LONDON — The media in the Middle East carry a lot of Middle Eastern stories, of course, but why do most of the other media in the world do the same?
Asian media strike a better balance, but Western media, and any other media that basically follow the American news agenda, focus obsessively on the region. Between a third and a half of all foreign news stories in the Western print and broadcast media are usually about the Middle East.
Like fish that never notice the medium they swim in, people tend not to remark upon this familiar aspect of their media environment. I didn't really become aware of it myself until I flew into Canada a few years ago, got a copy of the Globe and Mail, "Canada's National Newspaper," and found that every single story on the two pages of foreign news it offers was about the Middle East.