Press: TV Turnabout

While U.S. news broadcasts are reaching a growing audience abroad, foreign reports are also starting to flicker across American TV screens. Every week CNN World Report features 2 1/2 hours of uncensored stories from broadcasters throughout the world. Any news agency is free to contribute, although CNN reserves the right to cut segments longer than three minutes. Since World Report went on the air last fall, 86 news organizations in 80 countries, ranging from Argentina to Zimbabwe, have participated. A segment from Uruguay's SAETA TV, for example, reported on Pope John Paul II's recent tour of four South American nations. The Icelandic Broadcasting Service examined the country's economic problems and the strain they were putting on Reykjavik's coalition government. Japan's TV Asahi aired a report on the stabbing of two children by a bicyclist in Tokyo. Betraying his Western bias, CNN Executive Producer Stuart Loory, formerly the cable network's Moscow bureau chief, admits he has been pleasantly surprised by the show. "We were afraid at first we might just get talking heads and anti-American tirades," he says, "but these journalists have been taking a close, sometimes critical look at their own countries."