TELEVISION & NEWSPAPER

Take sometime to listen and watch the news and really look at the headlines of most events in U.S. cities. Imagine being a foreigner and you do not know much about U.S. customs, geography, or politics. Imagine what you would think about people who live in the United States. On many occasions, we have been told by numerous foreigners that the U.S. seems like an extremely violent country.

You should use a wide variety of sources to educate yourself about what life is really like in your host country and city. The major news channels are a common source of information for world events; however, television should not be your only resource. Quite frequently, news reports give us a very distorted perspective of what happens abroad. This is mainly because U.S. television news spends the majority of its time reporting on U.S. events. The news spends only a few minutes or seconds summarizing what is going on in the rest of the world. They usually present the most extreme or dramatic examples of events throughout the world, and you see these images repeatedly. Television and newspapers do not report on the fact that most people in other countries are living their lives just as contentedly as you are.

It is worthy to take some time and reflect how our perceptions of other places are shaped by the media.