12.26.2006

South African Perspective on News

http://www.mg.co.za/
The Mail and Guardian Online is an exclusively online paper published in South Africa. It is fun and won't have Iraq on the front page at all.

Great cultural perspective. I mean, there's a whole section of the site dedicated to "The Selebi Saga." What is that, for God's sake? Americans don't even know. It's interesting to see how people on the other side of the world are just as gossip-oriented as we are, but about different things. It will have news stories not found in the U.S. For example, look at this:

"Gaza doctors say patients suffering mystery injuries Doctors in Gaza have reported previously unseen injuries from Israeli weapons that cause severe burning and leave deep internal wounds, often resulting in amputations or death. The injuries were first seen in July, when Israel launched operations in Gaza following the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants."

Have you seen anything like this in U.S. papers? No.

Check out The Week In Pictures. And what paper in the world has a section for only good news? And yes, only good, positive news is reported there.

The sports coverage isn't even remotely familiar, but still fun.

4 comments:

The Lazy Iguana said...

Here is what the typical American citizen will say about this.

Of course I have not heard this from American news sources! It is simply not true! It is just another example of state run news from nations that hate America trying to spread lies to discredit America and turn attention away from all the good things we are doing!

Can you hear the banjo music? I can. Good luck swimming upstream. Watch out for grizzly bears. I have been doing this for some time now. I gave up.

Econo-Girl said...

Forgive me, Iggy, but I disagree. Americans are really reaching outside the media filter for information these days. Bill Clinton won because of that. After all, the mainstream media thought they killed his Presidential chances.

A lot of ideas Americans used to embrace have been removed, like the idea that innocent people are never sent to prison, and that Mike Wallace is a trusted news source.

So their minds are a little more open. I realize people are still not going to go to Africa to see what they might be missing, so Econo-Girl is going to do that for them. Kind of a public mission. Besides, she loves it.

The Lazy Iguana said...

I have a friend who works as an instructor at a bar tending school. I worked at in an environment where everyone had at least a 4 year degree and could speak at least three languages.

I would say stuff like "you know, people are not buying this crap". My friend would then remind me I was working with educated people. People who obtained degrees in the USA but who attended k-12 in other countries.

He was working with typical morons. Some of his students thought that Pearl Harbor was just a movie and never really happened.

You may be in the same boat as me. If you spend all your time with educated people that know what is going on then you draw conclusions that are not true.

So let me re-phrase my first statement. Here is what the typical American will say about foreign news sources.

"Who cares about that? I do not have time to worry about it. There is a sale on Prada stuff at the mall, and my I-Pod still has 7 gigs of free space on it!"

Most of the people in my age group are clueless. They really do not care.

Econo-Girl said...

Iggy,

OK, now there's a good point. It could be that I live in Washington, DC and there are a lot of diplomats and well-traveled Americans here.

So, what would the strategy be? A good 60-70% of my hits are from Google. So what would the angle would be to infiltrate the mind of America? How about putting a title on the post that relates to Americans, and then slip the information in. You can see, of course, that I have not given up on this mission.