“Dad, if I went to Dartmouth, do you think I’d be mugged?”

Sometime in the 1990s in Japan, the son of Washington Post Japan reporter T.R. Reid’s had just watched a one hour special on Japanese TV which highlighted the high murder rate in New Hampshire. Reid's son was considering attending Dartmouth College, and he wondered whether attending the Ivy League school would be dangerous. "This," the journalist thought, "is the picture of our country that comes through over there."

That was one of the views of America, as seen through the eyes of the media overseas, expressed in a November 5, 1995 On the Media segment. Hosted by Alex S. Jones, it also included a panel with Reid, Claire Bolderson of the BBC, and Victor Fuentes, the New York correspondent of ECO-TV, a Spanish-language news service seen in Latin America.

Bolderson noted the love-hate relationship the British had with America. She said the U.S. was seen as "a violent, terrible place where everyone is going to get killed [that triggers the thought of] 'how can anybody want to live there?' . . . At the same time, we envy this country hugely . . . We love it and think it’s successful and prosperous and full of celebrities —and we’re completely fascinated with it."

In 1995 the media was rife with speculation on a possible presidential run by General Colin Powell. Reid believed that America was managing diversity better than other countries and that "Colin Powell’s election would be spectacular for the image of the U.S. It would prove that diversity works."

According to Bolderson, America was also seen as a political trendsetter; for instance, Newt Gingrich’s rise was leading European conservatives to “look to the American right” for examples of successful strategies.

Latin America’s view of the U.S., according to Fuentes, also swung between tales of racial strife and economic opportunity, with “streets paved with gold.” This led Jones to quip, "America may not be the land of milk and honey —unless you’re looking at it from Peru."