MEDIA

Journalism.com: US public turns to Europe for news

The threat of war in Iraq is driving increasing numbers of Americans to British and international news web sites in search of the broader picture.

According to the internet audience management and analysis company, Nielsen NetRatings, traffic to the UK's biggest news sites, BBC News Online and Guardian Unlimited, has increased dramatically over the past year. Many of these new users are from the US.

Jon Dennis, deputy news editor of the Guardian Unlimited web site said: "We have noticed an upsurge in traffic from America, primarily because we are receiving more emails from US visitors thanking us for reporting on worldwide news in a way that is unavailable in the US media."

The American public is apparently turning away from the mostly US-centric American media in search of unbiased reporting and other points of views. Much of the US media's reaction to France and Germany's intransigence on the Iraqi war issue has verged on the xenophobic, even in the so-called 'respectable' press. Some reporting has verged on the hysterical - one US news web site, NewsMax.com, recently captioned a photograph of young German anti-war protesters as "Hitler's children".