From W.N.Y.C. in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Soon after the collapse of the Twin Towers,

Mayaculpas fell like gentle rain from the lips of news producers.

CNN chairman Walter Isaacson said the attacks helped

his network rediscover, quote, its true mission to cover international news in a serious way. Of course,

CNN had only recently misplaced its mission in response to the siphoning of its ratings by the more

entertaining, less newsy, Fox. But the big three

broadcast networks had left the true path a long time ago. Here's a number, in case you needed it.

In the 1970s, according to a Harvard study, networks devoted about 45% of their newscasts to foreign

affairs. That fell to 13.5% by 1995. But after September 11th,

the networks awoke to the idea that they could serve the public better. It's been six months now.

How are they doing? A good measure for coverage of foreign news is how many minutes of time

on the network nightly news is filed

with a foreign date line. In other words, not with a voiceover of footage from abroad, but

you've actually sent a correspondent abroad. And pre and post September 11th, you've virtually

doubled, virtually doubled the amount of foreign coverage. Andrew Tyndall, author of the

Tyndall report, spends his days doing the

numbers on the network's nightly news. He says foreign coverage rose from 10 to 20 percent of the

newscast in the last six months, due of course to the war on terror and related stories. That makes

sense. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict also received ample airtime, but Tyndall says it always does.

105 minutes in the five months before September 11th, 108 minutes in the five months after.

But what about the rest of the world?

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