I am British and since I first came across Chomsky's analysis of
manufactured consent in the U.S. media, I have become more acutely aware
of how U.S. journalistic motives, priorities and values have been
colonizing Britain's news media.

Global news means less news, apparently. Fewer points of view, certainly.
Take the BBC for example. Pieces done by their star foreign
correspondents are increasingly getting sold to CNN and ABC - more so
ABC, as far as I am aware. It must be quite lucrative for the BBC. But
does it not cause any discomfort or slight crisis-of-integrity type
thing? Can it be right that millions of ABC viewers and millions of BBC
viewers might have just watched exactly the same 90 second piece on, say,
Sierra Leone?

Watching U.S. TV news (as I do, here in Japan, where I live), I know
there are countless things reporters and newscasters cannot/will not
mention. They certainly do not analyze world events objectively. There
are certain 'angles' - ones which stare the rest of the world in the face
(although I am not suggesting that they are necessarily reported outside
the U.S. either) - and yet they seem to be literally taboo in the States.

Do the likes of Matt Fry (the BBC's omnipresent 'World Correspondent' -
more about him some other time), and other BBC reporters, have to
remember these 'taboos' when they stand there doing their intrepid,
hands-on-hips pieces to camera? "I might be able to sell this to the
Americans so I'd better watch what I say." I refuse to believe that they
don't: not at a time when marketing imperatives at the BBC are so
infamously in the ascendancy over quality and integrity.

So much for journalist risking life and limb to get the truth out!
Whenever they actually do, we can count on the likes of the BBC to either
ignore them or smear them as subversives, or simply interview the one
with the worst English.

Adrian