U.K.: "Berlusconi's Back!"

Nosemonkey's EUtopia has a bit of fun discussing the re-election of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The blogger lists all the reasons he is excited about Berlusconi being back in power - all of which are to be taken ironically, as the blogger views Berlusconi as having high entertainment value but low political effectiveness. The blogger compares Berlusconi to the previous PM, Romano Prodi, who was "not holding a near monopoly in the Italian media, not trying to blatantly advance his own commercial interests through his high office, [and] not re-writing the country’s electoral laws to give his own party an advantage," among other things.

This is a great example of a blogger who writes just for the sake of providing commentary. There is little research behind his post, and the blogger acknowledges that, as someone who is not Italian, it is difficult for him to understand the details of Italy's election process. Instead, he links to a Reuters article that reports the actual news of Berlusconi's victory and to the international section of Spiegel Online, a German site, which provides a more comprehensive, contextualized analysis of the election. This brings up one difficulty in covering international news: background information. For readers unfamiliar with other countries' governments, it is difficult for news stories to include enough context to the story without introducing bias. Also, readers' appetites for consuming such news may not be as high if they know nothing about the subject (one article we read mentioned that readers who have more background information learn more from a news story). As a result, people with little background knowledge--such as this blogger--rely on easy stereotypes and well-publicized news stories, as Nosemonkey's EUtopia has done.