When Did TIME Magazine's International Coverage Go Down the Tube?

[liberalpragmatist]

One of my biggest gripes about American media is the lack of international news that is covered by either the print or television media. Unless an event in another country has a DIRECT effect on the U.S. (and often even when it does), there is NEVER any coverage given to the subject. At most, there might be a page-long writeup. Rarely a cover story and typically not even much devoted to it inside.

And yet, if you look at the TIME cover archives, even up through the early '90s, that wasn't the case. Obviously, the end of the Cold War probably reoriented coverage away from Cold War politics and a lot of international coverage. But it seems that even during the mid-90s, there was more international coverage than there is now. I would have thought that the events of the last 4 years would've made covers about international events more important. Yet I feel as though international events get even LESS exposure than they did in the mid-90s. There have been only a handful of cover stories relating to international events this year - the London bombings, the Tsunami, AQ Khan, China, and a few on Iraq:

2005 Cover Stories
http://www.time.com/time/coversearch/results/1,16872,,00.html?query=&daterange=&from_month=&from_day=&from_year=&to_month=&to_day=&to_year=&year=2005&last_result=39&this_page=3

Take a look at some of these covers. You'd never see issues published with cover stories like this today:





































































































































Covers on most of these topics are inconcievable today. Even in the past 5 or 6 years, there have been no cover stories on pivotal elections in foreign countries. No covers on elections in Mexico, Germany, the U.K., India, Israel, France, Japan, Brazil, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan, or South Korea. International conflicts like the India-Pakistan-Kashmir dispute didn't get a cover. Even the Israel-Palestine conflict got suprisingly few covers. There's been nothing about major figures in Iran. Nothing about China's presidential succession. Nothing even about the politics or Saudi Arabia. Nothing about "Africa's World War" in the Congo.

Even pivotal U.S. allies or countries that are important in the world get much coverage. The U.K. elections weren't covered here - for all his stature as a US ally, Tony Blair has yet to get a TIME magazine cover. So does Japan's PM Koizumi. Even U.S. so-called "enemies" like Jacques Chirac didn't get anything. There's been nothing about Vladimir Putin, very few articles on Russia actually at all. Admittedly, if the Cold War were still ongoing, or if we were at war in Vietnam today, there would have been covers on those topics, but it's unlikely there would have been any covers on Vietnam's leaders - after all, there have been no covers on Iraqi leaders.

Is it just a perception? There have been some international covers this past year, but woefully few. And that's true of most covers from the past 10 years. Certainly even decades in the past there were public interest stories or stories about cultural or societal movements - but often, there aren't even covers like that anymore - just fluff or stories that, whatever their merit, really don't belong on the front-page of a current events journal. Items like the following, all from the past year:











Admittedly, the comparison may not be incredibly fair - comparing apples to oranges, some might say. But it does seem like international coverage - in fact, substantial issues in general, have been pushed off the front page and downgraded within the magazine. TIME isn't the only one at fault here; most media seems to have become similarly ignorant of international affairs.

It seems like even 15 years ago, things weren't so bad. Look at the covers for the past
Take a look at the '92 cover stories:

http://www.time.com/time/coversearch/results/1,16872,,00.html?query=&daterange=&from_month=&from_day=&from_year=&to_month=&to_day=&to_year=&year=1992&last_result=39&this_page=3

(on a side note, I found this one, from Apr 1992 pretty amusing)

(trusted him so little they elected him twice)

And '91: http://www.time.com/time/coversearch/results/1,16872,,00.html?query=&daterange=&from_month=&from_day=&from_year=&to_month=&to_day=&to_year=&year=1991&last_result=39&this_page=3

What do you all think? I'm only 19, so I've not been around THAT long, and I'm sure plenty of you have a longer memory than I do. But it sure seems to me like if TIME were the same magazine it was in the '60s, Eva Morales of Bolivia would have made the cover last week. If TIME were the same magazine it were in the '60s, Ayatollah Sistani would have made the cover. How is that even when we're in Iraq, there's no coverage of who the Iraqi leaders are, and simply covers about the military angle?

Is my perception correct? Has TIME - and the rest of the media - stopped covering international events? And why is this the case? How was TIME able to turn a profit and keep up a strong circulation when it had cover stories like the ones above on the Chinese Foreign Minister, the Indian Defense Minister, the U.K. elections, or profiles of various foreign leaders? And if they used to be able to turn a profit on those stories, why must they resort to fluff today?

[RagingInMiami]

1. Thanks for all those covers. Good post.

The trend in newspapers and magazines is just that, "the trend."

Their so-called surveys" revealed that most people don't care about all the "boring, mundane international news."

Which, of course, can justify them cutting back on the international bureaus. Which makes stockholders more money.


And having said all that, I'm not even sure what company purchased Time over the last decade. It's sad. Thanks for pointing it out with such visuals.

