As a Swedish expat who has lived in America for more than 20 years, I am often struck by how far from reality European news reports on America can be. Some reporting is accurate, of course, and often insightful on a level that even some American media fail to reach. However, more often than not, I find stories in European media on American politics and events that are a good distance from reality.
Some of the inaccurate reporting is politically motivated and can easily be written off as simply editorial bias. Ever since I started reading newspapers (in the information stone age when there were no personal computers), I have been struck by how the lion’s share of European media prefers to give their readers a negative picture of America.
This is unfortunate because America—the United States— is a rich country in more ways than one. There is probably a great deal of history behind this. Unlike Europe, my adopted home country traces its roots not to centuries of native lineage, but to less than 250 years of putting a philosophical idea to work. That idea, enshrined in the Constitution and formulated in countless writings throughout the years, is still influential in American society and American politics. Americans in general still harbor a sense of independence, and the spirit of optimism seems to withstand almost anything in this country. Many people still believe that you can make something of yourself here in America—in ways you could not do anywhere else—if only you are willing to work for it.
With this spirit of purpose and opportunity comes a penchant for commercial as well as social entrepreneurship, and for political involvement. American politics is more vibrant, more personal, and more problems-oriented—at least at the retail level—than, generally speaking, politics in Europe. This is often misunderstood in European media, sometimes as ‘bickering’ with no real purpose, other times as disunity that wastes time and gridlocks the political process.
Having worked in American politics and public policy for many years, I can understand the impression it gives outsiders. I also know how cynical our politics can be. At the same time, a look at European politics from an American perspective can likewise give you a reason to shake your head and wonder what they are up to on the other side of the Atlantic.
In an attempt to bridge the misunderstandings, the confusion, and sometimes the lack of reporting, we are starting a new standing feature: The America Report. The idea is to present recent news from America with an American perspective. We will also look at what European media are saying about America—and what they get right or wrong.
Today we start with three stories, the first being about diplomacy. It takes us into America’s increasingly problematic relations with Hungary.
U.S.-Hungary Relations
The diplomatic dialogue between Washington and Budapest is becoming tenser, yet reading American media you would not know half of it. However, you would be told, in no uncertain terms, that Hungary is a ‘bad’ country. For example, NBC reported on April 6 that “Germany and France are joining the EU Commission’s infringement proceedings against Hungary over its anti-LGBTQ law.” The Commission “referred Hungary to the Court of Justice of the EU” last year because the Hungarian parliament passed a law to ban sexual propaganda in schools.
It is not difficult to see why NBC reports on this. Mainstream American media is vehemently in favor of the so-called LGBT movement. This may be the reason why they have chosen not to report on the confounding involvement in Hungarian domestic policy that the U.S. embassy in Budapest has engaged in. As we reported on April 12,
The United States, under the leadership of President Joe Biden, has launched a hard diplomatic offensive against Hungary, with the U.S. Embassy in Budapest—headed by Ambassador David Pressman—funding a nationwide billboard campaign that seeks to undermine the Hungarian government’s position on the Russo-Ukrainian war.
It would be interesting to see American media react to a billboard campaign in America, funded by the Hungarian embassy, with messages critical of the U.S. government’s involvement in Ukraine.
Media in the United States has also missed out on a rather embarrassing social choice by U.S. Ambassador David Pressman. While the good ambassador acts as if he does not, on any terms, want to have anything to do with Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, he seems to have no problems associating with an extreme anti-Semite. Our contributors Gavin Wax and Nathan Berger describe the man in question, Márton Gyöngösi, as “president of the Hungarian political party Jobbik and a Member of the European Parliament”. Furthermore, they explain, in the late 2000s, Jobbik went to great lengths “to vilify the Roma people, introducing the term ‘Gypsy crime’ into common discourse”.
Gyöngösi has also called for the government “to tally up” Jews in Hungary who he said “pose a national security risk to Hungary.” This is one of several reasons why Wax and Berger round up their article by pointing to Ambassador Pressman’s affiliation with the anti-semitic Jobbik leader as a “Faustian bargain.”
The American media has not even mentioned this story.
The Biden administration has made it one of his administration’s top priorities to further so-called LGBT rights, an issue on which the conservative Hungarian government has taken a very different view. To show how important this issue is to President Biden, he appointed a homosexual man as his ambassador to Budapest. The Hungarian government is not anti-gay, but the Biden administration behaves as if they are. Yet if the American government really wanted to promote gay rights, it would send David Pressman on from Budapest to Tehran or Doha.
Again, this issue is only sparsely covered in American media.
