I had been quite impressed with the quantity of international news reported here in Spain, and I had thought that the turmoil in Tonga was quite a big deal. But had it not been for New Zealand news sources, I wouldn’t have known that anything unusual was going on there at all. It’s made me think about how current events are reported by newspapers around the world.

I read the Spanish newspaper “El País” (“The Country”) most days. Despite its name, it is more left-leaning than the other main daily “El Mundo” (“The World”), and generally its first ten or so pages are filled with international news.

I grew accustomed to this idea of newspapers openly taking an editorial line when I was in London, where the papers clearly have a point of view. It seems a much more honest way of going about things, in comparison to say the NZ Herald’s claims of being completely impartial. Lets face it: everyone has an opinion, journalists included. That’s not to say that the reportage is particularly slanted, but the issues highlighted and given importance often vary – for example The Independent in the UK often leads with an important environmental issue.

Here, El Mundo has devoted an absurd amount of space to what I can only describe as an absurd theory that Basque terrorist group ETA were involved in the al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the Madrid metro in March 2004. But then I largely get my information on domestic matters from arch-rival El País, which occasionally laughs out loud at the lack of foundations in support of this idea. Yes, I should be reading both to get a broader perspective. But would you really want to read The World According to Don Brash? It’s tough going.

But back to the localisation of news. I have always been disgusted by the Herald’s token two or three page “World” section, which really doesn’t give you too much of an idea of what is going on in the world. In contrast, the UK and Spanish newspapers I read/read seem to have pretty comprehensive coverage of world affairs.

So I was surprised to not find even a tiny paragraph on Tonga in El País. But maybe it really is because, at the end of the day, most people care mainly about things around themselves. In New Zealand it is big news because Tonga is close, we have a sizeable Tongan community, and the government is getting involved. To Spaniards, Tonga is a tiny drop in a faraway ocean which has little to do with them. In contrast, the large Latin American community and historical links with the region provide good reason for giving decent coverage of the main events in Spanish America. Similarly, news from Europe and North Africa is given a lot of importance due to proximity and political importance to Spain.

Other posts by Katie Llanos-Small