Y’all Gettin’ A Diff’ent Perspective

Living 6,000 miles outside the United States, out of easy reach of the American broadcast media and the national conversation, my awareness of the news has charged markedly. Because I receive most of my news from Ghanaian and international media (mainly Al Jazeera-English and CNN International), the US coverage comes without some key components: first, continuous, mindless, partisan bickering; and second, distracting, self-indulgent tabloid journalism. As a result, I have no idea who Justin Bieber is, have little knowledge of all the allegation or confessions in the Tiger Woods saga, and was not been driven to the brink of insanity, nor distracted and misinformed, during the health care debate. But more importantly, the news that I hear comes without the Americentrism that is nearly-ubiquitous within domestic media coverage. Elsewhere in the world, the United States is viewed as just another country; A powerful, wealthy, and often bullying  country, no doubt, but just another country nonetheless. The coverage of the US comes without the aura of American-exceptionalism, so commonplace in the American conversation as to render it unnoticeable by those involved - like one’s own accent, you aren’t even aware it exists until you become surrounded by people who speak differently.

So I don’t know how, in the US, the leaking of the 2007 video showing the killings of a number of unarmed Iraqi civilians is being reported. But I would guess it’s different from the types of reports I am hearing.