Those agencies aren’t so country specific - my daughter works for Thomson Reuters and my cousin for AFP - their copy is bought all over the world, she’s in Poland, he’s in Cyprus (where AFP’s ME reporting is based).
True but there’s less of a need when you can visit anywhere in the huge landmass that is the USA without one.
I meant where those news agencies originated and their headquarters are based. Reuters in London, AFP in Paris, AP in New York.
Exactly the reason why an American photographer I worked for moved to Europe. He got fed up with “It’s a beaches shot - CA or FL” “It’s snow and mountains - Colorado/Washington” “Deserts - let’s book into Vegas and check out AZ”
I follow your drift, Geof. However, I am a great deal more sceptical than you seem to be about the accuracy - or even veracity - of the output of ‘experts’.
For example, serious and concerned analysis of the output of the rear end of the horses on London streets towards the end of the 19C predicted a level of horse shit some X feet deep. And along came the internal combustion engine.
At the opening of Calder Hall power station, as was, the consensus amongst the experts was that if few more were built, electricity woud be too cheap to be worth metering.
Bill Bryson’s book “A Short History of Nearly Everything” includes descriptions of aspects of scientific topics where the practitioners of subjects disagreed to a marked extent as to the ‘truth’ of one theory or another.
I recall him describing the differences between those studying ‘early man’ to be so acute that he awarded them first place in terms of viscious back-biting and vituperative criticism of the work of their fellow academics.
I recall one myself. A prog on TV about early man, centred on a theory propounded by a particular academic, was startling in its academic and intellectual slack-mindedness.
This person started from the end point - her theory - and proceeded to join up the dots, going backwards, to the evidence she found in the fossil record. Of course, doing it that way, everything fitted perfectly. The subsequent comment and analysis by her peers was right out of Bryson’s prime examples of withering contempt.
TV had a very interesting series which set two experts in their field to propound their totally opposing p.ov’s. on a topic. The only one I can remember is the one about the harm or not of salt to human health. Two distinguished scientists held diametrically opposing views on this and proceeded to establish the veracity of their individual p.o.v. with what seemed to be, to the averagely intelligent viewer, incontrovertable evidence.
Having been educated on the science side of the cultural divide in Western thought, I take the output of experts with a pinch of NaCl
Indeed - I’ve just read Jim Baggott’s book about ‘fairytale physics’ - several hundred pages demonstrating that all of the recent attempts at a ‘theory of everything’ (supersymmetry, string theory, etc) are not really ‘science’ at all. Some experts are better than other experts, and some posing as experts have no real expertise at all.
But turn it round the other way. Lets not listen to experts at all. If we want to know about string theory, ask a plumber. If we want a bridge building - well, no need for a structural engineer, surely - ask a chef. And of course if you want to know how to cook, go straight to a civil engineer. Limb amputation? - I’m sure I saw a butcher do something similar. The effect of brexit on importing radioactive isotopes? - well of course the average politician will know all the relevant details…
The first item was this
“12 killed in SUV carrying 25 passengers in a collision with a semi, in Imperial County, Southern California” Footage of police wandering about on a road in Imperial County, Southern California.
CNN is a US station and CA is in the US. If 12 people have been killed, I’m sure many other Americans have been directly affected. I’d imagine a similar event in the UK would receive a similar priority of coverage.One might assume you would be 'suitably regretful and sympathetic’but if so, why feel the need to state it?
On a more trivial level seems a bit like Brits on Duolingo complaining that the answers us e US sentence constuctions.
ILastly, if you want to avoid this sort of ‘news’ viez France 24.
The point of this is that it is not news. Not even to Americans. I have a pal who lives just across the sound from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, about as far away on the contiguous US as possible to the site of this event. To him, this is not news. Less so the further miles and personal connections one goes.
Of course various Americans will have been affected. I made that point re any of these events being reported as ‘news’
The point is that the media as whole report this stuff, from every corner of the world, but the only relevance it has is to the immediate ‘participants’. That it might be a house fire in Wakefield that killed a family - it is, to all not immediately involved, simply a tragic event. It is not news.
For everyone else it merely adds to the steady drip of anxiety, largely unconsciously perceived, which results from this litany of minor disaster about which one can do nothing
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Hello
Where do I find News 24 please ?
Why is the French TV and radio obsessed with England ?
I want to hear relevant interesting worldwide news. For example, Canada, where my cousin emigrated to 25 years ago.