I like to tell Europeans who complain about American insularity and/or lack of foreign languages that most Americans I know speak at least one other language fluently, often more (and when I'm annoyed at them that I and many of my friends and acquaintances know much more about their own history than they do ;). Those abroad get their news from the media which when it is doing its job presents the political news plus a balanced sort of greatest hits slices of life, and when it isn't those faits divers and trends that confirm their own stereotypes about America. So you Europeans throw in your (European) media and personal political leanings filtered version of America, and it's not ours - not the one we see and hear every single day and we get annoyed.
But your sample is not representative. Language education is not compulsory even at university level (here two foreign languages are compulsory to the level of a state exam). According to no less official source than the Senate Resolution 28 Designating 2005 as the "Year of Foreign Language Study",
Whereas according to the 2000 decennial census of the population, 9.3 percent of Americans speak both their native language and another language fluently; Whereas according to the European Commission Directorate General for Education and Culture, 52.7 percent of Europeans speak both their native language and another language fluently;
Whereas according to the European Commission Directorate General for Education and Culture, 52.7 percent of Europeans speak both their native language and another language fluently;
BTW, if you have the time, I would invite you to read and comment/critique my seven-diary 1956 series. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Well, considering you're in an academic department of European History...
As to the "European media filtered version of America", it is mostly uncritical regurgitation of American mainstream media sources, including canards swallowed whole, to the point that I wonder why newspapers bother posting foreign correspondents at all. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
I think foreign correspondents started out [and the name suggests it] as people who were abroad doing something other than reading the local press and talking to local journalists and who wrote pieces about their experiences to be published back home. Then they became "professionalised" and jounrnalists with no other purpose than geing correspondents got foreign postings with no chance of interacting with their host country in any meaningful way. It is possible that the rise of blogging will lead to the death of the "professional" foreign correspondent, and media outlets will go back to syndicating "amateur" writing by expatriates, which is the way it should always have been. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
Because the recurring discussion so far excludes those correspondents which truly attempt to do their job but get caught up or even trapped in the framework of narratives which stem forth from either top-down directed media manipulation at the foreign location (which can be rampant) and if that's not enough, there's the narrative from the editors at home who hope for catchy headlines and experience complete disconnect with the foreign correspondent. And mangled in between rapdily evaporates genuine reporting, which is selective and skewed at best. It's not that some correspondents don't have the chance to interact with local people, as Migeru writes, sometimes that chance simply does not exist.
An amazing (Dutch) book was released this year by a reporter who described his correspondence years in Egypt and in Israel and the Palestinian territorities. It completely devastates the layman's notion that correspondents can properly function even when they want to. (Because the easy way out, the correspond-itis of copy-pasting press releases within a hotel suite, is abundantly present as well: see Migeru's El Pais example.) The book is called "Het zijn net mensen" (loosely translated "They're almost humans") by Joris Luyendijk. If it were up to me, it should become standard material for any journalist or those interested in this subject.
Anyway. This is a subject that really is in need of its own niche to allow further expansion.
Woop woop.
