamdan “will never be released” – because the Pentagon may hold enemy combatants indefinitely. This was not regarded as a foregone conclusion by the Guardian or the Frankfurter Allgemeine. The Guardian reported that

“The judge in his case, U.S. navy captain Keith Allred, told reporters at the prison camp that it is unclear what future Hamdan faces in six months but that he would likely be eligible for an administrative review of his status.”

Reid also characterized the verdict as “the latest blow to the Bush Administration’s efforts to justify its highly controversial military tribunal system at Guantanamo Bay.” Rather than legitimizing the court, as suggested by the Guardian, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, and the New York Times, Reid reported that the verdict would

“bolster the case made by civil rights groups, and much of the international community, that holding Guantanamo Bay detainees indefinitely is unjustifiable, particularly after they have been tried.”

In a commentary August 8, Reid went as far as to claim that “the five and a half year sentence was nothing short of a disaster for the Bush administration,” and that “the White House has made clear for months that whatever happened to Hamdan, he would still be held indefinitely.”

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 writer.A similar phenomenon has been occurring in a cascade of reports in the U.S. media about the so-called “forgotten war” in Afghanistan, the latest from macho military TV and print correspondent Oliver North in the Washington Times August 10.(“Report from a forgotten war.”) The word “forgotten” suggests that North’s report from the ground in Afghanistan is boldly reintroducing Americans to a war that has vanished from their minds.

But who has actually “forgotten” the war in Afghanistan? Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was there in a blaze of publicity last month, and his Republican rival John McCain has visited four times, most recently in March. A Nexis search reveals a deluge of reports alluding to this “forgotten war” in recent years. Does a constant diet of stories about a “forgotten” war cause people to forget it?

The Paris-based International Herald Tribune, owned by the New York Times, appears to be vaguely aware of the problem. It published a lengthy analysis of the war August 4, followed by another long piece on August 7 on the “forgotten war.” By August 8, the headline on the second story had been changed to “nearly forgotten.”

But the main point is that even if the war has been forgotten by many Americans, it has not been forgotten by the other countries fighting in Afghanistan, where it is a major and controversial political issue. There have been heated exchanges on troop contributions in the German, Dutch, Danish and Canadian parliaments. The war is constantly in the news in Britain and Canada, whose forces are engaged in heavy combat, and also in Australia. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Opposition in Britain and very possibly the next prime minister, has said, “Afghanistan is our absolute Number 1 foreign-policy issue.” (”Going to the country”, Sunday Times Magazine, July 20, 2008).

The U.S. media frequently fail to mention that a large part of the Western effort in Afghanistan is a NATO operation and significant numbers of allied soldiers are dying there. North’s piece is a typical example. He reports the war as if only Americans were fighting and wrongly describes it as “Operation Enduring Freedom.” But that is only the U.S.-led counter-terrorism effort. The NATO force in Afghanistan is known as ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). The United States has about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan (15,000 in ISAF and 19,000 in Enduring Freedom.) The other NATO allies have about 30,000 in ISAF. North’s report, like those of others in the U.S. media, suggests that what is being forgotten is not the war but America’s allies.

In a delightful series of articles from across the United States, Frankfurter Allgemeine’s Washington correspondent Matthias Rüb has been taking the pulse of the United States three months before the election. Rüb shows that not all reporting from rural America has to be marred by popular stereotypes and old clichés.

Starting from Washington D.C., Rüb spurned the main highway (I-95) and drove south on the smaller Route 29 to get a better sense of rural America. En route to Florida, Rüb filed reports on the rich history of Monticello, the Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson, on the rapid high-tech business expansion in Charlotte, North Carolina, and on the great human sacrifices on display at the Fort Stewart military base in Georgia where 414 flowers are planted to honor the 414 Georgians who have fallen in Iraq.

Rüb’s articles do a fine job of displaying America’s diversity, often neglected by Europeans who see the United States as a homogenous country. Take the stark contrast between Charlotte, where Rüb described the “amazing development” of the last two decades, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he found one of the highest rates of financial foreclosures. In Fort Lauderdale, so-called Repo-Men, or repossession agents, are flourishing:

“Perhaps it’s no coincidence [given the high foreclosure rate] that a company is headquartered here, which according to its own data is not only the uncontested world market leader, but which has also tripled its operations in the past three years. The company is National Liquidators, which specializes in seizing and auctioning all kinds of water vessels from jet skis and sailboats to fishing boats, yachts, and small cruise ships. (…) In Florida alone, an average of five boats are seized every day.”

