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34 Nieman fellows in 23 countries took part in a Watchdog survey on perceptions of America

Some Asian Nieman fellows are highly critical of the American press

DISCUSSIONS | June 12, 2006

Coke, Pepsi and Starbucks are popular but Bush, the Iraq war and the American news media aren’t.


By Barry Sussman
Editor, The Watchdog Project
editor@NiemanWatchdog.org

Nieman fellows from around the world say perceptions of the United States in their countries have become highly negative, in some instances as bad as or worse than they have ever been. They assign most of the blame to the war in Iraq and to President Bush. Some are highly critical of the American news media for lack of aggressive reporting, and the citizenry itself for submissiveness.

Read posts from:
  • Nguyen Quang Dy, Vietnam: Iraq has revived the ghosts of Vietnam
  • Ramindar Singh, India: Let down by the ‘crumbling’ of the U.S news media
  • Arun Chacko, India: ‘Two sets of entirely different perceptions’
  • Thepchai Yong, Thailand: There’s Americans, and then there’s the U.S. government
  • Jie Lin, China: U.S. lifestyles yes, policies no
  • Sayuri Daimon, Japan: Image of a good America has faded
  • Xiaoping Chen, China: The waning of an infatuation
  • Jingcao Hu, China: A film maker wants the media to give a broader view
  • Satoshi Yoshida, Japan: Japan has the same issues as the U.S.
  • Thai Nguyen, Vietnam: No hostility, but surprise and frustration
  • A Vietnamese Nieman fellow from 1963 says the war in Iraq has “revived the ghosts of Vietnam” and made the U.S. unpopular throughout the world.

    In all, 34 current and past Nieman fellows from 23 countries took part in a one-question e-mail survey done by this Web site on the occasion of its second anniversary. The question was:

    Please share with us your thoughts about people’s main perceptions of America where you live, and how their perceptions have changed in recent years, say since 9/11.

    Today’s focus is on Asia, where ten Nieman alumni took part. One of them is Ramindar Singh, a 1982 Nieman fellow who is now president of the Hinduja Group, a global banking and investment firm. In nuanced remarks, Singh cites the strong attachment of Indians to the U.S., but also disappointment with U.S. policies and deficiencies of the American press.

    “Even during strained relations between the two governments,” Singh writes, “the U.S. has remained the dream destination of every educated Indian. Indians going abroad for higher education chose the U.S. over their traditional destination, England. And the more engineers and doctors emerged out of U.S. universities, the stronger the bond became between Indians and Americans. But their political worlds remained poles apart.”

    Singh says “the U.S. Constitution is taught in most Indian schools and colleges as the core document which enshrines democratic values,” but “when these beliefs are tested on the ground, the U.S. has often chosen the convenient path rather than the rightful or moral one. Especially in recent times.”

    Singh writes, “Indian democrats in general and Indian journalists in particular, feel let down by the unquestioning acceptance of the Bush policies by the U.S. media, the U.S. Congress and American civil society.”

    The media crumbled, Singh says: “Bush was off limits for criticism, even satire and humor for nearly a year after 9/11. Cartoonists called halt to Bush baiting, and for several months Saturday Night Live steered clear of satirizing the President. Large sections of the U.S. media were unsure of where they stood professionally at a time when their nation was at war. Too many allowed their sense of patriotism to supercede their professional objectivity. It was as if large parts of the U.S. media had turned Bush’s ‘with us or against us’ dictum upon themselves, that they would be seen as pro-enemy if they criticized Bush. In its first severe test of objectivity after 9/11, the U.S. media crumbled.

    “U.S. coverage of the war in Iraq, its acquiescence in censorship of embedded reporters, its unquestioning acceptance of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan as ‘collateral damage,’ have in the eyes of the rest of the world diluted the US media’s reputation for objectivity and professionalism. The umbrella excuse: ‘We are at war.’”

    A second Nieman fellow from India, Arun Chacko (class of 1978), director of the Press Institute of India in New Delhi, offered similarly harsh comments about the American news media:

    The Nieman Foundation should be particularly concerned about what the world thinks about the U.S. media,” he wrote. “Today, they have an extremely low credibility, and some international credibility rating agencies put them well below many third world countries, including India. Most refuse to take them seriously, if they bother to read or view them at all. For them the U.S. media, with extremely rare exceptions, have invariably been an embedded watchdog, which doesn’t make for credible journalism. Only, today they are much more blatant than before.”

    Chacko writes that “Indians who think about the United States have two entirely different perceptions”: First, that relations between the two countries have rarely been better; and, second, that America is “an irresponsible and dangerous superpower in a unipolar world.” Few Indians, he writes, “were particularly surprised that the U.S. was seriously hit by the same terrorism it fostered and encouraged around the world for decades. After all, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are former U.S. allies, not to mention the Islamic fundamentalists in both Pakistan and Afghanistan – long recipients of U.S. arms and aid before the tide turned.”

