A week or so ago, my roommate said something that really made me cringe. World News with Charles Gibson was coming on and she said, “Ugh, this is so pointless.” I responded by saying that her comment was ignorant, but unfortunately, she’s not alone in her opinion. Most Americans are unaware of what is going on in the world. Is this because the media is doing a bad job or do Americans just not care? I think the answer is the latter of the two. Perhaps there are times when the media drops the ball on foreign coverage, but all in all I think they do a pretty good job of covering what is going on in the world.

This week, CBS will begin an extensive 3-day look into the war in Afghanistan on The Evening News. The foreign correspondents “will get some expanded real estate to explain everything from the state of the Taliban to the strategy behind the U.S. counterinsurgency plans to the likelihood of Pakistan’s’ nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.” Personally, I think this is a good idea. Hopefully CBS will able to get the access they need to really get the meat of the issues, not just what the government wants them to know. I will try to watch the coverage and post my thoughts on it later.

One thing is for sure, the adaptation and proliferation of techology is certainly changing the way news organizations cover world news.  In an article in The New York Observer, it states how the three major networks are dismantling their foreign bureaus and testing out other ways of covering world news. Part of this is also due to the advertising market and diminishing budgets.  President of CBS News and Sports, Sean McManus says, ” in the digital age, it doesn’t make sense anymore to have the same kind of fully staffed bureaus in locations around the world. That’s in part because of changes in technology that allow news organizations to mobilize troops quicker when a news story develops in a region—and, in part, due to the proliferation of video sources.” ABC News has been sending out one-man-bands to cover foreign news–(I guess it’s good that Shenid Bhayroo taught me how to operate as a one-man-band over the summer!) CBS is actually partnering up with the international news site, GlobalPost, which will give the network access to another 70 correspondents in 50 countries around the world. McManus said this is proof of their effort to expand world news coverage.

So while staff is being cut, the media is desperately trying to hold on to good coverage. And though they may be adapting slowly to the changes in technology, they are adapting. The theme is the same: the content is not changing, just the way we get it.