This morning I was flipping through the TV channels and found FranceNews2 on C-SPAN. If this is typical of the news that Europe gets it does a lot to explain the lack of understanding the people there have for what goes on here. The bias there makes CBS look fair and balanced.
The report they were showing was about the U.S. election. They said Kerry conceded the election without waiting for the Ohio provisional ballots to be counted because Bush had won the popular vote in the rest of the country. According to the report, there were possibly 200,000 ballots left to be counted. They implied that Kerry could still have won but decided to avoid further division of the country by accepting defeat.
He didn't concede because he had no chance, he conceded because he is (to them) the better man, more noble, more honorable.
They showed clips of Americans in Europe, all apologizing for the re-election of President Bush.
It did have some good (sane) parts. There was an interview with Kenneth Timmerman. One of the questions they asked was whether Bush would continue in Iraq without seeking aid from our allies. Timmerman pointed out that we had asked for help before but France refused. That immediately ended discussion of that topic. I wish I had taped the interview. It was all good.
I didn't watch for long but during that time only two topics were covered: The U.S. election and Yasser Arafat. I couldn't tell if they were more disturbed by the re-election of President Bush or by the failing health of Arafat. From the coverage both seemed equally tragic to them.
Posted by marybeth at November 4, 2004 10:09 PM News