What are the implications of the 'globalisation of television news'?

'Globalisation of television news' refers to a set of processes which see that the existence oftelevision news products, infrastructure and companies is expanded out of the existing area ofoperation and around the world. These occurrences are enabled not simply because of a will tobe global, but also, and initially, because satellite communication technology brings thege<)s1ati()iie!"y to the fore, making any event on the planet which takes place in close proximityto a camera as nearby as any other. Tills essay examines the characteristics of, and issuessurrounding globalised news, and the impact left by the explosion of new, worldwideorganisations and content.

Of all the different methods of global news delivery and of all the different news providersamongst a burgeoning collective, few organisations can embody globalised news broadcastingas does CNN. Not just in its expanding professional practices, but also in its foundingprinciple, the Cable News Network has a global ideology, and one which ironicallyundermines the notion of the global in favour of the neo!iocal: "Ted Turner banned on!air useof the word 'foreigner,' insisting that all the world's peoples are 'neighbours, brothers andsisters."' (1) It is a sentiment echoing the McLuhanite belief that "we now share too muchabout each other to be strangers to each other." w The boss believes that a common source ofinformation will inevitably bring people closer to each other, and we can argue that unificationis brought about by such globalised news services..

"CNN now employs a satellite system that covers six continents, reaching some 210 countriesand territories, with potential access to a half!billion people every day."'3' Its impact, and sothat of television news globalisation, is said to be so profound as to produce a "CNN effect,"whereby it inadvertently shapes news events themselves because of its aggressive livecoverage. But it is one organisation operating in a complex system in which 'globalisation' hasmany meanings,, a news producer and retailer in an environment in which wholesaler newsagencies and exchange schemes also compete, providing material to networks at the broadcastend.

Tn fact, because television news prioritises those events for which pictures are available, thisprofessional judgement adds bias to the information the audience receives. Important events inremote places ! therefore, 'global news' ! may be initially inhospitable to cameras andjournalists... perhaps a natural disaster, or because the distance a crew must travel knocks backtransmission time and kills exclusives, or because of political constraints on journalisticmovement. These are the reasons for news exchanges, to extend the scope of coverage despitethe limitations.

All of these and more newsroom codes affect the end product. When globalisation imposessuch parameters on production practices, the extent of the globalisation of actual new?s contentis witnessed in the programme's national!international balance, because 'home news' isregarded as vitally important, particularly in the absence of 'world news.' So, it appears thatthe implications for newsgatherers, broadcasters and their audiences are that resources (men inthe field, speedy, plentiful and light communications equipment; and good, liberal access tothe network or a rolling service of one's own) really are important for the producers indetermining a decent and professional global make!up. In short, "the actual choice of itemsand treatment is obviously related to what is happening in the world, but is also tied topriorities set in the news organisation." (4)

The reality of television news, with its drive for picture!led news, was that most TV watchersin most countries could watch an Iraqi Scud missile streak across the sky to Israel in 1991,then landing and exploding there. This is the case whether the viewer subscribes to the

pictures' original provider or not, because the likelihood is that gatherers like CNN, forexample, with commercial motives ati of their own, are willing to sell on their footage to othernetworks eager to air such dramatic pictures. The globalisation phenomenon itself putspressure on its newsgatherers to extend reach, ironically in spite of cost!cutting realities athome, so they look to the footage of other organisations (wires or other outfits) to artificiallyextend their operation.

This is a second level of globalisation... not the content (the news), but the commercial andproduction practices which enable that content.

What are the effects of imported material? welUthe audience is no longer aware of thereports' origins or of its author's identity, whereas knowledge of authorship may be a crucialfactor in determining journalistic credibility. Because distanced broadcast reporters may ormay not exert their own editorial discretion over pictures and information received fromanonymou sgency journalists, the integrity and source of 'fact' is uncertain.

Also, a dominant elite of news providers giving material to the world's broadcasters, like aNew World Information distributor all of its own, could be said to bring about a globalconsensus or framework of opinion. It may be argued that such phenomena eradicatedifferences in the facts reported, in the synchronicity of viewing, and in the resulting culturalreception. Globalisation of news would be seen as an agent of cultural imperialism. For theimpact of that, look no further than exponents like Herve Bourges. \vho lamented Frenchreliance on foreign, Anglo!American image!making during the Gulf War and:

"suggested that some allied misinformation had contributed to spoiling the traditionallygood relations with some Arab counts !ies. If key mainstream figures in major Westerncountries express concerns about the unbalanced flow of international information, thenthere must be a problem." t5'

Globalisation via exchange programmes can result in bizarre cultural dilutions, Israel'smembership of Euro Vision and winning of its Song Contest meaning the Middle!East plays 0^lead role in what is an uniquely European arts event. And the concentration of productionamongst Western organisations may affect definitions of other cultures within and outside oftheir own territories, dividing the planet up into areas relative to the English!speaking 'FirstWorld.'

