Building the new international media
By Philip Seib Posted Jul 1 2007
New voices are making themselves heard in a journalistic domain long dominated by a relatively small number of Western news organizations.
These newcomers include broadcasting stations funded by royal families and blogs based in tiny apartments, sophisticated Web sites and casual e-mail networks, carefully crafted documentaries and video shot on cell phones. Some have built global audiences, and some reach just a handful of like-minded friends. They are luring news consumers away from traditional providers and reshaping the business and craft of journalism. They might be making traditional news organizations superfluous as news consumers search for information on their own.
One of the most prominent of these ventures is Qatar-based Al Jazeera, which has proven to a skeptical Middle Eastern audience that Arab media are substantive enough to end a dependence on Western news organizations. Through a mix of innovative programming, credible journalism and persistent marketing, Al Jazeera has established itself as the “go-to” information resource in much of the Middle East. In cafes from Morocco to Kuwait, the television in the corner is tuned to Al Jazeera. A 2004-2005 survey of television viewers in Cairo found that 46 percent of households watched satellite television, and of these, 88 percent watched Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera’s success has encouraged regional competitors such as Al Arabiya, Abu Dhabi Television and Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation. Costs of satellite hardware have dropped substantially, allowing more players into the game. By October 2006, the number of satellite channels broadcasting on Arabsat and Nilesat reached 263, a 163 percent increase since the beginning of 2004, and 74 percent were privately owned.
Outside the Middle East, regional satellite television is taking hold in areas where indigenous news media have long been overshadowed by foreign media. Telesur, which is shorthand for La Nueva Television del Sur (The New Television of the South) exemplifies this. Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez, a principal booster of Telesur, says the Spanish-language channel will counteract “the media dictatorship of the big international news networks.”
Like the founders of the Arab channels, Telesur journalists speak of the “anti-hegemonic” nature of their effort. The channel’s managing director, Aram Aharonian, noted the “urgency to see ourselves through our own eyes and to discover our own solutions to our problems.”
Politics is a factor in the creation of the new satellite channels. French journalist Ulysse Gosset, who helped develop France’s entry into this field, France 24, says, “Today news channels are part of the global battle in the world. It’s as important as traditional diplomacy and economic strength.”
France 24 was constructed as a joint venture between TF1, France’s largest independent network, and state-run France Televisions. News bulletins are presented in French and English from adjoining newsrooms and Arabic and Spanish broadcasts are to come. The channel’s Web site offers news in French, English and Arabic.
“This channel will not be anti-American, but this channel has to discover international news with French eyes, like CNN discovers international news with American eyes,” says Alain de Pouzilhac, France 24’s CEO.
Russia has also decided to use television to assert itself. English-language channel Russia Today was created in 2005 to reshape Russia’s image. Svetlana Mironyuk, the general director of the news agency Novosti, says,“Unfortunately, at the level of the mass consciousness in the West, Russia is associated with three words: communism, snow, and poverty. We would like to present a more complete picture of life in our country.”
Elsewhere, a pan-African channel that would broadcast in English and French is being contemplated. One of the planners, Salim Amin, echoed his colleagues at other channels when he described the rationale for the channel, “All we see on the international networks about Africa is very negative: famine, war, disease, death, HIV. There are positive things happening here that never get highlighted.”
New broadcasters tend to take aim at CNN. Born in 1985 as CNN Europe, CNN International competed primarily with BBC World News during the 1990s and over the years has seen its reach extend into more than 200 countries. An aging star, CNN has lost some of its luster. In the United States, it trails the acerbic and conservative Fox News Channel, and internationally it is often overshadowed by younger, zippier channels such as Al Jazeera.
But CNN is still very much in the game, particularly as a result of the partnerships it has formed with indigenous broadcasters around the world. One example is CNN-IBN, a 24-hour English-language news channel created in 2005 to link CNN to India’s leading broadcast companies, the TV18 Group and Turner International in India. CNN provides international coverage, while IBN concentrates on national and local reports. Chris Cramer, CNN International’s managing director at the time, cited this partnership as one of “CNN’s efforts to move closer to its audience,” and the new channel’s editor-in-chief, Rajdeep Sardesai, says the appeal of working with CNN was partly the demand for more international news “in a fast-globalizing India.”
Those dual rationales say a lot about the state of the international news business. CNN has recognized the credibility and appeal of local and regional news organizations, and knows it must change its image from that of an outsider (and a Western one, at that) to that of a local colleague.
Even more than broadcast venues, Internet-based media attract large numbers of news consumers. The audience for old media is not departing solely because it is infatuated with the bells and whistles of online products. The issue is primarily about the relationship between the news provider and news consumer.
In 2005, Rupert Murdoch declared, “I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers.” He said that his own News Corporation had to be smarter in its use of the Internet and make its products “places for conversation” where the public can “engage our reporters and editors in extended discussions.”
One of the most important models for citizen journalism is OhmyNews, based in South Korea. It has taken blogging to a level closer to conventional journalism in the sense that it has “reporters” and editors who impose quality control. But it is still a populist venture. Jean K. Min, Oh- myNews’s head of international business relations, observes, “Contrary to initial thinking, the Internet is not just another channel for news to travel along. Instead it’s a space that everyone can use, and that means that journalism is going to stop being a lecture given by a few ‘special’ people, and start being a conversation.”
Global Voices is another Web-based news service that goes beyond standard blogging. The site provides a forum for “bridge bloggers” who write about their country or region for an international audience. The organization’s blogger-editors select and provide links to the most interesting blogs from various regions of the world. Global Voices then offers its product to traditional news organizations as a source for story ideas.
The Global Voices’ philosophy, as stated on its Web site, is similar to that of some of the emerging satellite television channels and news-oriented Web sites: “Because North American and Western European voices and perspectives dominate both the international news media and the global Internet, Global Voices focuses on the rest of the world. We aim to bring previously unheard voices into the mainstream media.”
Dissemination of the cell phone video footage of Saddam Hussein’s execution in 2006 illustrated that the Web provides a forum unfettered by traditional journalistic criteria concerning graphic images. Soon after the hanging, the video became available on a Web site and later on the Associated Press’s video service. It spread virally across the Internet and attracted 13 million hits just on YouTube, Google Video and Break.com. Anyone with Internet access who wanted to see it could, which raises questions for conventional television news: Should news organizations provide video they normally would withhold, or at least edit, just because it is on the Web? Are these news organizations superfluous since the public can find the product on their own?
Answers to such questions might be found in the fundamental journalistic role of providing historical and political context for what is being seen. Presumably, at least some of the people looking at the Hussein video wondered, “What does this mean?” That is a query journalists can help answer.
The terrain of new media is fascinating, like the bustling heart of a big city. It is dynamic and growing and it offers much more than a collection of high-tech curiosities. Traditional news organizations have not been shoved aside, but they are being pushed toward change.