2024 Presidential Candidates
Unbeknownst to many Europeans, the American political machine is already preparing for the 2024 election cycle. We are only a little more than halfway through Joe Biden’s presidency, but some of his prospective opponents are already working on their campaigns. This past week, Fox News contributed to the emerging 2024 frenzy by announcing that they will host the first debate among the primary election candidates. The debate will be held in Milwaukee, which is in Wisconsin, a key so-called ‘swing state’ with a narrowly divided electorate. It is one of a handful of states that will decide the outcome of the election.
There is nothing unusual with the next election making itself known this early. Running for president is a serious project; being a credible candidate is a business operation that requires a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore, those who want to run have to be out front early and build credibility with prospective voters as well as good relations with prospective donors.
European media, mostly, has not yet caught on to America’s fledgling 2024 campaign stories. This is understandable given that few have announced yet, and there are no policy debates between the emerging candidates. At the same time, the field of Republican candidates is becoming interesting for two reasons: the current frontrunner is former president Donald Trump, and his competitors are all people who have been sympathetic to him.
His former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has already announced her candidacy. On Wednesday, April 12th, Senator Tim Scott, a conservative Trump-supporting Republican from South Carolina, announced that he has formed an “exploratory committee” for a presidential run. Scott is one of three black Senators, the other two being Democrats Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock.
His announcement was barely noticed in European media, with the BBC giving it a brief nod and Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet acknowledging his announcement in the passing. Apparently, to European media, Senator Scott is just another candidate, but he is also something that the mainstream media tends to have difficulties dealing with: a black conservative. If he were to clinch the Republican candidacy, it would be very interesting to see how Europe’s mainstream media handles him.
Scott will not only have to compete for the Republican nomination with Trump and Haley, but in all likelihood also with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He has not announced his candidacy yet, but there is no doubt that he has something in mind. According to the Daily Caller, “at least two dozen” former employees of the governor’s re-election campaign of last year
are currently on the payroll of the Florida Republican Party … DeSantis and his team have been coy about the governor’s presidential aspirations, with the governor speaking in hypothetical terms about his candidacy and declining to directly confront front-runner former President Donald Trump.
In the good old tradition of American politics, there have been multi-million dollar transactions between DeSantis’ campaign and the Florida Republican Party. On paper, these transactions pay for staff and for services that one organization provides for the other. In reality, these payments are ways for politicians like DeSantis to keep a campaign organization alive without officially having to recognize what ambitions they might have.
The European media does not seem to know much about Ron DeSantis. Deutsche Welle is a good example: the only recent story they have says that DeSantis is expected to sign a bill from the state legislature prohibiting abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy.
The stand-out exception is the Irish Times, which on April 14 published a long article on Governor DeSantis. It thoroughly covers both sides of the abortion issue and places it in the context of America’s ongoing “culture war”. This paints a largely accurate picture of who Governor DeSantis is, at least from the viewpoint of the culture war issues.
The conflict over social issues will be important in the 2024 election. The dividing lines in the American culture war are crisp and clear. They separate two very different ideologies or philosophies about the fundamental principles of human civilization: on the one hand, God, life, liberty, and tradition; on the other hand, secular hedonism with no boundary between right and wrong.
Woke Business
One part of this culture war is being battled out in America’s business headquarters. Some big corporations have decided to include ‘woke’ values in their advertising. The most recent example is Anheuser-Busch, which produces the in America popular beer Bud Light. Together with sports apparel manufacturer Nike, they have hired a ‘transgender’ man and social-media influencer to market their products.
Most of the public debate over the marketing campaigns has been centered on whether or not it is right to call publicly for boycotts of companies whose values one does not share. This debate is a bit strange, given that the criticism of the boycotts is now coming from the left, or the ‘woke’, who are otherwise quick to stage boycotts of businesses they don’t like. However, beyond the buy-or-not question lies the deeper issue of identity politics, one that has taken on ugly forms recently.
An incident that does not seem to have caught any attention in European mainstream media (except for news sites oriented toward an American readership) is the assault that elite swimmer Riley Gaines had to endure while speaking at an event at San Francisco State University. While trying to leave the event upon its conclusion, Gaines was forced by aggressive hecklers to take shelter in a locked room. She remained there for three hours until the university’s own police eventually intervened and escorted her to safety.
Gaines came to SFSU to speak about the problems women face when men, purporting to be women, are allowed to compete in the same sports. This issue has grown into a hot topic since the Biden administration’s Department of Education recently announced that in order for schools to comply with federal law—and receive certain types of funding from the federal government—they would have to allow ‘transgender’ individuals to compete in whatever sex-designated category of sports they prefer.
