By Eamon Scarbrough
There is a rather limited scope of what is and isn’t considered newsworthy in the United States. One of the primary, and perhaps most obvious, factors that limits this scope is whether or not a piece of news comes from this country. Many people simply don’t care what happens elsewhere; 
this is their home, after all, and it is most important to know what is happening here.
However, large, newsworthy events are being overshadowed by national stories across the board. Of course, there are a few exceptions such as the typhoon that just hit the Philippines. That was an important piece of international news, but it’s not the only one, and news consumers should pay attention to more than just tragedy.
Canada has been our neighbor to the north for our country’s entire existence, so isn’t it strange that there is barely a hint of its existence anywhere on the news? Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been receiving some major media exposure thanks his recent admission of smoking crack cocaine and being an alcoholic degenerate. While it is important to know that the mayor of a major hub of international commerce and policy is a substance abuser, I imagine receiving strange looks if I asked people what else they know about Toronto.
In fact, the same response probably would come from asking what a person knows about Canada at all. Do they know that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in favor of the Keystone XL Pipeline that President Obama rejected or that the indigenous people of Canada suffer similar disadvantages as those in our country? Whether or not anyone knows about these things may seem of little consequence, but having knowledge of our geographic neighbors should be important.
It is ridiculous that we should acknowledge that we aren’t the only country in the world (besides our enemies of course) only when something entertaining happens in another country.
In Sofia, Bulgaria, for example, Ahmed Dogan of Bulgaria’s ethnic Turkish party was briefly held at gunpoint in the middle of a televised speech. Somewhat unsurprisingly, this video made the biggest waves on YouTube. While the event was quite an anomaly—especially to be caught on camera—there was very little discussion of how an assassination attempt was provoked. The incident largely was ignored in America because it had nothing to do with Obamacare, climate change, gun control, or marriage for same-sex couples.
My opinion may seem to say that we should pay more attention to other countries than our own, but that is not true at all. Our country’s issues obviously should come first. However, something is very seriously wrong when we get hardly any glimpse of the world outside our borders aside from funny videos and news of war.