Frogs in the (huge) well

This is a long and maybe a boring post. So be warned.

I have been a regular newspaper enthusiast since childhood. I guess I started reading newspapers since the 7th grade and always had subscription to at least two of them - one in English and other local vernacular edition. That was always in addition to subscription to various magzines like Outlook and libraries. Some of the best papers I have been reading since childhood are The Hitwada, Navbhart, Dainik Jagran,Economic Times, Sakal, Lokmat, and ofcourse the Times Of India(ToI)which I prefer to call TOIlet paper these days. I would love to switch over to The Hindu which I have heard is a much better paper. I will never get tired of praising the benifits of reading a newspaper, especially Indian newspapers.
Thanks to the Brits for leaving us a gift, the lingua pura- English language which I feel is spoken in its purest form only by Indians these days. I see only "slang" and "spoken" English in US, UK and other tradionally English speaking countries. The worlds business language is now limited only to that - business, in form of ultra shorthand emails and crisp news items which sounds like notes from technical manuals. The poetry and prose heritage of English is found only in some rare novels now a days.
Anyway lets come back to the subject of this post again: The above gives a background to the audience that yours truly has been a regular newspaper reader.That holds good even here in US since I have subscribed to "Chicago Tribune". This paper rougly compares with Tabloids as far as dimensions are concerned and is so thick that I feel it is humanely impossible for anyone to ever finish reading the paper all in a day. Such a waste of paper and environment.In contrast,I find the size and dimensions of Indian newspapers perfect.
But that is not my key complaint. I wont mind such thick news papers provided they have some QUALITY news in them. One thing that I have noticed in all the developed countries that I have visited is that their media (Print as well as Television) is very country centered. For them international news is limited to natural disasters
(that too only if they are the size of Tsunami), nuclear explosions,big explosions,tiny explosions,diwali cracker explosion and of course those political turmoils which can be a "threat" to their existance. Everything else is immaterial and not news worthy.
And US seems to be leading the pack of such nations whose media believes in keeping their masses highly ignorant of happenings in the world other than those mentioned above and in their immediate vicinity and radius of about 50 miles. And this I believe is the root cause of the shock and awe an average american felt after 9/11 while he or she was left wondering why on earth would someone want to hurt their "peaceful" country so badly. It was only after that they woke up and took notice of existance of many other smaller muslim/asian countries and read about how their wrong foreign policies lead to a general discontent and discord against US in minds of these nations.
Had the media of these developed countries fed information about the issues facing the developing world, I believe at least the shock would have been less. How can anyone explain the Breaking News of "a mother and a child disappearing somewhere in US only to resurface later" being covered round the clock on CNN when there are many more important news worthy things happenings all around the world? Watching news channels and reading news papers here is a joke.I sincerely wish the media in US sets their priorities right and dishes out something interesting and informative to read in tomorrows paper. That may be a tall order considering the average inability of an american to comprehend issues not related to them! Alas they are the frogs in the Well who believe that they live in a ocean. Only difference here is that the size of thier country and economy is really oceanic so it doesnt really matter to them!