UK viewers who travel to the States on occasion might choose to watch the news there, just to see what's happening in the world.
Big mistake.
The usual reaction is "WTF is this? This isn't a news programme." This goes for network TV news as much as it goes for cable news.
You might even be fooled by CNN's excellent world news service, available in every country in the world except the US, into watching a similarly entitled network called "CNN" in the US. Again, big mistake, since it's absolute rubbish that treats you like an infant who needs to be dragged away from an XBox to be told… well, nothing very important usually.
And let's not start with Fox News. Just don't.
Suddenly, the BBC, Sky News and ITN seem like Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man.
Yet, there is one area where the US has the edge: they have Lara Logan as CBS's chief foreign correspondent. Here she is on The Daily Show. Don't you wish all reporters were like her? More importantly, she's married to an English guy and comes from South Africa – isn't it the bounden duty of all South Africans to come and work in Britain? At least, that's what I thought.
June 21, 2008 | Reply
We did have Lara Logan -- for four years, she was a foreign correspondent for GMTV before her move to CBS.
Of course, this was a period when GMTV was actually interested in journalism rather than the "Daily Express for people too lazy to read" presenting style they have these days...
June 23, 2008 | Reply
You mean we had her and we fed her to GMTV? We don't deserve her!