...interested in US politics, and even *I* think it has been over the top.

I thought the last election coverage was the same, but put it down to the Obama effect. Clearly not.

If you only ever listened to Radio 4, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Tea Party were in power.

As far as the BBC is concerned. They never cover, say, the German elections in such detail. Yet, as the most populated country in the EU, it has a great potential to influence the UK economy.

Russia is pretty important too and their elections get virtually no coverage compared to the US minute-by-minute analysis.

so I'm not sure what you mean by disproportionate, but it seems The Beeb can't win.

There was a report this week revealing that the amount of world news featured in UK newspapers has reduced significantly in recent years. We know less about the wider world and what's going on. The BBC have a lot of coverage about an important event from abroad and it's deemed as too much - what's the happy medium?

Anybody would think there aren't any cutbacks. The BBC has corresponspondents based over there which is fair enough. Quite why they felt is necessary to spend my money on sending the likes of Asmah Miah (apologies for spelling) from 5Live baffles me.

As to the elections themselves. I'm interested in the sense that I like to know what's going on because the Republicans and the Tea Party are, quite frankly, bonkers. But not so much that I want or need wall to wall coverage. The BBC have some questions to answer not just about this but they send far too many people to events such as the World Cup and Commonwealth Games.

Such blanket coverage can have its plus points, though. Without it I'd almost certainly have remained unaware that the name of the governor of Idaho is Butch Otter.

because I find it quite distracting from the actual politics. Now I know it's based on the Boston Tea Party, throwing the tea off the boats into the sea in protest, no taxation without representation, etc. But I cannot hear it without thinking, usually in order, of the following three things:

1) An Alice in Wonderland-style, Mad Hatter's tea party (ideally starring Johnny "Swoon" Depp as the Hatter) but in the style of the psychedelic bit in Easy Rider, all swirling colours etc. With White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane as the soundtrack, obviously.

2)Lovely afternoon tea taken by sophisticated ladies wearing pearls and hats (not just pearls and hats obviously, that's not that sophisticated): champagne, tea in a bone china pot, a three tier stand with tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off, delicious little cakes and dainty scones with jam and cream.

3) Wouldn't The Tea Party be a great name for an indie band? Probably something in the mould of Belle and Sebastian... But with more glockenspiel.

Actually it's not just the BBC. All our media's coverage of internationational affairs is poor and in my view has been declining for years.It seems odd when we are a much more multi-cultural society, better travelled and I would have thought more of us are interested in places and events in parts of the world we know.

I appreciate the US elections will have a bearing on world events but did it really need a six hour election special?. I don't think we even get that for our own local or European elections. BBC coverage of the EU is pitiful and hard to understand when this has more relevance to the UK.

I have never bothered with Al Jazeera but will give it a go on Fraser's recommendation.

Currently I seem to pick up world news from;

From our own correspondent - Radio 4 and one of my weekly podcast listens.Agree with Stuin this pool of excellent hacks seems to be an underused resource by the Beeb.

Unreported World - C4 documentary series and more often than not opens up items previously unknown to me.

Storyville - BBC4's excellent international documentary strand.

The Economist - not a regular reader but there is usually a copy lying around the office where I volunteer.

Any others I should add to this short list?

The World Service might surprise you.

Television news media are lazy. The British are linguistically torpid. Put those two together and the BBC will flock somewhere where they don’t have to work too hard to fill up air time. Easy access, easy quotes, easy pictures. Easy.

As an ex-army brat and itinerant executive I’ve lived all over the world. I’ve left every place. Thanks to the five languages I speak if I want to know about something somewhere I can often go to a news source from that place. I can’t help it if I’m lucky.

One thing I haven’t heard the national media here point out is that yesterday was a series of local elections. Not national. Which makes it all a little less interesting, apart from the host of loons standing for various offices (see lazy, above). Fortunately, most of them made little or no progress overnight.