But 'globalisation of television news' should not always be seen as an imperialist force. Wiredup by 'dish!wallahs'Chacker specialists) motivated by a lack of home!grown news and fallingprices of equipment, India was shown globalised news by satellite in January 1990:

"As US troops assaulted Iraq, the satellite revolution struck India with equal force.Anyone with a 12!foot dish antennae could receive CNN. Among the educated butnews!starved classes of the subcontinent, the market for up!to!the!minute broadcasts wasimmediate and enormous." (6)

And we can argue that the arrival of CNN in India by this backdoor informed Indians abouttheir own interests more than their o\vn media ever did, the subcontinent being linked byself!interest to the Gulf region by decades of oil!dependency and an Islamic heritage. Even ifwe believe that CNN's US!slanted coverage makes something of a suspicious or biasedcultural relationship, then April 1991 may mark an annulment of such imperialist arguments,Hong Kong!based STAR TV broadcasting BBC Asia to India, together with three otherchannels: "In early December 1992, the BBC's immediate and even!handed coverage ofIndia's Hindu!Muslim riots ignited yet another mad scramble for hook!ups," adds Greenwald.

CNN, with a dish!size requirement 9!fcet wider to pick up the signal and less Indian content,fell by the wayside,

So, news globalisation is a phenomenon which sees nations made into arenas for competitionbetween large companies based outside of the nation itself. But these companies do battle byoffering the most local news, not just MTV and day!time soaps. Distinctions are not as clearas they appear... the existence of a network within one, distant nation does not necessarilymean that the nation's ideologies will prevail in its broadcast target area, because satellitespectrum is given over to a multitude of news producers. The BBC, for example, is confidentin claiming its ability to produce uniquely Asian content. The news producers' practices, then,are as important as those of the networks, and force a distinction between the two bodies. Infact, as well as International, CNN has also now launched regional channels for Europe,Africa, the Middle!East, Asia, Latin America and the US. Indeed, its World Report airs newsfrom local journalists in 130 countries without censorship or editing, and makes it available toaffiliate networks, w

In this sense, news globalisation is not a force ofhomogenisation, but ofregionalisation: "asthe world becomes more universal, it also becomes more tribal. As people yield economicsovereignty, holding on to what distinguishes you from others becomes very important." w

Indeed, we also have the national!interest factor. Worldwide reach extends coverage to theends of the Earth, literally; but, it seems, interest extends this far only because citizens of thenews producers' own country inevitably wander abroad and end up in "newsworthy'situations. One mark left by globalised news is that, for example, the death of four Britons atthe hands of Yemeni terrorists and special forces can dominate news agendas for a weekwhilst the continuing effects of natural disaster in Central America go unreported... on theworld stage now, ongoing stories are not as attractive as one!off events involving Britsabroad, and the death of one Briton, it is said, is equal in newsworthiness to that of a hundredforeigners. Whilst television news' reach has extended to the global, its producers' values havebroadened little .! programme content is still largely motivated by the national. In such aclimate, the 'global village' resembles not the mutually!understood "entire human familysealed into a global tribe" because our "central nervous system is extended to involve in thewhole of mankind and to involve the whole of mankind in us," but a setting in which theexploits of villagers travelling in the global are relayed back home in national self!interest. <9)Glohalisation becomes a tool for continued introspection.

And global news is quick. In the past, "you had to make a story that wouldn't be outdated. Itwould have a shelf!life of at least 24 hours if it was going to be shipped and someone mightbe showing it the following day, which then made you produce a story which had a bit moredepth, a bit more perspective, and not the absolute, immediate happening, as is more and morethe case today." <10)

Immediacy, then, erodes context. The argument is that rolling global news draws the viewerinto events for the sheer real!time drama of it, rather than asking it to step back and survey thesituation to achieve analysis, as one would have done with news bulletins of a shorterturnaround. After all, the broadcaster has spent too much money on transportation and settingup a bureau in, say, Cuba, not to pipe a continuous feed of its citizens fleeing the coast onmakeshift rafts to America. We should argue that pithy, yet in!depth reports may make betteruse of such pictures with the illustration used sparingly... the impact of news globalisation'srolling services familiarises the audience with the extraordinary by prolonging the event tojustify costs in the name of drama.

