By IRNA,
London : Coverage of international news is disappearing in the UK media and now only accounts for 11% of the content of national newspapers, according to a study published by the Media Standards Trust (MST).
In a report on the ‘Shrinking World,’ foreign news coverage was found to have fallen by 40% across a cross-selection of four dailies since 1979 in absolute terms.
The decline was twice as much, 80%, in the number of international news stories in the first 10 pages of the Telegraph, Guardian, Mail and Mirror, according to a copy of the report obtained by IRNA Sunday.
MST Director Martin Moore, who authored the report, warned that the shrinkage in world news coverage could be fatal unless the trend was immediately reversed.
“The slump in foreign correspondence catalogued in this report is significant but not terminal. Newspapers still have a great opportunity to reinvent international reporting, but they better move quickly or they’ll be superseded”, Moore said.
In a forward to the report, BBC foreign correspondent David Loyn, said that the decline “reinforces insular values – prejudices – and discourages understanding among British voters.”
“The decline in foreign reporting in red top tabloids shown in this MST report is perhaps no surprise. But the slide in both column inches and prominence of foreign stories among the ‘broadsheets’ should ring alarm bells,” Lyon warned.
MST is an independent research charity, founded in London in 2006, that seeks to foster high standards in news on behalf of the British public.