Despite what most Americans think — and obviously some members of Congress as well —  non-military foreign affairs does not take up a quarter of the federal budget.

The core State Department budget for 2012– that part that pays for embassies and the salaries of diplomats WORLDWIDE — is $14.2 billion. That works out to about $46 per year for each person in the United States.

Once you add in non-military foreign aid — you know the stuff that allows other countries to grow enough so they can buy U.S. products and services — the entire non-military foreign affairs budget is $47 billion — $152 per person per year.

And yet what Americans think about the foreign affairs budget is way off.

According to a survey by Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland late last year the American people think the U.S. spends 25 percent on foreign affairs.

The public thinks 5 percent is the about the right amount.

The real number is ABOUT 1 PERCENT.

But it seems that even this small amount is too much for some.

• Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has made it clear her goal is to cut the State Department budget.
• In the last-minute deal to keep the government running, the State Department took a hit. Even a former Pentagon assistant secretary called the move a disaster. (The War on Soft Power)
• The Ryan Plan would cut the budget for international affairs and foreign assistance by 29 percent in 2012 and 44 percent by 2016. At the same time, the defense budget would be increased by 14 percent during the same time frame.

It seems that those who want to cut the civilian foreign affairs budget look at just the cash and not the human cost. (Think about the men and women in the military who would have to go into harms way once the diplomatic corps is gutted.)

There are damn few talking about how the small foreign affairs budget provides a large positive impact both for U.S. security and for U.S. jobs.

There is a disconnect between the day-to-day diplomatic and development work and the American people. The folks on Main Street get the idea of a strong military defending freedom and all, but they don’t see how diplomacy fits in.

And part of the blame for this disconnect is the inability of local news organizations to see how global issues affect local events.

The mantra of “Local! Local! Local!” has led the accountants at news organizations around the country to think that anything that touches on international news should be avoided. Such a view denies the every increasing connection between Main Street and the rest of the world.

A local paper or radio station can always find a church group that sends a mission to some country. The trick is to find economic and political connections.

For example, the state of Florida is highly dependent on tourism from Brazil. For every 82 visas issued in Brazil to visit the United States 1 job in Florida is created. The U.S. mission in Brazil (3 consulates and the embassy) issued 620,000 visas last year. (For the math impaired that is 7,500 jobs created in Florida as a DIRECT result of visas issued to Brazilians by U.S. diplomats. No diplomats. No visas.)

Miami NBC got the connection a while back with its story about how Brazil was the #1 trading partner with Florida.

It is not difficult to make the connections between the world and Main Street. Stories that make these links put international events into a local context. And with context comes a better understanding of the world.

The stories might also help dispel myths about  the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. If nothing else, the public would be educated as to the real cost and value of the civilian foreign service.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Many thanks to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing for pointing out this great CNN story about ”newspaper landlords” who rent the want-ads by the minute.

Is this the wave of the future of newspaper readers?

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

Just about any community paper can do a story about a church or civic group going to Honduras or the Dominican Republic to run a dental clinic or build houses for the poor. (About half of the stories in the US media about the DR are just these type. The other half are about baseball players.)

But what really makes a connection between local news and global events is good old business. Bottom line: Does the global connection mean jobs in a U.S. town?

Mlive.com has a great little story about how a medium-sized company in a medium-sized Michigan city has a business deal with other countries. The deals are worked out through a local charity (another angle for the story) but most important to the global-local connection, the deal means jobs in Michigan.

Add to this the fact that the company, HydrAid, exports all of its products overseas.

Without saying so directly, the Mlive.com story points out the link between Grand Rapids, Mich., and a dozen or so countries AND the importance of international trade to a small-medium sized company.

Now there are links that work and won’t get lost in “compassion fatigue.”

West Michigan company lands major deal to provide water filters to Honduras

I would bet that similar examples of small-town business connections to the rest of the world can be found just as easily. If people would just open their eyes.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Congrats to NBC Miami. They see a world beyond their local beat.

The station ran a story today about how Brazil is now the No. 1 trading partner with Florida. (Brazilian Businesses Booming in South Florida) (And that doesn’t count all the Brazilian tourists that are flooding into Florida creating jobs in Florida.)

Here is another example of how a local news organization uses local information to build on an international story.

FYI: According to the U.S. International Trade Administration, while Brazil is the #1 international trader with Florida, Florida is the #2 exporter of U.S. goods and services to Brazil. (Texas is the #1 exporter.)

It is a pity that so few local news organizations have taken the time to use the occasion of Pres. Obama’s trip to South and Central America to look at how the politics and economies of that area directly affects their own local areas.

BTW, Besides being the #2 exporter from the United States to Brazil (value $7.2 billion), Florida is also the #2 U.S. exporter to Chile (value $2.8 billion) and ranks as #1 to El Salvador (value $2.4 billion). And it took me less than five minutes to get that information. Now think about how much those export sales add to the income of the state and how much the state budget would be hurt if those exports were cut or ended.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

Congratulations to Herb Jackson, Washington correspondent for the [New Jersey] Record.