But, what other impact has the explosion of expensive global news itself had? Well, not leastbecause of the commercial pressure to fund ever more far!reaching bureau and in!depthcoverage to win audience share in an increasingly crowded marketplace, news organisationsseek to appeal to a larger and broader audience which would attract both more subscriber cashand higher!paying advertisers. In making news friendlier, the networks have increasinglyturned to a phenomenon derided as mis!aligned:

"Rather than alter their formats or air news at more flexible times in more creative ways[to retain a new audience culture], the networks just kept raiding and trading anchormonsters, paying more and more money for something that was of increasingly dubiousvalue." c11)

So, the big news media players have wrongly opted for the popular route in looking to growbigger, and may have missed out for it. With dozens of similarly!funded operations havingsprouted up, local cable news outlets adding in a mix of the international to usurp truly globalnews networks, and an additional threat from the mass availability of alternative internationaland foreign!domestic news providers on worldwide digital networks, the heavyweights arelosing audience share, CNN posting, viewers in an average of just 284,000 homes in the USAduring the second quarter of 1997, which "barely qualifies the nation's leading cable newsnetwork as mainstream media," according to Katz. As commercial globalisation opens up theworld's news events, its newsgatherers, networks and audiences in all sorts of contracts,competitions and consolidations, big television news finds its own revenue and goals beingeaten away by the process it started all by itself.

To run with the example of the Gulf War, which popularised CNN early in the decade, theevent of the 1998 Baghdad air!strikes marked a significantly differently!reported global warevent. In addition to CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, BBC World, BBC News24 and otherstations piping their television news feeds to live Internet video, the Internet became theepicentre of the episode, serving as television, radio, video, print, memory and discussion andmedia all in one, and, most importantly, with a reach matching the ethos of 'globalisation oftelevision news' completely. Media users could both track the event and receive secondaryanalysis via countless web sites and chat rooms, even spying on the bombings with ABCNews' live nightscope camera feed or monitoring its own news wire to obtain literally'up!to!the!minute' reports previously available only to the worldwide journalists themselves.

The world's only globalised medium, in transforming the impact of global television news,enables not just a larger audience for Christianne Amanpour reporting from Basra, but alsoaudience engagement with the event: "Create your own web page on the bombing of Iraq andhelp us create an instant snapshot of reaction around the world." <12) 12,136 globe!scatteredpeople were able to talk to an Iraqi journalist in Baghdad's press centre as bombs went off,asking what was going on in real!time. "You're getting a constant flow of feedback from theaudience you're serving." v") Global news has become organic, fast and personal.

That news broadcasters can distribute their material anywhere in the world without theproduction or legal constraints of traditional broadcasting is, in itself, important for the impactof global news, opening up content glohali.wtion absolutely, whilst not requiring a similarlyhuge extension ofnewsgathering production capability beyond that already put in place for thecore TV business. The new face of world news is one of content plentitude and massavailability of channels outside of their home nations, which forces us to replay new and moreconcerned imperialism debates, despite the claim that "a quarter of the hits on the CNN homepage are from users outside the United States, suggesting that the Internet will be an importantpart of the network's continuing intemationalisation and global presence." (14)

So, in conclusion, commercialisation coupled with liberalisation in a friendly, worldwidefree!market extends all forms of news globalisation. The phenomenon is a complex one, withnewsgatherers, agencies, wires, exchanges and broadcasters all existing and, increasingly,blending together as the economic imperatives of the media and information sectors'expansion encourage companies to grow bigger and into other areas, where vertical integrationenables the development of a strong, proprietary brand.

Just as the distinction between types of organisations are not clear!cut, neither is the impact ofglobalisation, since there are many effects. Because there is little consistency in the end resultof global news carriership (as illustrated by the simultaneous cultural diversity and locality inthe STAR TV example), we can but mention that the cultural impact is varied. Certainly, it istrue that the English language dominates globalised news and, as such, it is fair to infer thatWestern interpretations will often prevail!, too. We can also say that commercial imperatives tocut costs have arisen because of news producers' desire to position themselves as globalplayers in order to gain the upper hand when news by new!media is finally made profitable.

