Mitt Romney may have talked about the Middle East yesterday in what was billed (and panned) as a major foreign policy address, but ad spending by both candidates’ camps shows that global affairs are still low on the list of key campaign topics.
Fewer than 10% of ads aired in the U.S. presidential race to date have made reference to international issues–and those that do look abroad reveal a worldview that’s largely limited to Chinese trade, Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, according to a tally by Elizabeth Wilner, a vice-president at the media research group Kantar Media. Wilner argues that disparity is in fact even greater when discounting China-trade-related ads, which she says are fundamentally about U.S. economic policy. Without them, only 3.3% of spots have referred to global issues.
looking beyond borders 