By Michael S. McPherson
President, Macalester College
Vice Chairman, World Press Institute
[This article was reprinted with permission of the Star Tribune (Minneapolis) newspaper.]
Each year when the ten new World Press Institute journalists arrive in St. Paul, they begin their four-month fellowship with four weeks in the Midwest. Much of that time is spent in briefings by Macalester College faculty who help the fellows understand aspects of U.S. life, including needed historical context about the kinds of issues they are likely to encounter as the fellows travel across the U.S.
One of the issues central to understanding the U.S. is that we are a nation of immigrants. It is surprising to the fellows, then, that the Americans they meet and the journalism they read, watch and listen to is so U.S.-centric, so seemingly disinterested in the goings on of the rest of the world. Like the fellows before them, this year's group was unimpressed with the U.S. news media's ongoing front page focus on "soft" issues. The journalists were, however, favorably impressed with the U.S. news media’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks — the amount of information gotten out and the speed in which it was produced. By the following week, however, many observed that the focus was less neutral than the U.S. press is usually praised for achieving in press circles around the world.
Americans seem as a group, whether as individuals or institutions, to have quickly hunkered down again, immune and ignorant of the views of the rest of the world. Journalism? I agree with the fellows. One need only compare the coverage of world affairs in The Economist of London with that in any American news magazine to discover the superficiality and U.S.-centered character of American coverage. Business? There are some positive examples of American business leaders who have addressed seriously the social implications of global corporations — Win Wallin and Bill George of Minnesota's Medtronic Corp. come to mind — but cultural sensitivity and value-based leadership too often are lacking in this arena. Government? That our security agencies needed to run ads to find speakers of Arabic in the wake of these tragedies is unsettling, but no more so than the fact that many of our members of Congress have never traveled outside of North America.
Surely all this traces back in part to an American sense of insularity or even invulnerability, but it has roots as well in our educational system. From grade school through graduate study, learning of foreign languages and engagement with other civilizations and cultures is more commonly seen as a "frill" or as an option than as a core part of learning.
I have written elsewhere that the intellectual demands of responsible global citizenship in the 21st Century are substantial and increasing. Consider just a few questions: To what extent do traditionally "American" values of free speech, free press, representative democracy and political equality have application in other societies? How well, for that matter, are they honored in our own? What level of international cooperation is required to overcome the social devastation caused by diseases such as HIV/AIDS? How do we acquire the knowledge needed to govern the development and use of the rapidly expanding capacity for genetic engineering of plants, animals and even humans? As Kofi Annan said in his commencement address at Macalester in 1998: "The challenges of our age are problems without passports; to address them we need blueprints without borders."
Reaching across borders to bring international journalists to the U.S. for four months of extensive travel and intensive briefings as they see the U.S., its people and institutions through the eyes of the First Amendment is a very valuable experience for the international journalists. They write of their experience as both a personal and professional epiphany. But it is also a very good experience for the U.S. journalists and many others these international journalists encounter as they intermingle their necessarily global views into the mix of our own. The value of WPI, now 41 years old with 460 alumni from 93 countries, is enhanced in a time where global understanding and contextual, penetrating journalism is needed.
This is a sobering time for our country, and our world. However tempting it may be to try to withdraw into ourselves, our best — our only — hope is to engage the world in all its cultural and religious and human variation and to join in the struggle to improve it.
