As the world and the Middle East held its collective breath while the crisis in Egypt exploded in a military coup that ousted that country’s first popularly elected president this July 3, CNN demonstrated perfectly how poorly our mainstream press covers international stories of global importance.
As Americans, we are of course used to a terrible press that more often serves as a power’s stenographer than as its watchdog, but coverage of Egypt this past week has been so abysmally terrible that it stands out as a new low point. Consider, for instance, this clip from CNN’s coverage, or rather non-coverage, of events as the coup played out.
The once-proud network — that in 1991 continued to broadcast live from Baghdad even as bombs were falling from the sky — spent hours on every scandalous minutia of court proceedings at the George Zimmerman trial. Even when remote testimony was comically interrupted by an uncooperative Skype, CNN stuck with the trial – and just the barest mention of Egypt by their anchor was unceremoniously cut off by a commercial break.
This of course mirrors the coverage of most of the other major cable news networks, where wall-to-wall coverage of the Zimmerman trial reigned supreme. Even then, when the networks ginned up the gumption to finally switch to some coverage of goings-on in Egypt, the talking heads generally presented an easy-to-understand narrative that turned the complex politics of Egypt’s ongoing revolution into a simple Islamist-versus-secularist stick fight.
Surveying the damage
This framing cast the Islamists as the ‘bad guys’ and the opposition to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood as the ‘good guys,’ thereby not only simplifying the story but justifying the overthrow of a democratically-elected president to an apparently little-interested American public. Lost in this farce was any mention of the Brotherhood’s pivotal role in protecting and help in organizing the original mass protests some two-and-a-half years ago that led to the overthrow of then-President Hosni Mubarak. It also raised few qualms over the precedent set by the coup and mostly neglected altogether that the opposition to Morsi was a mixed lot that also included, you guessed it, a strong Islamist component.
Not all American networks failed so miserably, however. One actually ignored the Zimmerman trial altogether and stuck with the Egyptian coup story for quite some time. The network? CNBC, the country’s premier business-news channel. Given the globalized nature of American capitalism, it makes perfect sense that the only U.S. network providing any coverage worth watching is the one which is focused, like a laser beam, on Wall Street, the financial markets, and the global economy.
On that channel it is not at all out of the ordinary to see international stories discussed in depth. This is because the individuals comprising the world of American high finance need to know how the world actually works and thinks if they are to make, or at least avoid losing, massive amounts of money. Egypt matters to them because what happens there affects the greater Middle East, which in turn influences oil prices and the global economy. Contrast this with CNN, FOX, or MSNBC where international coverage is usually minimal and boring (e.g. CNN) or otherwise spun to affirm their viewers’ ideological beliefs (FOX and MSNBC).
This dichotomy in the quality of foreign offerings is present in other forms of American media as well. Indeed, the U.S. business press is usually generally much better at reporting international stories of this sort, and it is no surprise that of the three or so major national daily papers that do provide a lot of foreign coverage, one is the Wall Street Journal – the grand dame of U.S. business reporting.
Business mentality
What is disturbing about this difference in coverage between the business press and the rest of the American media is that it symbolizes the widening chasm between a globally-focused economic elite and the rest of the country. It no longer really can be said that there is a discernible entity called ‘Corporate America’ insofar as that implies a long-term interest in the United States as a country as opposed to viewing it as merely one economic market among others. For a long time now, “American” corporations – especially our richest and most powerful – have been global actors that easily flit across borders in search of profit and opportunity.
To be sure, many of the executives employed at these corporations are U.S. citizens, but that does not mean that the company they work for, as an institution, has any loyalty to the United States as such. General Motors may be based in Detroit, sure — but if it now sells more cars in China than it does in the United States, to what extent can GM really be considered an American company? The same goes for many other ostensibly blue chip “American” firms like Caterpillar, General Electric, ExxonMobil, Bank of America and JPMorgan-Chase. All are huge, multinational firms that act on interests from many different countries around the world, not just the U.S.
Those in the know
This shift in the very nature of American capitalism – the transformation of our national business class into a transnational economic elite – lies at the heart of many of America’s current problems. Once upon a time there may have been some truth to the old saying that what’s good for business is what’s good for America, but with the globalization of American capitalism that is no longer necessarily true, if it ever was. The world today is the corporate sector’s oyster, and the orientation of executives and firms, like their investment capital and attention, is now firmly directed outward.
Most Americans, despite thirty years of stagnant incomes, have yet to understand this very basic fact about how the U.S. economy now works. Many still believe that U.S. companies and the corporate elite who run them are as attached and loyal to America as they are. Since the average U.S. citizen thinks the United States is still number one and by far the greatest country in the world, by definition everything that takes place outside of it is unimportant and uninteresting.
If this is what Americans believe then their TV news networks will reflect that basic prejudice – and will therefore ignore a critical global story like the Egyptian coup in favor of a domestic courtroom drama that mines all the clichéd tropes of America’s bitter racial history. One set of Americans, however — those intimately familiar with the workings of global capitalism — believes the exact opposite. To them, the Zimmerman trial is an unimportant distraction of importance only to the great unwashed while in their reality, America is a place to do business in, not something to give loyalty to. Not surprisingly, the television channel of choice for these Americans reflects that basic prejudice as well.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Mint Press News editorial policy.