Misunderstanding Each Other

Richard Lambert

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2003

Article preview: first 500 of 4,071 words total.

Summary:  Anti-Americanism has long been a feature of the European news media, but recently the hostility has been matched on the other side of the Atlantic. Skewed media representation has widened the transatlantic rift. It is now up to the Europeans to project a better image of themselves and thereby help to restore the balance.

Richard Lambert is the former Editor of the Financial Times. This article is based on a research project for the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

WHAT GOES AROUND

Anti-Americanism has been a feature of the European news media for years. Newspapers such as Le Monde and The Guardian have long been a useful source of quotes for those who want to illustrate tensions in the Atlantic alliance, and the list is growing longer. According to Gerard Baker of the Financial Times, today even the BBC "rarely misses an opportunity to perpetuate every available negative stereotype about America and its current government."

More recently, however, this hostility has been matched on the other side of the Atlantic. The past couple of years have seen a marked change of tone in the reporting and commentary on Western Europe in the U.S. print media. From the right of the political spectrum comes a sense of deep distrust and icy contempt. And even the more moderate publications often convey a mixture of irritation and bemusement, portraying a group of inefficient and eccentric nations with a troubled past and a doubtful future.

The final months of 2002 were a testing time for the Atlantic alliance, with a number of specific bones of contention and widespread disagreement about the best way to deal with Iraq. And this apparent rift brings to the fore an important question: what would Americans understand about Europe if their only source of current information were the U.S. print media? And how are newspapers in the three biggest European countries -- Germany, France, and the United Kingdom -- covering these same issues?

Since newspapers and magazines tend to reflect and reinforce the views of their readers, this comparison reveals something about the current state of the transatlantic relationship. It also helps to highlight the main areas of current disagreement and suggest potential trouble spots in the future. In today's uneasy political climate, skewed media representation further shapes and entrenches negative attitudes. The question is whether there is anything that policymakers on either continent can do to restore the balance.

BEG TO DIFFER

For a European, the hostility of some right-wing commentators in the United States comes as a real shock. These writers seem to propagate a widespread view that European leaders have never met a dictator that they did not seek to appease, that Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's election campaign was a sign of ugly spirits rising again in Germany, and that antisemitism is endemic. According to Mortimer Zuckerman in U.S. News and World Report,

Europe is sick again. The memory of 6 million murdered Jews, it seems, is no longer inoculation against the virus of antisemitism. ... Somehow antisemitism in Europe has outdone every other ideology and prejudice in its power and durability. Fascism came and went; Communism came and went; antisemitism came and stayed. And now it has been revitalized.

Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic have been only too happy to take the moral high ground in their criticisms of each other. Robert Bartley of The Wall Street Journal wrote that "American values are universal, in short, and the U.S. will be alert ...

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