A growing movement of young women in sports is trying to speak up against the ‘transgender’ invasion of women’s sports. The more attention this issue gets, the more difficult it will become for European media to cover: after all, women and ‘transgender’ individuals are two ‘victim’ categories. Having to choose one victim category over another has never been easy for the left, including its media.
The America Report: Diplomacy, 2024, and the Culture War
As a Swedish expat who has lived in America for more than 20 years, I am often struck by how far from reality European news reports on America can be. Some reporting is accurate, of course, and often insightful on a level that even some American media fail to reach. However, more often than not, I find stories in European media on American politics and events that are a good distance from reality.
Some of the inaccurate reporting is politically motivated and can easily be written off as simply editorial bias. Ever since I started reading newspapers (in the information stone age when there were no personal computers), I have been struck by how the lion’s share of European media prefers to give their readers a negative picture of America.
This is unfortunate because America—the United States— is a rich country in more ways than one. There is probably a great deal of history behind this. Unlike Europe, my adopted home country traces its roots not to centuries of native lineage, but to less than 250 years of putting a philosophical idea to work. That idea, enshrined in the Constitution and formulated in countless writings throughout the years, is still influential in American society and American politics. Americans in general still harbor a sense of independence, and the spirit of optimism seems to withstand almost anything in this country. Many people still believe that you can make something of yourself here in America—in ways you could not do anywhere else—if only you are willing to work for it.
With this spirit of purpose and opportunity comes a penchant for commercial as well as social entrepreneurship, and for political involvement. American politics is more vibrant, more personal, and more problems-oriented—at least at the retail level—than, generally speaking, politics in Europe. This is often misunderstood in European media, sometimes as ‘bickering’ with no real purpose, other times as disunity that wastes time and gridlocks the political process.
Having worked in American politics and public policy for many years, I can understand the impression it gives outsiders. I also know how cynical our politics can be. At the same time, a look at European politics from an American perspective can likewise give you a reason to shake your head and wonder what they are up to on the other side of the Atlantic.
In an attempt to bridge the misunderstandings, the confusion, and sometimes the lack of reporting, we are starting a new standing feature: The America Report. The idea is to present recent news from America with an American perspective. We will also look at what European media are saying about America—and what they get right or wrong.
Today we start with three stories, the first being about diplomacy. It takes us into America’s increasingly problematic relations with Hungary.
U.S.-Hungary Relations
The diplomatic dialogue between Washington and Budapest is becoming tenser, yet reading American media you would not know half of it. However, you would be told, in no uncertain terms, that Hungary is a ‘bad’ country. For example, NBC reported on April 6 that “Germany and France are joining the EU Commission’s infringement proceedings against Hungary over its anti-LGBTQ law.” The Commission “referred Hungary to the Court of Justice of the EU” last year because the Hungarian parliament passed a law to ban sexual propaganda in schools.
It is not difficult to see why NBC reports on this. Mainstream American media is vehemently in favor of the so-called LGBT movement. This may be the reason why they have chosen not to report on the confounding involvement in Hungarian domestic policy that the U.S. embassy in Budapest has engaged in. As we reported on April 12,
It would be interesting to see American media react to a billboard campaign in America, funded by the Hungarian embassy, with messages critical of the U.S. government’s involvement in Ukraine.
Media in the United States has also missed out on a rather embarrassing social choice by U.S. Ambassador David Pressman. While the good ambassador acts as if he does not, on any terms, want to have anything to do with Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, he seems to have no problems associating with an extreme anti-Semite. Our contributors Gavin Wax and Nathan Berger describe the man in question, Márton Gyöngösi, as “president of the Hungarian political party Jobbik and a Member of the European Parliament”. Furthermore, they explain, in the late 2000s, Jobbik went to great lengths “to vilify the Roma people, introducing the term ‘Gypsy crime’ into common discourse”.
Gyöngösi has also called for the government “to tally up” Jews in Hungary who he said “pose a national security risk to Hungary.” This is one of several reasons why Wax and Berger round up their article by pointing to Ambassador Pressman’s affiliation with the anti-semitic Jobbik leader as a “Faustian bargain.”
The American media has not even mentioned this story.
The Biden administration has made it one of his administration’s top priorities to further so-called LGBT rights, an issue on which the conservative Hungarian government has taken a very different view. To show how important this issue is to President Biden, he appointed a homosexual man as his ambassador to Budapest. The Hungarian government is not anti-gay, but the Biden administration behaves as if they are. Yet if the American government really wanted to promote gay rights, it would send David Pressman on from Budapest to Tehran or Doha.
Again, this issue is only sparsely covered in American media.
