U.S. Media Caught Napping

In the run up to a conflict in Iraq, foreign news websites are seeing large volumes of traffic from America, as U.S. citizens increasingly seek news coverage about the coming war.

In January, for example, half the visitors to the Guardian Unlimited news site, an umbrella site for Britain's left-leaning Guardian and Observer newspapers, were from the Americas.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, "(U.S. TV news) seems to be reporting about a different planet than the one covered by foreign media."

The only debate in the U.S. media is on the Web, [Jon Dennis, Guardian Unlimited deputy news editor] said. "Weblogs are doing all the work that the U.S. media did in the past," he said. "That's an interesting development."

Another source that may be pointing U.S. news junkies overseas, [Barb Palser, online media columnist for the American Journalism Review] said, is Google. A search on Google News for the terms "Iraq" and "war" turned up more than 54,000 links, with articles from Australian, British and Saudi Arabian news outlets topping the list.