The media in the United States have to learn to do a better job with international news. Each day, dozens of events overseas go unnoticed because American journalists fail to see and report the big picture. 

Five years ago, Elian Gonzalez was front page news all across the United States. Recently, on the fifth anniversary of Elian's return to Cuba, few media outlets reported on the massive celebration in Havana that honored the young hero.   

Last month, more than 1,000 Native Alaskan Inuits celebrated the 35th Annual Earth Day by gathering on an ice floe and forming the outline of an Inuit drum dancer. In addition, they spelled out a message for the entire world: "Artic Warning: Listen." How much did we see, hear or read about this event?

Do people in the United States know, too, that polio remains a problem in many parts of the world? According to the World Health Organization, the threat of polio is especially acute in such countries as Egypt, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.   

These items are but a few examples of "international" stories that often do not seem to have the importance or prominence of local events. Editors and reporters routinely ignore stories that do not directly affect readers and viewers within a given community or region. Such a perspective might have been acceptable 40 or 50 years ago, but not today. 

We are now living in a global community. Events occurring on the other side of the world are every bit as important as a council meeting in our own city. Technology has brought citizens everywhere closer than ever before, and we need to realize that people share certain universal concerns. If, for example, five persons in China are arrested for talking openly about their beliefs in God, then this particular news would be important to the millions of people of faith in the United States. In much the same way, the fact that Cuba still reveres Elian Gonzalez after five years allows readers and viewers throughout the United States -- not just those in and around South Florida -- to see what is going on 90 miles off the coast of Key West. 

The traditional characteristics of determining the news -- prominence, proximity, timeliness, consequence and human interest -- no longer are enough in the post-modern era. We have outgrown these five basic elements. Journalists now must look also to a new component that has emerged because of technology. Today is an age of information, where the element of ever-increasing knowledge is critical. People everywhere have a growing, almost innate, desire to learn more about the world and to understand how certain events play a role in the development of a society or culture. The media must respond accordingly or risk marginalization of its impact, influence and credibility. 

The future of journalism depends on making a significant adjustment in determining what news to report each day. So-called international news cannot be handled as in the past. Dr. David G. Johnson, in an article titled "Media Bias: Real or Imagined," says that journalists have been extremely biased in what they report from overseas. The media have tried to rate the importance of an international news story based on the size and power of a particular country. Johnson cites the work of Johan Galtung, a Norwegian scholar who has studied and analyzed the impact of major nations on the rest of the world. 

"Galtung is not making insidious comparisons," explains Johnson, "but referring to the fact that some countries such as the United States, the countries of Western Europe, and, increasingly, Asian countries like Japan have more influence on the rest of the world and that others have less. The ones with greater influence are the 'centre countries.' The Soviet Union was formerly a centre country, but Russia has become less central since the end of communism. The international news flow, Galtung argues, is largely determined by 'centre' countries."

Johnson adds that smaller countries are labeled as "periphery" and do not carry as much influence throughout the world and, therefore, with the media as well.  However, "when the U.S. government becomes interested in the Philippines for example, suddenly the Philippines are a big international story, but when the U.S. government loses interest, the Philippines sink out of sight in the media."

One recent example is a front page story in The New York Times about the parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe. This news appeared in column one on April 2 with the headline, "Mugabe's Party Wins Majority In Zimbabwe." After more than a month, there has been little coverage anywhere by the U.S. media about this crucial vote, which essentially solidified President Mugabe's 25-year hold on the country.    

Another top news item which quickly faded from national media interest is the story of President Bush's concern that "lifting the European Union's arms embargo against China would change the balance of relations between China and Taiwan," as reported on page one of The New York Times (Feb. 23). The President talked openly at the time about his fears while meeting in Brussels with more than a dozen leaders of the European Union.

On March 11, page three of The New York Times carried the story of Tung Chee-hwa's resignation as chief executive of Hong Kong. The country's second-ranking official took over, but there has been scant news in the United States during the past months about Donald Tsang's leadership. The Asian media, however, has reported almost daily on Tsang's progress.     

Another factor for journalists to consider when dealing with international events is who actually gathers and reports this news to other newspapers and broadcast stations. Noam Chomsky believes that the media conglomerates set the agenda for reporting both international and national news.  In "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream," Chomsky comments that, "There is another sector of the media, the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media because they are the ones with the big resources...

"The New York Times and CBS, that kind of thing," says Chomsky. "The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching The Associated Press, which grinds out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says 'Notice to Editors: Tomorrow's New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page.' The point of that is, if you're an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don't have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don't want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is."

Readers, viewers and listeners today care about all sorts of events. Unfortunately, space and time limitations restrict some of what journalists can report. One key to the media's success in the future is for editors to realize that the Internet has opened up all sorts of avenues for exploration and education. People want to know more about the world in which they live, whether it deals with deforestation in Japan or the death of a pope in Vatican City. The other critical element for journalists to keep in mind is that the media now are serving a global community. The real story may be on the other side of the world just as well as down the street.