2024 Presidential Candidates
Unbeknownst to many Europeans, the American political machine is already preparing for the 2024 election cycle. We are only a little more than halfway through Joe Biden’s presidency, but some of his prospective opponents are already working on their campaigns. This past week, Fox News contributed to the emerging 2024 frenzy by announcing that they will host the first debate among the primary election candidates. The debate will be held in Milwaukee, which is in Wisconsin, a key so-called ‘swing state’ with a narrowly divided electorate. It is one of a handful of states that will decide the outcome of the election.
There is nothing unusual with the next election making itself known this early. Running for president is a serious project; being a credible candidate is a business operation that requires a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore, those who want to run have to be out front early and build credibility with prospective voters as well as good relations with prospective donors.
European media, mostly, has not yet caught on to America’s fledgling 2024 campaign stories. This is understandable given that few have announced yet, and there are no policy debates between the emerging candidates. At the same time, the field of Republican candidates is becoming interesting for two reasons: the current frontrunner is former president Donald Trump, and his competitors are all people who have been sympathetic to him.
His former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has already announced her candidacy. On Wednesday, April 12th, Senator Tim Scott, a conservative Trump-supporting Republican from South Carolina, announced that he has formed an “exploratory committee” for a presidential run. Scott is one of three black Senators, the other two being Democrats Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock.
His announcement was barely noticed in European media, with the BBC giving it a brief nod and Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet acknowledging his announcement in the passing. Apparently, to European media, Senator Scott is just another candidate, but he is also something that the mainstream media tends to have difficulties dealing with: a black conservative. If he were to clinch the Republican candidacy, it would be very interesting to see how Europe’s mainstream media handles him.
Scott will not only have to compete for the Republican nomination with Trump and Haley, but in all likelihood also with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He has not announced his candidacy yet, but there is no doubt that he has something in mind. According to the Daily Caller, “at least two dozen” former employees of the governor’s re-election campaign of last year
In the good old tradition of American politics, there have been multi-million dollar transactions between DeSantis’ campaign and the Florida Republican Party. On paper, these transactions pay for staff and for services that one organization provides for the other. In reality, these payments are ways for politicians like DeSantis to keep a campaign organization alive without officially having to recognize what ambitions they might have.
The European media does not seem to know much about Ron DeSantis. Deutsche Welle is a good example: the only recent story they have says that DeSantis is expected to sign a bill from the state legislature prohibiting abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy.
The stand-out exception is the Irish Times, which on April 14 published a long article on Governor DeSantis. It thoroughly covers both sides of the abortion issue and places it in the context of America’s ongoing “culture war”. This paints a largely accurate picture of who Governor DeSantis is, at least from the viewpoint of the culture war issues.
The conflict over social issues will be important in the 2024 election. The dividing lines in the American culture war are crisp and clear. They separate two very different ideologies or philosophies about the fundamental principles of human civilization: on the one hand, God, life, liberty, and tradition; on the other hand, secular hedonism with no boundary between right and wrong.
Woke Business
One part of this culture war is being battled out in America’s business headquarters. Some big corporations have decided to include ‘woke’ values in their advertising. The most recent example is Anheuser-Busch, which produces the in America popular beer Bud Light. Together with sports apparel manufacturer Nike, they have hired a ‘transgender’ man and social-media influencer to market their products.
Most of the public debate over the marketing campaigns has been centered on whether or not it is right to call publicly for boycotts of companies whose values one does not share. This debate is a bit strange, given that the criticism of the boycotts is now coming from the left, or the ‘woke’, who are otherwise quick to stage boycotts of businesses they don’t like. However, beyond the buy-or-not question lies the deeper issue of identity politics, one that has taken on ugly forms recently.
An incident that does not seem to have caught any attention in European mainstream media (except for news sites oriented toward an American readership) is the assault that elite swimmer Riley Gaines had to endure while speaking at an event at San Francisco State University. While trying to leave the event upon its conclusion, Gaines was forced by aggressive hecklers to take shelter in a locked room. She remained there for three hours until the university’s own police eventually intervened and escorted her to safety.
Gaines came to SFSU to speak about the problems women face when men, purporting to be women, are allowed to compete in the same sports. This issue has grown into a hot topic since the Biden administration’s Department of Education recently announced that in order for schools to comply with federal law—and receive certain types of funding from the federal government—they would have to allow ‘transgender’ individuals to compete in whatever sex-designated category of sports they prefer.
A growing movement of young women in sports is trying to speak up against the ‘transgender’ invasion of women’s sports. The more attention this issue gets, the more difficult it will become for European media to cover: after all, women and ‘transgender’ individuals are two ‘victim’ categories. Having to choose one victim category over another has never been easy for the left, including its media.
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