International press coverage needs to be improved, said the executive editor of the Centre Daily Times.

"International reporting hasn't had a very good name," Robert Ashley told a group of about 20 people yesterday. The lecture, held in the University's International Lounge, 222 Boucke, focused on the difficulty small newspapers have in adequately covering foreign news. Ashley's speech was the first offered as part of the International Lecture Series.

Ashley cited "myopic vision" as a major problem for small papers. Many tend to focus on the local angle of every story while ignoring the larger issue, he said. He used as an example a parody of newspapers done by National Lampoon, which ran a headline reading "Two women feared missing on vacation," with small print beneath it adding, "Japan destroyed."

In fact, until the late 1940s, only 10 of 1,750 daily newspapers in the country had foreign correspondents, he said.

Only a small percentage of the CDT's readership is interested in foreign coverage, he said, adding that interested readers have several outlets available to them in the form of larger press such as Cable News Network and The New York Times.

As a whole, the press has greatly improved international coverage in recent years, Ashley said. For example, the press no longer bases its stories on a point of view, he said, alluding to past times during wars when the press was used to "whip up public enthusiasm."

Members of the audience did not necessarily agree.

Myths perpetuated by the media cause misunderstandings between Americans and foreign visitors, said Siddhartha Banerjee (graduate-mass communication), a native of Calcutta, India. Biases in both education and the media influence American citizens' opinions of foreigners, he said.

The press "doesn't cover issues as fairly as it should," Abbas Aminmansour (graduate-engineering), a native of Iran, commented during the discussion. Asserting that American media is slanted, Aminmansour said he believes that if the press' current biases are not dealt with, prejudice and misunderstanding will continue to be perpetuated.

Banerjee went on to attribute his bad encounters with Americans to what he called their inadequate education about foreign countries.

"I don't know that there are any easy answers," Ashley said following the discussion.