Afghanistan dominated TV foreign news in 2009

Afghanistan and the U.S. military escalation in the civil war there dominated foreign-related news coverage by the three major U.S. television networks in 2009, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report. Despite the continued presence of well over 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan received more than four times the amount of coverage–a combined total of 735 minutes - on the 30-minute nightly evening news programmes of ABC, CBS, and NBC, the primary sources of national and international news for most U.S. citizens. Despite their importance to the U.S. economy and global strategic position, Europe and East Asia, with the exception of North Korea, were virtually absent in 2009 from the networks' foreign news agenda, as were Latin America and Africa, according to the report. And despite the build-up to last month's long-anticipated Copenhagen Climate Summit, the three networks devoted a total of only 76 minutes to the issue of global warming.