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How does the news shape the way we see the world?

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Here's the world based on the way it looks -- based on landmass.

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And here's how news shapes what Americans see.

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This map -- (Applause) -- this map shows the number of seconds

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that American network and cable news organizations dedicated to news stories,

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by country, in February of 2007 -- just one year ago.

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Now, this was a month when North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities.

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There was massive flooding in Indonesia.

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And in Paris, the IPCC released its study confirming man's impact on global warming.

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The U.S. accounted for 79 percent of total news coverage.

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And when we take out the U.S. and look at the remaining 21 percent,

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we see a lot of Iraq -- that's that big green thing there -- and little else.

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The combined coverage of Russia, China and India, for example, reached just one percent.

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When we analyzed all the news stories and removed just one story,

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here's how the world looked.

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What was that story? The death of Anna Nicole Smith.

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This story eclipsed every country except Iraq,

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and received 10 times the coverage of the IPCC report.

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And the cycle continues;

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as we all know, Britney has loomed pretty large lately.

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So, why don't we hear more about the world?

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One reason is that news networks have reduced the number of their foreign bureaus by half.

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Aside from one-person ABC mini-bureaus in Nairobi, New Delhi and Mumbai,

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there are no network news bureaus in all of Africa, India or South America

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-- places that are home to more than two billion people.

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The reality is that covering Britney is cheaper.

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And this lack of global coverage is all the more disturbing

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when we see where people go for news.

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Local TV news looms large,

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and unfortunately only dedicates 12 percent of its coverage to international news.

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And what about the web?

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The most popular news sites don't do much better.

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Last year, Pew and the Colombia J-School analyzed the 14,000 stories

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that appeared on Google News' front page.

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And they, in fact, covered the same 24 news events.

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Similarly, a study in e-content showed that much of global news from U.S. news creators

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is recycled stories from the AP wire services and Reuters,

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and don't put things into a context that people can understand their connection to it.

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So, if you put it all together, this could help explain why today's college graduates,

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as well as less educated Americans,

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know less about the world than their counterparts did 20 years ago.

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And if you think it's simply because we are not interested,

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you would be wrong.

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In recent years, Americans who say they closely follow global news most of the time

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grew to over 50 percent.

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The real question: is this distorted worldview what we want for Americans

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in our increasingly interconnected world?

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I know we can do better.

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And can we afford not to? Thank you.