I have similar media frustrations with when the U.S. is first deciding whether to invade somewhere. Suddenly all this news comes out of nowhere with no actual context provided.
Sometimes I wonder how different the U.S. would be as a democracy if our media spent as much time on day-to-day international news as they currently spend on celebrity gossip.
As I alluded to at the start of this thread, I've been frustrated with the lack of context provided by American media on what's happening right now in Afghanistan.
This interview partially ameliorated my feeling of having no idea what's actually going on there: https://www.democracynow.org/2021/8/18/matthew_hoh_afghanistan_war#transcript
It might be of interest to anyone who is feeling similarly.
When there's a major international news story going on I really adore Democracy Now as a source for coverage that doesn't feel utterly vacuous. I also went to them (and was not disappointed) when I needed to help make sense of the U.S. assassination of Soleimani.
All the other coverage I have access to seems to feel painfully biased, or extremely shallow, or both.
*That said*, I also feel that Democracy Now is guilty of the overall trend I described at the start of this thread. When there isn't some kind of headline-grabbing incident going on, I feel like their coverage skews to relatively minor domestic stories. They cover protests and strikes a lot, which are certainly worthy news stories that deserve coverage, but I continually feel that I have no idea what's going on outside my country's borders.
@dynamic Independent media is mostly funded by the people these days, so there is a constant struggle to be relevant enough to get an audience; which is pretty much the same as the mainstream media fighting for ad dollars, but with better content.