Why an international student chooses Compass News
This year was the first time I really tried to follow New Zealand’s elections, despite the fact that my father is from there. After the wake of the American and French elections, in which I knew who all the candidates were, what they stood for, and what the major debates focused on, and the latter of which I voted in, I decided to dive head-first into figuring out what was going on in New Zealand politics.
I quizzed my father, but I also knew he was biased. I downloaded the NZ Herald and Radio NZ apps, only to realise I didn’t have enough of a base knowledge to understand what most of their articles were even talking about. I turned to the New York Times to see if they had any recap articles about the election, only to discover with disappointment that New Zealand news falls under their ‘Australia’ section (they did provide some coverage though).
In the end Google was my friend, and by the time election day came I had passable knowledge of what the results would mean. On October 7th, Compass News’ need-to-know headlines informed me that the National party had won the most seats, but not a majority. A couple weeks later, those same headlines announced that Jacinda Ardern of the Labour party would be the next prime minister.
I would have sought out that information even if Compass had not covered it — but I can’t say the same about Japan’s general election, Venezuela’s political crisis, or the Kurdish bid for independence. Seeing stories that I’m familiar with well represented and well explained on Compass gives me confidence that I can trust their coverage of other parts of the world.
It’s also just practical to have global news from multiple sources gathered in one place. I take a more in-depth look at news from countries that I have connections to; but before I started using Compass that was all I did, and I missed most of what was happening in the rest of the world — barring major headlines — as a result. Cambridge, like many universities, is an incredibly international place, and it’s nice to avoid coming across as totally ignorant when I meet someone from Zimbabwe (Oh cool! I’m sorry what language do they speak there?), while also spending less than five minutes reading an article (if only it was relevant to my essay).
Some people may wonder why it matters — why read the news about countries other than your own? If it’s important enough, you’ll hear about it, right? I’m not going to tell you that every crisis (or tech advance, or cultural phenomenon, because some news is positive) will affect you, personally. It’s impossible to know which events will lead to great change, and which will become that thing that happened a few years ago that no one talks about anymore.
For me though, learning about movements and politics in other countries helps me understand how our world works as a whole. I can draw parallels, think about how people will respond to events in different parts of the world, speculate about whether the solution to a problem in one country would work in another. The fact is, today’s world is connected like never before; so while some news hits closer to home, that does not mean I can’t also care about the Rohingya’s plight or watch Mexico’s battle against violence and corruption closely.
