News from the BBC

Why is it that the US news, as read on NPR, differs so much from the BBC? I get my news from NPR and the NYTimes online, and I haven't heard either of these two stories, which were on the BBC Worldservice tonight:

1) The first (and top) story I heard tonight on the radio is the resignation of William Fallon, U.S. Commander in the Middle East, our main military decision-maker in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Esquire magazine wrote a article saying he was the primary thing standing in the way of war with Iran, since our commander-in-chief seems bent on invading Iran. Bad idea, says Fallon, and so he gets canned. The NYTimes cover story is about the Spitzer prostitution scandal - who cares? The NPR top story was about Spitzer, too.

2) The third story I heard tonight on the radio was about sexually transmitted diseases in American teenage girls: evidently over one-quarter of girls ages 14-19 have at least one STD. Lots of questions arise, of course: What are the implications for health and fertility? Who's having sex with these girls? Where are the diseases coming from?

The main pedagogical conclusion to reach is that we have to help our students listen to the world's news to find out about ourselves: non-US media sometimes covers the US better than the US media. Duh!