[Raydawg1234]

3. Time Warner no doubt

[Raydawg1234]

2. Americans don't care about "foreigners"

:sarcasm:

No, but it's a marketing move. Americans are reading much less as our attention spans shrink. Are we just becoming stupider? Can't say for sure. But I know we are much worse informed.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. They must feel they have to be "fluffy" to compete

In a news market where the line between information and entertainment is so blurred it's practically indistinguishable. That's no excuse, though.

However the covers you displayed featuring world leaders and stories of international importance are a sampling from a period spanning decades. Time has always done fluff as well. I recall Farrah Fawcett covers when I was a kid so it's not like they never had to fill a slow week. But you do make a very valid point about the increasing dumbing down of the populace with crap like the later cover stories. It's deliberate and serves two purposes. It keeps us uninformed citizens and anxiety-ridden consumers.

Great post and kudos to you for being so smart at such a young age. :applause: :yourock:

[liberalpragmatist]

8. Right and I mention that

My point however is that even the fluff pieces are "fluffier" than they used to be. And at least many of the former fluff pieces seemed to have some relevance or were at least truly filling slow news weeks. The frequency of fluff covers seems to have increased to include weeks when something actually happened too. I mean, that whole "Women in Mid-Life Crisis" cover occurred the same week as the French riots. Which is more important? You'd think that given how pivotal the Iraqi elections are - and I do think they are an important event - they'd have merited a cover story. You'd think that Jiang Zemin, in his 10+ years as president of China would have gotten at least one cover as, you know, the president of the world's largest country and fastest-rising power. My point is that in the past, even with the fluff covers, the fluff covers were less "fluffy" and there were tons of covers on important international AND domestic events and people. It's inconceivable that most of those covers would make the cut today.

For example, do a search on TIME's cover archives for India and/or Pakistan. There are tons of covers prior to 1980, and that was when India and the U.S. had virtually no relationship to speak of. Both the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971 were covered extensively, the latter with two or three cover stories. Meanwhile a few years back when India and Pakistan nearly went to nuclear war, there isn't a single cover to show for it. That's a direct example. Do a cover search on any random country. You'll find that right up through the '80s, or even the early '90s, you'll get lots of hits. Then nothing after around 1993. Or earlier in some cases.

Of course, I'm just repeating myself now, and repeating what you said as well. We're in agreement.

Still, I wonder why this had to happen. I'm sure there's probably a business case for it, but at least from here, I don't see it. TIME and Newsweek have both acknowledged that they make very little money off of newsstand sales and most of their profits come from subscriptions. Most people that subscribe to TIME are people that are genuinely interested in reading about the news and about world affairs. I don't know of too many TIME magazine subscribers that would cancel because there weren't stories like "how to lose weight." Or maybe I'm just being naive.

I've largely stopped reading TIME. I find that daily New York Times readings give me much better international coverage, as does the internet. And The Economist, though not politically my favorite magazine, has good international coverage. The Atlantic's pretty good too. Between TIME and Newsweek, I'd say Newsweek does a much better job with International news. Fareed Zakaria is great with foreign policy columns, although again I disagree with him politically on some issues.

ON EDIT: Oh, and on a separate but related note, what happened to their covers? I mean aesthetically - right up through the end of the 1960s, there covers, as you can see in so many of the preceding examples, were beautiful. Works of art, really. If you browse covers by year, you see that between 1971 and 1972 the covers became more cluttered and ordinary, although they were still relatively classy and there were several covers that retained the grace and artistry of the covers in the preceding decades. Then suddenly in 1972 it bottomed out. Since then only the rare cover has been so visually striking. From an aesthetic point of view, as tragic as the dearth of international coverage.

[Hello_Kitty]

14. I've stopped reading Time too

And Newsweek. Occasionally, I'll flip through the latest issue while waiting for my oil change or something and realize that I've already read about every hard domestic and foreign news story in there in depth on-line a week, or even a month, prior.

I'm puzzled by the change in new coverage from all sources. Various theories include the increasing power of the Right Wing Noise Machine, market forces, everybody having these "consultants" nowadays telling them what people supposedly want, etc. There's merit to all of those but the crazy thing is that news consumption in all sectors has decreased. The network news, which used to be a staple of the American dinner hour, has seen a steady decrease in viewership on all 3 big networks. The cable channels fare even worse. The top anchors on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox can't beat TV Land reruns in the ratings. Newspaper and news magazine circulation is dismal, and the majority of publications are owned by a handful of companies, resulting in homogeniety in the format across the country. Ditto for AM radio news. At the same time, the Internet and a wide variety of cable TV, and now satellite radio, channels are responsible for diluting consumption of news. But the fact is that fewer people are even bothering with it at all in the U.S. So it creates this conundrum where magazines like Time turn more to entertainment type stories to maintain their readers, while readers leave in droves anyway because they're no longer interested in any news, even if it is simplistic "infotainment"

As for the covers, I really miss the old ones. My family subscribed to Time, Life, and the National Geographic for years and I couldn't wait until they arrived in the mail to see the covers. They really were works of art. My guess is that Time went to strictly photos to save money.

