Corporations Decide U.S. Foreign Policy

David Shaw’s article on the shrinkage of foreign news coverage (“Foreign News Shrinks in Era of Globalization,” Sept. 27) fails to cover the political background of this development. Studies show that the flow of information follows channels of power.

We have a shrinking number of news organizations, and the remaining ones are under the control of fewer individuals, mainly the heads of large corporations. As a result, the media will tend to report the news favorable to those corporations.

Not only are news organizations less motivated to report the news of foreign countries, but also of our own government’s foreign policy, which most often is decided in the boardrooms of large corporations and conducted largely in secret.

As a result of this covert censorship, our country wields enormous power overseas with very little accountability.

The media not only left U.S. readers and viewers without an understanding of the causes of the Sept. 11 attacks, but also of the causes of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank and G-8. We have suddenly awakened to a world in which whole countries hate us, and we haven’t a clue how our own country might have contributed to this problem.

As a result, we fail to see terrorism as a symptom of a much greater problem of the growing divide between the rich and poor nations. Until we grapple with that problem, we will be dealing with terrorism for a long, long time.

William H. DuBay

Costa Mesa

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So Americans are “clueless” about much of the world? Guess what? Most of the world is even more clueless about America: what it really is as a people, a culture and the very specific, underlying values that make this country what it is.

The fact is, most of the foreign press peddles more ignorance about America than all the American journalism--print and media--combined. Starting with the vile hatred peddled in the schools in the Middle East, all the way to the leftist radical chic press of Western Europe.

Compared to their rantings, I will take “trash media” any day. At least the latter does not pretend to be the intellectual underpinning for mass murder, which is the ultimate intent of the anti-American propaganda in this world.

Maude Ham

Burbank