How European Media Damages America
By Dale Hurd
CBN News
September 3, 2007
CBNNews.com - PARIS - In part two of this series on the European media's anti-American prejudices, we discuss how European media is hurting America's relationships with its allies.
A German magazine calls American businessmen "blood suckers." A French literary event bashing America is called "The Ecstasy of Hate." You would think that America is the source of evil in the world. But increasingly, the European media acts like it is.
In France, the French media often acts like an anti-American propaganda machine.
American novelist Nidra Poller in Paris talks about what she terms ingrained, hateful anti-Americanism.
"When you think of all the Americans who died to liberate Europe from Nazism, it's very shameful," she said.
Poller added, "They talk about America as a nation of vicious capitalists, indifferent to the welfare of human beings."
When asked if the European media acted like enemies of the United States, Poller replied, "Yes, they do act like enemies. I would put their feet to the fire on that. I think it's a big mistake that the Americans haven't done that. If they ever get attacked, they think the Americans will help them out. So they can kick the Americans. They can't kick the Iranians -- they're afraid of them."
Richard Miniter says that the media on the continent of Europe is not really free like our media, and it can be dangerous to stray from the conventional wisdom.
He said,"I worked in Brussels for The Wall Street Journal for almost five years, and I saw a consistent pattern of anti-American bias in the press."
"And the conventional wisdom set by the intellectual class," Miniter said, "is profoundly leftwing, and therefore profoundly anti-American."
Respected French journalist and author Ivan Riufol at Le Figaro told me he's been black-balled from French TV because of his pro-American reputation.
The anti-Americanism that used to exist only on the political fringes of European society has taken over the middle. When a recent poll showed that most Germans now think the U.S. is more dangerous than Iran, the Berlin bureau chief of Der Spiegel took his own nation to task, writing sarcastically that, "Anti-Americanism is the wonder drug of German politics. Take a swing at the Yanks and you'll be shooting your way back up to the top of the opinion polls in no time. For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic, too isolationist or too imperialistic."
"Anti-Americanism is hypocrisy at its finest," he added. "You can spend your evening catching the latest episode of "24" and then complain about Guantanamo the next morning."
Anti-Americanism is called one of the last acceptable prejudices. Andrei Markovits, the author of Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America, uses the example of a London dinner party, where, if you were to slander the Chinese, for example, it would be considered in such poor taste you would not be invited back.
Markovits said, "Yet, no thinks for one second at the equivalent of a London dinner party of constantly talking about Americans as fat, uncultured, idiotic, dumb. Why? And that is what I'm talking about."
Poller says that the French media regularly mocks America's religious faith.
"One of the terrible things about America is that people are religious and believe in God," she says European media reports. "And this is considered to be a sign of being underdeveloped and simplistic."
A few years ago, The Sunday Herald in Britain was alarmed that President Bush was "under the influence of the crackpot TV evangelism that is so peculiar to America." The British Economist Magazine has written that "To Europeans, religion is the strangest and most disturbing feature about. They worry that fundamentalists are hijacking the country. They find it extraordinary that three times as many Americans believe in the virgin birth as in evolution."
Thanks to the Internet and television, millions of Americans are now turning to the British media for their news. But a British conservative group has a warning for them about the BBC.
The Web site BritainandAmerica.com ran an ad that said the BBC is like a Trojan horse, and asked, "But what is the inside story?"
The inside story, according to Robin Aitken, 25-year veteran of the BBC and author of the book Can We Trust the BBC? is that the BBC is systematically biased against Christianity and America.
A BBC spokesperson replied that "Mr Aitken draws a scenario of institutional bias, which we don't recognize. Impartiality has, and always will be, of paramount importance for the BBC." Samuel Coates is a spokesman for the British group that made the anti-BBC ad. Coates said, "Americans do have to wake up to the BBC, because it is seen as the leading media outlet in the world."
Analysts say that the anti-American media machine has already damaged America by gradually separating America from her allies. New French President Nicholas Sarkozy had to tone down his pro-American views or risk losing the election.
Americans have a tradition of not much caring about what the rest of the world thinks of them. It might be time to start.
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