From Florida, Rüb travelled to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Kraemer, Louisiana where he filed a report August 6. You can follow Rüb’s tour on the website of the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Rüb’s itinerary so far:
Undated: ‘Monticello (Virginia): On U.S. 29 through Virginia’
August 2: ‘Charlotte (North Carolina): Where the Crisis is still Distant’
August 3: ‘Fort Stewart (Georgia): Inexhaustible Stock of Flags’
August 4: ‘Fort Lauderdale (Florida): The Business of “Repo Men”‘
August 5: ‘Biloxi (Mississippi): Gambling is the Savior’
August 6: ‘Kraemer (Louisiana): Banana Republic in the River Delta’

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 occasional tangential swipes at the European Union and Brazil.

United States Media Coverage

Washington Post: ‘Trade Talks Crumble in Feud Over Farm Aid’, July 30, 2008

The Washington Post reported that whereas American and European officials were prepared to make big concessions, the talks fell apart after India and China insisted on keeping the right to protect their farmers and accused the United States and other rich nations of exaggerating the generosity of their offers. India’s chief negotiator, it said, “may have played the biggest role in undoing the talks.” The Post said the talks “at times took on a highly charged, personal tone that immediately cast the negotiations as a power struggle between the developed and developing worlds.

“Within 24 hours of landing in Geneva nine days ago, Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, infuriated First World negotiators, comparing their efforts to hype their proposed trade concessions to Nazi propaganda.  His comments drew sharp reprimands, particularly from Washington’s top negotiator, U.S. Trade Ambassador Susan C. Schwab, the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors.”

The article conceded that Brazil ultimately was more flexible than India and China, but still lumped it in with the hold outs.

The New York Times: ‘After 7 Years, Talks on Trade Collapse’

The New York Times report was among the few to observe that the failure of the negotiations “delivers a blow to the credibility of the World Trade Organization.” It also noted a strategic power shift among the countries at the table, pointing out that India and China have become aware of their economic power and are finally asserting themselves.

European Media Coverage

The Guardian: ‘Tariffs: WTO talks collapse after India and China clash with America over farm products’

The Guardian blamed the collapse of the talks on disagreements between India, China and the United States. It quoted remarks by U.S. Trade Ambassador Susan Schwab that sounded pushy and condescending:

“[Schwab thought] it was ‘unconscionable’ that developing countries were insisting on shielding their farmers…’in the face of the food price crisis, its ironic that the debate came down to how much and how fast could nations raise their barriers to imports of food.’ She [Schwab] suggested that if India and China had got their way ‘we could have come out with an outcome that rolled the global trading system back three years, or five years, or 30 years: 30 years of progress.”

The report said Schwab “has come under fierce political pressure from Capitol Hill to secure fresh markets for America’s rust belt manufacturers.”

It added, however, that EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson “had also come under intense political pressure over promised reforms to Europe’s lavish common agricultural policy.”

The Guardian recalled that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had demanded an urgent meeting with Mandelson in the middle of the negotiations, a summons that Mandelson politely declined, and that Sarkozy had tried to rally other countries, including Italy and Greece, to reject the deal as it stood. Thus while the headline fingered the United States, the report seemed to suggest that Europe would also have had trouble accepting the outcome.

The Scotsman: ‘US Clashes With New Giants’

Like the Guardian, the Scottish daily The Scotsman laid most of the blame on the United States for clashing with India. The Scotsman, however, was one of the few to point out that Brazil and India had been allies in the past during these trade rounds and that their split at this meeting was remarkable.

The Times of London: ‘Why the Doha Round of Talks Finally Died’

The Times laid the blame unequivocally on India. Almost all of its report focused on Kamal Nath, the Indian Trade Minister, who ‘was gritting his teeth, doing his best to justify a wrecking operation that has earned him brickbats from all round. He has brought to an end a seven-year struggle for a global trade agreement that would open boarders and reduce subsidies and he knows it.’

The report said India disagreed not only with the United States but also with ‘a host of developing nations in Latin America, including Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina,’ as well as other countries such as Thailand.

