July, 2008

During Barack Obama’s visit to Europe, several European media outlets took issue with the coverage of his trip by the U.S. media. But while American pundits were debating whether the U.S. media were too biased in favor of Obama, a number of European journalists found their American counterparts cold toward him.

While much of the European media are consumed with insatiable "Obamamania," Christoph von Marschall, bureau chief of Berlin’s daily Der Tagesspiegel, describes how the foreign media have been almost completely denied access to the candidate.

A surly New York waiter seeks to promote his forthcoming book, Waiter Rant, by accusing the British of failing to leave proper tips in a blog run by the British daily, The Guardian.

A commentary in the left-of-center British daily, The Guardian, struck a salutary note of caution amid all the frenzy surrounding Barack Obama's tour of Europe. It warned that, while transatlantic relations are likely to improve under the next U.S.

Earlier this year a dramatic accident at an illegal street race in a Washington, D.C. suburb killed eight people and sent five others to hospital. The reaction of local law enforcement? A crackdown on illegal street racing. 

Whether American or British journalism is "better" is a complex and probably unanswerable question that would require many thousands of words to address exhaustively.

Perhaps this is no more than proof of the old adage that journalism is a career for young people, who have less in their memory banks than their elders.

In a report July 8, The Washington Post took on the easy target of EU food regulations, ridiculing rules such those defining the bend in Class 1 cucumbers, the size of onions, and the ripeness of peaches.

As this blog has documented, Barack Obama has received extensive, and mostly positive, coverage in Europe. Just as he is planning a trip to Europe, however, many in the European media are for the first time strongly criticizing some of his policy pronouncements, particularly those seen as signaling a move to the political center for the general election.

An article in the Norwegian daily Bergens Tidende on July 4 again demonstrated how parts of the European media are struggling to present a non-biased picture of the U.S. presidential election despite their support for Barack Obama.

Anthony Julius of the Mischon de Reya law firm, well known for his work on behalf of Princess Diana and Deborah Lipstadt (an American historian accused by historian David Irving of libel), recently wrote an opinion piece for the The Times of London accusing an imperial United States of throwing its weight around even on minor issues such as its views on ga