If you like tunnels, there will be 200km of tunnels built by 21 boring machines at the same time between 2020 and 2030 around Paris : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express
I am not French, I don't live in France, I don't speak French and I am not particularly interested in tunnels or rails. And probably that's why it's the first time I hear about this. But I am not American either, and I don't live there, but I have read about the expensive few mile extension of a subway line in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the failed attempts to build a high speed train between LA and San Francisco hundreds of times.
A project of that scale in one of the largest Western capitals goes relatively unnoticed outside of France mainly because of language.
Think about what else is lost. I bet there are thousands of businesses, and lots of culture which never get noticed mainly because of language.
Remarkably complacent view, and undermined by the fact that other channels will report on this stuff, but not the BBC. The point is firstly that the signal to noise used to be far higher in the UK - I've been watching it for 40 years - I know what I'm talking about - and secondly that it's extremely unlikely I'm going to learn anything new from Stormzy's poorly informed opinions. And yet the latter is prioritised over the former.
If you think the willingness of a news organization to publish something depends on how newsworthy it is, I guess all I can do is respond by quoting the Daily Mail Song:
Pop stars take drugs
Teen boys wear hoods
Sports stars have sex
Bears shit in woods
But that's still English news. I guess I can quote something else:
> the more lurid, titillating, sensational, or nationalistic, the better. Even the distinguished Xinhua News Service is not immune from this sort of thing. I couldn't help but chuckle when the podcast host Scott Peters worried whether or not the American press corps' obsession with non-stories like Kim Kardashian and Bruce/Catelynn Jenner would give it [Xinhua] a strategic advantage in the contest to control global media narratives. My guess is Mr. Peters doesn't read Xinhua too often. If I had few dollars [for] every time Xinhua placed a photo collage like "Beautiful Female Soldiers From All Over the World," "Singer Valen Hsu Poses For Fashion Shots," "Sleeping Babies With Their Cutest Pets," on their front page...
( http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2015/07/chinese-journalis... )
Newsworthiness is something that can force news organizations to begrudgingly give up space they would rather have allocated to -- going back to the song -- their photo feature on schoolgirl skirt styles. If you're watching the news because you're hoping to learn something, you're making a blatant category error; that's not what the news is for.
And "civil war in Africa" fits tabloid desires perfectly; it's lurid and violent, drawing readers or watchers, without being at all surprising or important.
Something like BBC news world or The Times will generally cover the more important global events.