Role of the Media in the Trans-Atlantic Relationship

[Skybird]

Worth a read, I thought.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...478884,00.html

One could see it as an absurd lopsidedness because, for example, that a single edition of the "New York Times" would run the same story from a number of different angles - the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department. Europeans are unfamiliar with this tradition in which journalists report hard facts but avoid stating an opinion. Even the analysis of these facts, sometimes by the same reporter who has penned an article, whether in the "New York Times", "Washington Post" or "Los Angeles Times", differs little from the other pieces. What distinguishes American journalism from its European counterpart is the absolute divide between such articles and editorials, opinion pieces or regular columns. It is obvious where this can lead: readers who want to believe that the affirmative, patriotic America was the real deal would pay attention to one half of the papers, while those who wanted to read about questioning, self-critical America would stick to the opinion pages and journalists like Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman or Thomas Friedman. That's how easy it can be to have your prejudices confirmed.

Major powers often underestimate the significance of historical experiences not their own. Medium-sized powers are aware of the dangers of over-estimating their own importance and correctly assess the significance of institutions within the global community. Major powers occasionally fall prey to the delusion that they can bend the world to their will in certain selected regions. In the past, Europe's medium-sized powers followed the same policies and now know that overweening ambition and large empires can be short-lived. Major powers like America repeatedly underestimate the overwhelming force of the strong emotions they unleash against themselves. Smaller powers have already experienced the historical consequences of such actions, so that experiences that are quite new for superpowers will often seem like déjà vu to them.

The cultural differences between major powers and smaller powers can feed a perception of "foreignness" that can lead to increasing political polarization when power starts to decline.