The Confines of News Universalism
Abstract News outlets remain predominantly segmented by national boundaries, despite the spectacular development of a range of technologies offering the potential to overcome many of the barriers to transnational news circulation. Likewise, national and local outlooks on the news are persistent even for matters of worldwide magnitude and interest. This article argues that the facts related to newsworthy events should be more systematically paired with the scientific knowledge that is required to describe them accurately. Because facts and scientific knowledge should transcend cultural, social and political differences, they could constitute the basis for a limited but fundamental core of news universalism supported by global news agencies and other international news sources.
