What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
We’re fifty-two days into the Biden Administration, and the American and Danish establishment media are still in thrall to The Man Who Isn’t There—but some cracks are beginning to show. CNN’s Brian Stelter, for example, noted nine days ago: There are many ways to measure an American president’s accessibility. One way is by counting press…
A quick survey of recent American headlines invites a lot of perfectly reasonable questions to which Americans ought reasonably to expect clear answers. That’s not to say there might not be perfectly reasonable answers, only that they’re not being offered voluntarily and the establishment media show no interest in pursuing the questions. Because they strike…
(“With a title like that, you’re gonna need a bigger blog.“) The top foreign news item on DR’s website Friday afternoon, situated “above the fold” as one of three main news items visible when first loading the site, is entirely unsurprising: Texas Senator Gets Massive Backlash for Fleeing to Warmth amid Weather Chaos, Sofie Dyjak,…
Berlingske went straight to the Danish news service Ritzau to break the news of Rush Limbaugh’s death on Wednesday. (Ritzau apparently borrowed the story from Reuters.) After three straight news paragraphs about how his death was announced (by his wife, on air, at the start of his program on Wednesday) and how he’d gone public…
Europe’s given up on America, according to an article today from Berlingske: Europeans Turn Their Backs on America after Trump, and Denmark Stands Out on a Decisive Point, Kristian Mouritzen, Berlingske.dk, February 11 The subhead spells it out pretty plainly: “Europeans simply do not trust that the new president of the United States, Joe Biden,…
I’m hearing a lot of crazy talk these days. I’m hearing that the 2020 presidential election was rigged by a massive, heavily-monied, and carefully coordinated national organization of businesses, unions, activists, special interest groups, social media oligarchs, and political operators determined to prevent Trump from being re-elected. I thought we’d be over all that by…
“What you do to your adversaries today, they will do to you tomorrow.” It’s such a simple maxim, and so obviously true, and so easily observable in every sphere of human affairs, and at every level of the animal kingdom, that one would expect it to have been said in a thousand different languages across…
Everyone called it the Wuhan virus because that’s where we saw it start. Saying “Wuhan virus” was just shorthand for saying, “that virus that’s spreading like crazy in that city called Wuhan.” That’s what we thought. It’s what we told ourselves. We didn’t know any better. Fortunately there were people who did. People with eyes…
NOTE: Danish coverage of recent American events has been universally awful: whether on television, radio, web, or print, it’s all had the calm tone of MSNBC, the editorial equilibrium of the New York Times, and the penetrative historical insight of Vox. That is, it’s been a dumpster fire of unhinged and often uninformed hyberbole. Rather…
The Politiken editorial board wants the U.S. Ambassador called in because “there’s a coup attempt in progress.” I got a breaking news alert saying so on my phone the night of January 4th. They also put out a Tweet: The text of the Tweet: “Denmark and others must speak up.” The text of the headline:…
SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve never seen Grease, there are spoilers galore ahead, so I recommend you run along on your merry way and come back after you’ve seen it. None of this will make sense if you haven’t, anyway. TRIGGER ALERT: This piece uses words and defends ideas that people who are wounded by words…
The American chattering class has been entertaining itself for the past couple of weeks with Jill Biden’s insistence on being addressed as Doctor Jill Biden. The right has been mocking her for it, the left has been attacking that mockery as sexism. Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an…
A specter is haunting Europe. Europe in meltdown as Covid death tolls soar and progress unravels, Emma Reynolds, CNN.com, 11 Dec Europe’s Deadly Second Wave: How Did It Happen Again?, Josh Holder, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Allison McCann, New York Times, 4 Dec …it’s not the specter of covid, but the specter of broken journalism. From…
We have a saying in English that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. It’s related to the old injunction to get the log out of your own eye before you point out the mote of dust in your neighbor’s. A Sunday article by the rabidly anti-Trump, anti-Republican Steffen Kretz, our taxpayer-funded USA…
A week-old article from TV2 only caught my eye the other day because it compressed so much of what’s wrong with contemporary Danish media coverage of the United States into a single article. You can find the original version (obviously in Danish) here: Trump Costs the Developing World Dearly, Svenning Dalgaard, TV2..dk, 24 November Ordinarily…
A Monday editorial from Berlingske Tidende (with a Pierre Collignon byline), coupled with a tweet from David Trads on the same day, offer an excellent case study in the establishment media’s continued acceleration toward irrelevance. The editorial is entitled “Trump og Hitler har ikke noget at gøre i dansk politik.” Sounds reasonable enough. Saying that…
Good News! As DR notes in the article that topped their homepage Friday morning, America’s 2020 election was the most secure ever: 2020 Election Was the Most Secure Ever, but That’s Not Stopping Trump, Malthe Sommerand, DR.dk, 13 Nov The American media have run wild with this story as well, and you can gorge yourself…
The Danish coverage of the prolonged American election has been exactly the kind of reporting I’ve come to expect. I’ve been trying to maintain a stoic calm and let the inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and idiocies wash over me—to lie back and think of (New) England. I’ve succeeded pretty well so far. But there’s one article I…