[applegrove]

5. Makes me want to tear up for the good old days.

[ugarte]

6. Americans have become increasingly arrogant

as if to compensate for our growing insecurities. We look down our noses at the rest of the world, even as we look over our shoulders and see them catching up and surpassing us both in freedoms and living standards.

[Crunchy Frog]

7. I've seen a shocking deterioration in our news media

over the last 15 years.

I was addicted to watching the news during the collapse of the Soviet empire. I really started tuning out around the time of the O. J. Simpson trial, and on through all the Clinton "scandals". When I started really watching again around 2000, I couldn't even believe what I was seeing. This deterioration predated Bush coming into office, was likely a factor in his coming into office at all.

I have a feeling that their no longer so concerned with making a profit off of their stories, but about the other industries that they're consolidated with. Basically using propaganda to maintain the corporate environment that keeps those other holdings making money.

[oblivious]

9. Ask yourself when you stopped reading it.

Love your post!

[shraby]

10. There were a lot of truly despotic rulers

weren't there? Vastly outnumbered the good ones by far. Average human beings aren't that way, why does the bad tend to float to the top?

[liberalpragmatist]

11. oh, ha, different question

Totally different discussion, but an interesting one nonetheless.

Actually, I'd argue that average human beings ARE that way. Most despots actually have some decent, or even mostly good intentions, I'd argue. Without restraints or institutions, however, most leaders - even otherwise well-intentioned ones - would likely become dictatorial. And if people don't have experience with democracy, they can easily be manipulated, especially if they're unhappy and yearn for stability.

People argue even in the U.S. that there have to be better citizens out there. Maybe there are. But I tend to feel that politics by nature results in compromising and deal-making and even for politicians we wouldn't consider corrupt, there's always a tradeoff between what they actually want to do or what they believe and what favors they owe to others. And I think the reason politicians are like that is because politicians are human. Most people, even those that protest vociferously that they would act differently, would act the same under those circumstances.

[LibDemAlways]

12. Most Americans today probably couldn't

find Canada on a map, much less a country on another continent, and they just don't give a damn about world events. Americans are woefully ignorant about this country, too. When I was working in a travel agency back in the 80's I had a tough time convincing a woman that she wouldn't need a passport to travel to New Mexico. She had no idea it was one of the fifty states.

No doubt this lack of interest in the world outside US borders is due in part to lack of media coverage. And the corporate "suits" are apparently convinced they'll sell more magazines with "lifestyle" covers which are cheap and easy to put together and are competing at the supermarket check-out stand with the likes of People and Us.

Just another indication of the dumbing down of American "culture."

Great post. Really made me long for the "good old days" when Time took itself seriously.

[longship]

13. Foreign bureaus?

Time Magazine: What foreign bureaus? We got rid of those in the 80's.

[WinkyDink]

15. When they let 20--30-somethings take over, that's when.

Now both Time and Newsweek are awash in articles about computer games, tv shows and "entertainment" in general, fashion, gossip, with a smidgin of news. They are Enquirer/Maxim wannabe's.
I dropped Newsweek last year. Why bother?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

16. They haven't covered the real news in the U. S. very well either.

[clixtox]

17. Time, (and Life) have always been tools of the corporate establishment...

Newsweak, US News and WR, People and US, among many others, are not actually about spreading the news. They are all about creating acquisitive consumers, willing to be complicit in the various fictions that sustain our greedy culture by dominating the world, all of it's people and their resources.
These periodicals are also key components in the "dumbing down" process that is resulting in the ignorant, over-consuming, in debt, unhealthy and obese, "good American". These folks are most often heard blaming the many victims of our society for their plight. Like it is the many poor and powerless people themselves who have decided to be losers. Our economy needs tens of millions of these very poor people so that a very few thousand can live like decadent Maharajahs and Potentates. Most of us are still living lives of quiet desperation. Ain't it grand!
I remember an old joke (fable) about the invention of a machine that had the ability to discern if a written sample was the truth or a lie. After testing the device with a few obvious examples of lies and truths, a copy of Time magazine was sampled and it fatally fried the machine.
I heard this at least 20 years ago...

[marions ghost]

18. Time is not worth buying

I read it off & on for 20 years, but now I avoid it completely--don't need more reasons to get pissed off. Maybe one day nobody will subscribe and the publishers will wonder why. They are SO out of touch. There is no good American news magazine anymore.

[liberalpragmatist]

19. kicking this

:kick:

[Jim__]

20. The only thing that matters anymore is the bottom line.

Actually reporting news costs money, and so cuts into profit. It's much cheaper to just embellish government and corporate handouts and fill the magazine with that.

I'm not sure what drove corporations into their current mind-set. I know there have been court cases that ruled to the effect that stockholders can sue corporations if the corporation wasn't maximizing the bottom line. That may be what started this.

There was a time when at least some corporations were actually concerned with the quality of the product. I don't see that at all anymore.

The long-term effect of corporations producing shoddy products should be that they go out of business; but, based on the companies I've worked for, it's only this quarter's bottom line that is of any concern.

[Hippo_Tron]

21. I know that CNN went down the tube when Isaacson replaced Turner

Perhaps Time went down at the same time?