Europe's Anti-American Agenda
By Dale Hurd
CBN News
August 31, 2007
CBNNews.com - BERLIN - There's nothing new about America bashing. But in this first of a two-part series, CBN News examines why America bashing in the European media is getting worse, and why some say it is affecting European opinions about America.
Polls clearly show that Europeans have turned against America in increasing numbers. You can blame Iraq or George Bush. But it's also true that Europeans have been fed a steady diet of media distortions about America for years.
And if you repeat a distortion long enough, it can become reality.
If you got your news about the United States only from the European media, chances are good you wouldn't like the United States either. There are a lot of reasons for the anti-American coverage in the media here, but you can start with the journalists themselves. They're mostly liberal and they're on a mission.
America gets a journalistic thumping just about every day in Europe. It's a one-way media war that our government has shown little or no interest in fighting seriously, even though it has severely damaged America's image and influence.
A British novelist wrote that "My Anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It rises in my throat like acid reflux."
One of the biggest bashers of America is the British Broadcasting Corporation. Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that the "BBC is full of hatred for America."
A former BBC journalist says a drawing of Bush as Hitler is hung in the BBC newsroom.
A documentary on the German TV program Panorama suggests the U.S. military is filled with dangerous criminals; it's regular fare for Germans these days. Meanwhile, polls reflect the coverage, showing most Brits now have a negative view of America, and that a majority of Germans think the U.S. is more dangerous than Iran.
It's become so bad that a British conservative group has produced a commercial to remind the world that it really does need America.
In Berlin, American Jeffrey Gedmin, president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has spent a lot of his time busting the stereotypes of Americans pushed by the German media.
Gedmin said, "The intuitive stories are fat children, fast food, death penalty, no culture, Guantanamo. Current topics? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Guantanamo, Guantanamo, Guantanamo."
He continued, "I gave a talk to a group of high school students about three months ago. The first question was about Guantanamo. You know what the second question was? Guantanamo. You know what the third and fifth and ninth questions were? Guantanamo. Do you know after an hour I couldn't get them off Guantanamo? Where do they get that? Is it from the air or the water or -- is it this constant drumbeat, 'the Americans are abusing human rights,' 'The Americans don't play by the rules.'"?
Ray Drake, who is both an American and German citizen, became so upset by the lies and distortions about America in the German press that he helped start the Web site Davids Medienkritik to track it.
Drake said, "I had Germans actually ask me, 'Does everyone carry an M-16 around with them in the United States?' And they were absolutely serious. And that's when I began to wonder, 'What's going on here? Where are they getting these crazy ideas?'"
"People in Germany have got ideas about the United States that are totally skewed," he added, "totally based on misinformation, and have very little to do with reality."
A few years ago, if you went looking for the history of America on the German newsmagazine Stern's Web site, you would have seen this quote in German: "No nation has ever dominated the globe like the U.S.A. And its people could not care less about the rest of humanity."
After Drake posted this on his site, public outrage forced Stern to change it.
German citizen Karin Quade became so upset by anti-Americanism, she began her own Web site to fight it.
She said, "It is very difficult to get positive information about the U.S. because the mainstream media doesn't spread it. You have to read the pro-American blogs. You have to read the Internet."
"It's difficult to have a conversation without having the anti-American topics on the table," Quade said. "Even the weather. George W. Bush is to blame for global warming."
University of Michigan professor Andrei Markovits, the author of Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America, says that for the first time, anti-Americanism, which has always existed on the fringes of Europe, has entered the mainstream.
Markovits says it's created a market for anti-American news.
"I was just at a talk where a very eminent German journalist of a German newspaper -- I don't want to mention the name -- said my guys back at headquarters really want bad stuff. This is what really sells," Markovits said.
Anti-Americanism in France is neither new nor very surprising. New French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who says he actually likes America, is a notable exception, according to pro-American journalist Michel Gurfinkiel.
Gurfinkiel said, "The entire government and media structure of France take it for granted that the enemy of France and the enemy of the world is American imperialism."
The U.S. helped liberate Europe, spent great sums to defend it during the Cold War, and defends it today. So, why the hatred? Markovits say it's about more than Iraq or Bush.
"It's not so much what America does, but what America is," Markovits explained. "There is a real disdain for what America and Americans are. To the anti-American European, America is something inauthentic. This is crucial. It doesn't have tradition, it doesn't have values, it doesn't have depth, it doesn't have roots. By the way, this goes way back into the 19th century, that America is kind of this fleeting, superficial, commercial glitter."
Meanwhile, the British media has announced that it wants to bring its brand of news to America in a bigger way.
In part two of this report, a British group warns that the BBC comes to America as a Trojan horse. And how, in the European media, the deep religious faith of Americans is a sure sign that they're stupid.
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