I could not find any BBC coverage to speak of on Jon Stewart’s ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ (tagline “I disagree with you but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler”). Probably because it was a bunch of reasonable people holding placards with witty, reasonable slogans spelled correctly. Who here is interested in that? We want things that feed our delusional misguided stereotypes about a place we only know about from the pictures.

Probably of most interest to the readers here is that Linda Ronstadt’s ex-boyfriend beat E-bay’s ex-CEO.

I too revere the Beeb but i read somewhere that the Beeb had getting on for 200 people in the US for the Presedential elections where Channel 4 had about 5. Which seems disproportionate to me.

but the creaky old site crashed and I couldn't bothered typing it all out again.
I get annoyed by the way that senior journos race over the Atlantic to give us their "whither the nation" pieces while bothering people in "small town diners" trying to eat lunch. It's Jim Naughtie and Jon Snow getting off on their West Wing fantasies of being Danny Cincannon.
Also no one never admits the outcome won't really change much at all for all the rhetoric of Tea Party the day to day politics of US is much the same today as yesterday, emphasis might have changed a little but the major forces are still there.

Oh and then there's the scary presence of "Katty Kay" BBC world new's very own undercover superhero truly a force of nature. Thankfully reducing the airtime of the king of smug Matt Frei.

failure Jon Snow fantasises about being back on the politics beat and being a fictional character.
And I couldn't disagree with you more on the subject of Matt Frei - his Americana show on R4 is brilliant and he is a versatile and informed journalist who makes a great job of World News America.
His documentary on Berlin weren't half bad either, by all accounts.

I do think that the presentation of US politics has influenced our own system so much that we are locked into current news agendas.
I also think that the US really is the best political story in town at the minute. Not only is it culturally close to us it has a compelling narrative - a hugely charismatic, black leader, a failure to achieve the
promise, a massive movement of angry and loud tea baggers.
But you are right, news agendas have always been skewed.
What I want to know is: What the feck does Berlusconi have to do to get moved further up the running orders/ news lists?
Just google his name and the words 'bunga bunga'.

Notwithstanding the obvious attractions of an expenses-paid transatlantic jaunt on the public dime, there is perhaps another reason why the Beeb 'went big' on the mid-terms.

It has invested so much emotional and intellectual capital in the Obama project that the fear of it all going pear-shaped was almost bound to generate an unusually intense level of analysis.

The coverage of the 2008 presidential election -IMHO- represented something a landmark, in the sense that so firmly was the Beeb behind Obama that, for the first time, even the pretence of impartiality was abandoned in favour of pushing the received narrative, namely that their man was the chosen one.

Dom Joly was a guest presenter on a show produced not by the BBC, but by an independent for the network - not that it excuses his ignorance or preconceived ideas. It does rather signify a lazy, ill informed perception of US politics which should always be highlighted and countered. As an idiotic comedian and a complete political lightweight I have never warmed to, we should also ask whether he should allowed to tackle such issues in the first place.
However, I think it is grossly unfair to use this episode as a signifier of 5Live's output or that of the corporation as a news gatherer.
Peter Allen's comments to Asmah Mir (ah, lovely Asmah. A big Celt, too) were a way of framing the story in the most understandable way for the mass British radio audience: it was a terrible night for Obama. He wasn't saying it was a terrible night altogether.
Most Brits' knowledge of American politics recently will be framed by the story of Obama and the stupid, misguided fairytale promise it seemed to herald after the deeply unpopular presidency of George W Bush. It was, after all, Bush's intellectual failings, links to evil corporate thefts and the Iraq War, which made him a hate figure among many in this country and saw the Obama story gain such a currency of misguided hope.
The story has to be given context for a British audience within its own most recognisable parameters of understanding.
I would also broach that figures like Justin Webb have rightly been promoted to tackle perceptions of the BBC being anti-American and anti-Conservative.

How much coverage does CNN domestic or Fox News give to UK news in the states?

As there seems to be much analysis of the depth and breadth of the UK (in particular the BBCs coverage) of the US midterms on this thread, I just wondered how extensive the reciprocal coverage of our General elections is?

Perhaps an American menber of the massive can enlighten me.