Child Soldiers in Sri Lanka, Indonesia

Unfortunately in today’s day and age, poverty and the mistreatment of individuals are issues that are alive and prevalent to societies all over the world. When looking at how the media reports on international news, one will find that they keep shrinking the stories covering issues such as Child Soldiers, Mistreatment of Females, and Disaster Control in foreign countries. When looking at Child Soldiers in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami, the number of soldiers has increased and due to the Tamil Tigers, these children are suffering even more. Along with the child soldiers, the tsunami that happened in December of 2004 has affected the whole economy of this country. However, the media has done practically nothing to report on these rising issues affecting this area of the world. 

When researching how the citizens of America viewed international news, the rates were rather disturbing. The majority of the public in the United States hasn’t shown constant interest in what is happening in other parts of the world throughout the entire history of America. Unfortunately, American citizens have only been interested in what happens in the United States and nowhere else. The people of the United States have generally only had an interest for foreign affairs when they are threatened by war (Utley, 5). 

On the other side of the issue, journalists are quickly discovering the problem of the coverage of foreign affairs. The journalists feel that they can sell a story to their editor because the editor ultimately sells to the public. Take for example, the country of Afghanistan and how in the 1980s there were tons of television crews covering situations as long as they were about Soviet expansionism (Utley, 5). By the year 1989 the news coverage quickly plummeted, however the Afghans were still fighting each other. It wasn’t until after 9-11-2001 that Americans started seeing mass amounts of coverage in Afghanistan, however the coverage was full of violence and coverage of women being forced to stay at home, which was what the American people wanted to see.