The way Americans perceive global events often differs substantially from the perceptions of citizens of other countries. The diparity is caused in part by news outlets' choices of which images to use, said Ralph Begleiter '71, a professor of communications at the University of Delaware.
Begleiter brought his experience as a former CNN world affairs news correspondent to a group of about 25 people in a Watson Institute-sponsored lecture titled "Global Media and the Power of Images (What They Think of Us and Why It Matters)."
Begleiter focused his presentation on the "power of images."
"(The choice of images) is important, it's political, it makes a difference," he said.
To emphasize his point, he presented a slide show using pictures of recent events such as the conflict in Iraq and the bombing of Afghanistan. He compared images used extensively by U.S. media with pictures available to the rest of the world to underscore how images can be manipulated to shape viewers' perceptions.
Such visual comparisons resonated with many members of the audience. Stephanie Morin '05 said pictures of Iraqi civilians during the war were "incredible ... the images that I have never seen before, like the children in the hospitals."
Begleiter said these pictures of injured children "were not widely shown in the United States but were extremely heavily broadcast by Al-Jazeera and other news organizations that published in Europe and the Arabic and Muslim worlds."
The same trend occurred during the war in Afghanistan, Begleiter said. While Americans were fixated on pictures of soldiers waving goodbye to their families before departing, the rest of the world was seeing thousands of refugees fleeing their homes towards the Pakistani border, he said.
"This gap of image-making, of image portrayal of the very same events" occurs often in the news media, he added.
Begleiter's lecture was the result of Watson Institute efforts to host guests not only with academic expertise, but also with real-world experience. "We're trying not to bring in just other scholars ... but people who participate," said Thomas Biersteker, the institute's director and professor of politcal science.
The Watson Institute is looking for presenters "who can give us insights not just into the events themselves but into the process of covering (those events)," Biersteker said.