“The trade row finally destroyed the fiction beloved by development charities and poverty lobbyists that we live in a world divided between North and South, or rich and poor. Instead, we live on a globe of powerful and conflicting interest groups - Asian peasants versus Latin American farm laborers, for example.”

FT.Com-Financial Times: ‘Negotiators sift the debris for signs of hope’

The FT stressed the importance of an agreement for many of the countries involved, including Brazil. Nevertheless, while noting that WTO chief Pascal Lamy did not view the failure as final, the FT argued that Western countries were unlikely to offer similar concessions again soon. It blamed the collapse squarely on disagreements between India and the United States, with some meddling by China.

Der Standard: Greetings from the New World Order
In Austria, a commentary in Austria’s biggest daily publication Der Standard struck a similar note to the New York Times, calling attention to the global power shift that has occurred since the start of the Doha round in 2001.  According to commentator Michael Moravec:

‘The reason the negotiations of a world-wide trade agreement failed spectacularly is easily explained: When the discussions began seven years ago in Doha, when the goals and basic conditions were specified, the world looked very different: China, India, and Brazil still belonged to the community of developing countries and the US and the European Union set the tone.  If an agreement was reached between Europe and the United States, the remainder would be a child’s game in comparison, one thought at the time.  Now, the negotiations failed because of India and China.’

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 America,” read the headline of a commentary by Dieter Schnaas in the German weekly business magazine WirtschaftsWoche July 25. Schnaas claimed that Obama’s foreign tour had been viewed “in the U.S. media as ‘fake evidence’ of his foreign policy experience.” Similarly, the British daily the Independent reported July 26 that “the world has been bewitched by his [Obama’s] tour. But Americans are less impressed.”

An article in the German center-right daily die Welt July 25 accused the U.S. media and the American people of not paying enough attention to Obama and the election – a strange claim in view of the unprecedented media circus that has surrounded the campaign, and particularly Obama. The article reported that:

“The euphoria which greeted Barack Obama in Berlin has not reverberated to the U.S., and the media coverage of Obama’s speech in Berlin was only moderate.”

Furthermore, according to die Welt, most Americans are vacationing at this time of the year, and are paying little attention to politics or to Obama’s foreign trip:

“This Sunday only 100 days will be left until the Presidential election, but in the U.S. it is still vacation time. Barack Obama’s foreign trip was the latest hurrah in this three week long period, in which Americans forget about politics.”

The die Welt piece cited a report from Paris by Steven Erlanger in The New York Times as evidence of the negative American reaction to Obama’s Berlin speech, intended as a major foreign policy statement. Erlanger wrote that the speech was “vague on crucial issues of trade, defense and foreign policy.” According to European politicians and pundits Erlanger interviewed, Obama would have to move beyond rhetoric and provide more substance if he became president.

Die Welt and other European newspapers interpreted Erlanger’s article as criticism of their favored presidential candidate. A dispatch from the Norwegian news agency NTB, which ran in Norway’s biggest daily Verdens Gang, used the Erlanger article and a report by Fox News to portray the American reception of Obama’s speech as negative and skeptical. Obama’s speech was “met with skepticism in the U.S.,” and American commentators thought Obama was “clever with words, but vague on issues,” according to Verdens Gang. Similarly, an article by the Swedish press agency TT, printed in the daily Sydsvenskan, reported that “Barack Obama’s Berlin speech was hailed by the Germans, but received cool reactions in the U.S.”

Try Reading the Article
It should be noted, however, that the reporters who used Erlanger’s piece as proof of a negative American reaction to Obama’s speech had clearly not read the article properly. Erlanger was reporting from France on the European, not the American, reaction. And it should be no surprise to anyone that the conservative-leaning Fox News would be less than ecstatic over Obama’s performance.

This post was written by Ola Ulmo, Transatlantic Media Network Intern

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 appear ‘presidential’ at home and abroad and to demonstrate his ‘preparedness’ in foreign policy. Therefore

‘avoiding rhetorical missteps or policy errors was a key concern, as was providing the diplomatically correct and responsibly rhetoric, sufficient enough to distinguish himself from Senator John McCain, but not deviating or implying any radical departure from mainstream policies.’

Interestingly, according to Vicenzino, by the end of the trip, due to his efforts to remain ‘diplomatic’ and ‘politically correct’ the result was a further diminishment of any substantive differences in foreign policy between the two candidates.