He not only understands the idea that there is a connection between international and local events, he knows how to dig into the various databases to get the numbers to back up the link.

Obama’s trip to Brazil key to N.J.

He did what I and a few others have been arguing for a long time. He took information already on hand from the wire services, looked up some data and did some local interviews.

Without spending extra money to send someone overseas, the readers of the Record got a news story that was specific to their local area AND showed how the New Jersey economy depended on global trade.

This is called providing context.

It would be nice to see more LOCAL reporting like this.

Too often most Americans don’t know or care about global events. In part, this is because the U.S. media don’t show enough intelligence to provide the context of why understanding what goes on in Brazil or Japan or Germany means to the local reader/listener/viewer.

Again, congrats to Herb Jackson for being a good journalist who sees connections vital to his readership.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

The editors of the  hyper-local news service Patch.com seem understand that there are local connections to international events. And they are willing to really work those connections.

The Fairfax City Patch is running raw updates from the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Team.

The Fairfax team — VATF1 for Virginia Task Force 1 — was created in 1986, a year after the Mexico City earthquake.

The Task Force began its humanitarian response relationship with the US Agency for International Development – Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID-OFDA) in 1986 following a tragic 1985 seismic event in Mexico City. Realizing the void of qualified search and rescue resources in the Americas Region, USAID-OFDA joined in a strategic partnership with Fairfax County and the Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue Departments to develop a self-sustainable response resource. Its first deployment was to the former Soviet Armenia in 1988 in the aftermath of a large earthquake.

I saw first hand the importance of SAR teams from around the world in the Mexico earthquake. Since that time, other communities around the United States set up similar special teams to aid in disaster relief.

Many of these teams were deployed to New Orleans after Katrina hit. They also went to China and Haiti to help after the earthquakes in those countries.

The activities of these teams are all local stories waiting to be told. And those stories of international issues can be told without sending one reporter overseas.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World

Let’s face it despite the positive image of Brenda Starr, women still make up a minority in the newsrooms of the world.

So on International Women’s Day, I thought I would post a few items from around the world on the current status of women in journalism.

• From ABS-CBN in the Philippines: Wanted: More women in the newsroom (Thanks to @The_CopyEditor for tweeting this.)
• From the International Women’s Media Foundation: Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media (Report will be released March 25 at the IWMF conference.)
• From Reporters Without Borders: News media: a men’s preserve that is dangerous for women
• From Reuters: Progress, but women journalists not home free

BTW, Reuters is holding a day-long live blog on Women’s Day. To participate, go to International Women’s Day 2011 LIVE

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

ABS-CBN News in the Philippines has a VERY cool interactive map that show how many Filipinos are in the Middle East/North Africa area. The map shows not just the number of Filipinos but also their remittances back to family back home.

And when you get to remittances, then you are talking about a very real local connection to an international event.

Check out the story at INTERACTIVE: What unrests in Mideast, N.Africa mean to Pinoys and the INTERACTIVE MAP.

Many thanks to@The_CopyEditor, Jojo Pasion Malig in Manila for Tweeting about this.

First posted at Journalism, the World and the Future at George Mason University.

Voice of America has a great blog entry about the trials and tribulations of international students in the United States trying to figure out that whole love and dating thing.

Love and Dating for International Students

It’s clearly too late for Valentine’s Day, but who says this kind of story can only be written at a certain time of the year.

For college journalists, the cultural issues that exchange and full-time international students face is an excellent opportunity to inform the larger campus population of the diversity on the campus.

For journalists in the community press, this issue presents a similar opportunity to discuss and explore the diversity of the community. It is also a good way to air out some of the cultural differences that could cause friction between the immigrant community and others in the area.

First posted at Journalism, Journalists and the World.

The State Department provides an excellent page on the foreign affairs budget: Foreign Assistance Dashboard.

From this site you can get a break down of where the money went and is going. This is a good tool for anyone looking to put into perspective what foreign affairs cost and what the American people get for their money.

For example, in Brazil, the FY2011 budget called for $20.9 million for programs ranging from peace and security to the environment. And the FY2011 budget for Indonesia was $227.5 million.

Or if you want to know how much the U.S. government is spending on HIV/AIDS projects, you can see that the FY2011 amount was about $5.8 billion, with African countries getting the bulk of the funds.

So take a look. It is a good resource for stories.

Oh, and let’s start with the fact that the entire civilian foreign affairs budget represents only about 1 percent of the total federal budget. That small percentage of the budget pays for all the diplomats (including those who issue visas and help Americans in trouble overseas), embassies and consulates, humanitarian aid, development projects and exchange programs.

For a further discussion of the foreign affairs budget and what it means, check out my other posting: The foreign affairs budget: Small amount, Big bang