Time to view the world – not as foreign – but international

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The BBC’s Lyse Doucet was a recent guest on the wonderful Desert Island Discs and during the course of the conversation, she said she believed there was no such thing as foreign news – just international news – because in essence ‘foreign’ suggests a distance between it and us.

And that allows us to erect a wall between us; it matters but not as much as if it happened closer to home.

It’s always been this way; we used to refer to someone as being ‘out foreign’ in a time before internet and instant communication – because being in a foreign land was akin to living on another planet.

Our forefathers held American Wakes for departing transatlantic emigrants, because the unspoken reality was that they might never see their departing loved one again.

But that’s not the case now – or at least not since international (or foreign) travel resumed in the wake of the easing of pandemic restrictions.

Lyse, it must be said, might have more skin in this game than most, because she is after all the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, but it’s a point well made because we all tune out just a little as the tragedy moves further from our doorstep.

There was an old newspaper rule of thumb – and it’s not exactly dripping with sensitivity – but it calculated that one death here equalled ten deaths in Central Europe or a multiple of that in, for example, some part of India.

And yes, that’s simplistic and perhaps inhuman, but if you’re honest, we subconsciously do it ourselves; there’s a report of a robbery or an accident on the news and you pause – until you hear it happened in Tallaght or Termonfeckin and, with a small empathetic sigh, your day seamlessly moves straight back on track.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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