    In Asia and elsewhere, Nieman fellows mostly distinguished the American people and pop culture from the government. As Jie Lin, a 2004 Nieman fellow from Beijing put it, “a somewhat envious tone is usually heard among peer talks whenever the topic is related to American lifestyle. The young Chinese today drink Coca Cola and Pepsi, eat KFC and McDonalds, kill time at Starbucks and Hard Rock. They hold a friendly attitude toward almost all American individuals, who they think are outgoing, optimistic, enthusiastic and easy to make friends with.”

    At the same time, Jie Lin wrote, many Chinese feel America is a bully and regard Osama Bin Laden as a hero. “I still remember vividly that the first reaction from people around me in my organization to the tragic news of 9/11 was – I hate to say this, but it’s true – schadenfreude (except for those including myself who were educated in the States)."

    Jie Lin concluded that the overall, simplified perception of America in China is that the system is still good and the people likable but “when it comes to international democracy and justice, hmmm – please shut up. We don’t trust you anymore.”

    Xiaoping Chen, a 1998 Nieman fellow who is now studying juridical science at the University of Wisconsin Law School, says some Chinese are “subtly scornful” of the United States. He quotes a fellow student at Wisconsin as saying, “Before I came here, I had only fantastic images of America in my mind. But after staying here for a while, all these illusions have disappeared.”

    Chen cited opinion polls showing that while America is still the first tourist destination chosen by adults in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the percentage of these urban Chinese selecting the U.S. dropped from 36 percent in 1995 to 16 percent in 2003.

    Support in Japan for Bush policies

    A 1978 Nieman fellow from Japan, Satoshi Yoshida, was just about alone among respondents – from all countries – to find almost total backing for the U.S., saying Japan understands and supports the policies of the Bush administration. Satoshi, the chief economic news editor for the Kyodo News, cited four reasons:

    • Japan has experienced terrorism (the spreading of Sarin in Tokyo’s subways in 1995, killing 12 and injuring more than 5000 people).
    • Japan and the U.S. have similar immigration issues. One effect in Japan is that people have begun to feel a lack of security and safety.
    • As China emerges as a giant trade nation, Japanese, especially younger ones, are becoming more nationalistic to compete.
    • Most Japanese are unfamiliar with Islamic values and many think they are in opposition to traditional Japanese thinking which is based on Buddhism.

    Here are some of the highlights from other Nieman alumni in Asia:

    Nguyen Quang Dy, a 1993 Nieman fellow who is now a senior adviser for the Fulbright School in Saigon and the Vietnam Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, says, “Iraq has revived the ghosts of Vietnam, making America increasingly unpopular across the world...

    “In a sense, the ghosts of Vietnam are being kept alive by Iraq and history may repeat itself. Once again, America is facing a dilemma that 'Iraqization' of the war might not work for the American Army to withdraw soon enough to avoid a bigger controversy at home. It’s not the failure of the war machine or hardware. It’s the failure of a war philosophy and narrow vision based on unilateralism and hard power…

    “Vietnam and America have normalized relations, signed on as trading partners, and been conducting World Trade Organization negotiations. But the relationship can go sour any time, if not over POW/MIA as before, then over human rights or some other issue.”

    Thai Nguyen of Vietnam, a 1963 Nieman fellow, is impressed with how friendly Vietnamese are toward Americans. But, he writes:

    “Get close to the relatively well informed Vietnamese elite who had no fear to express their views and they share with you their feelings of surprise and frustration about America. They wonder why the Bush administration, after the Clinton administration which had done so well for America by being cooperative with the rest of the world, suddenly acted so arrogantly and antagonized most of America's friends by invading Iraq, despite their strong opposition to such an unwise military adventure.”

    Sayuri Daimon, a 2001 Nieman fellow and national news editor of the Japan Times in Tokyo, writes: “Though the government wants to maintain a close relationship with the U.S., I think the image of ‘good America’ is unlikely to come back anytime soon. Seeing that the U.S. is no longer a safe destination for students, more Japanese parents nowadays send their children to Australia, instead of the U.S., for English education.”

    Thepchai Yong, a 2005 Nieman fellow and group editor of the Nation Multi-media Group in Thailand: “There was sympathy for the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 even though there was a strong feeling against what the intellectuals and the media saw as U.S. unilateralism and interventionism. However, the war in Iraq did much to change many people's perceptions. The war was widely covered by the media and generated widespread debates among many quarters of Thais. Even though the Thai government sent troops to help in the reconstruction work, many Thais strongly questioned the legitimacy of the military venture which added to the U.S. image as an aggressor. The feeling was particularly strong among the Muslims in the south, which is a hotbed of Islamic militancy. It's not uncommon to hear Thais refer to the U.S. as ‘the self-appointed global policeman.’”

    Next: The view from the Americas



    The ME-dia
    Posted by Karen Burby Norman -
    05/31/2006, 08:39 PM

    What did the rest of the world think about the Clinton feeding frenzy that became the press' national obsession? That seems to be when the wheels first started to wobbling on the press responsibility bus. Now they've fallen off entirely.

    I agree with the rest of the world - how did we let it get so bad?




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