Most of these companies are Western or American. It is worth considering that Ted Turner,when he benevolently speaks of uniting the planet under the banner of global news, isapproaching the issue from the privileged position of US economic and political fertility andliberalisation. The issue at hand is whether news globalisation led by America can becometruly representative of the world at large, or whether true globalisation must be enabled

•!7 equally by each nation with fragmentation, and not the concentration of outlets which hasexisted until now.

1) Freedland, Jonathan (10 Nov, 1997), 'Mr Grow Rides In,' m The Guardian, G2, Profile.' London: GuardianNewspapers. p8.

2) McLuhan, Marshall (Feb, 1998), cited in Wired 6.02.' San Francisco: Wired Magazine Group. p22.3) Hogan, Joe (Aug. 1996), cited by Floumoy, Don and Stewart, Robert (1997$, 'CNN. Making News in the Global

Market' (1997). London: John Libbey. p6. fHogan is senior Vice!President for network distribution at TurnerInternational]

4) Walife, Roger and Baran, Stanley in The Known World of Broadcast News,' cited by Noren, Royner in 'Structuresand Processes in Global News: Global Hope's in News Transmission.' Ankara: University of AnkaraCommunications Studies, media.ankara.edu.tr/~erdogan/global.htm

5) van Ginneken, jaap (1998), 'Understanding Giobai News.' London: Sage. p46. [Bourges is a former President ofthe French public!service channels and a central figure in audio!visual policy!making, writing in Le Monde, 3 Apr,1991]

6) Greenwald, Jeff (1993), 'Dish!WaHahs/ in Wired 1.02.'San Francisco: Wired Magazine Group, alsowww.wired.com/wu'ed/arohive/l .02!

7) Plournoy, Don (1992), 'CNN World Report: Ted Turner's International News Coup.' London: John Libbey. OBC.8) Naisbitt, John (1994), in Wired 2.10.'San Francisco: Wired Magazine Group, also

www.wired.com/wired/arctwe/2.10/9) Mct!uhan, Marshall (1962), 'The Gutenberg Galaxy.' p8.

(1964), 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.' p4.10) Noren, Royner in 'Structures and Processes in Giobai News: Global Hopes in News Transmission.' Ankara:

University of Ankara Communications Studies, media.ankara.edu.tr/~erdogan/global.htm11) Katz, Jon (23 Jul, 1997), This I s CNN?'on 'HotWired, Synapse MediaRant.' San Francisco: Wired Digital,

www.hotwired.com/synapse/12) Blurb in Eedle, Paul (17 Dec, 1998), 'An Iraqi Journalist talks to America as the Bombs Fall'on 'Out There News.'

London: AOL, www.uk.aoi.com/channels/news/outthere/98december/1217/sfrong.htm13) Eedle, Paul, cited by Jones, Christopher (18 Dec, 1998), !Distributed Journalism Hits Iraq'on Wired ("veivs.' San

Francisco: Wired Digital, www.wiree!.coin''news/news/cu!ture./story.''16933.html [Eedle is Director of Out ThereNews, the interactive news service which ran the live Iraq joumaiism event in conjunction with America On!Une]

14) Woeifel, Scott, (Sep. 1996), cited by Fioumoy, Don and Stewart, Robert (1997), 'CNN, Making News in the GlobalMarket' (1997). London: John Libbey. p9. (Woelfel is Vice President of CNN Interactive}

*+) Boyd!Barratt, Oliver and Rantanen, Tertii (1998), 'Tha GtoliallzaSon otNsv.'s ' London: Saga.++) Porlsf. Mark (2!8 Oct 1997), 'Sate/die Wars: Today's news: (hare are too many channels' in "The European.' London: The European Ud. p8.

\ Predominantly English!language.

\! ' Western perspectives?

It is said that wholesaler news agencies such as Reuters and AP are 'independent.'What we might assume from the provision of such material to sundry newsbroadcasters, if audiences do trust television news. is a resultant global consensus ofopinion, making the interpretations, presentations and operating and institutionalpractices of the original journalist and news organisation all the more crucial indetermining the credibility of the news, balancing against the ethics of suchcentralised reportage.

On the other hand, it would seem that there are now far too many newsgatherers forsuch power to be exerted by a global news elite. Whilst the likes ofCNN, Reuters,

<^C6 r

. . r <;«J ^ ^ !Z S^^ct^y^^!

c^c^ \^^^^

cCifocA! ! ! c* )^ c !!<!!•^<?!!fc>^ at ! t!Q! "!t_t»'!a"<!'! ^

<Jt£... < !<ass,_—!0 ! a! c! . ! Ct —6! cv_ f >/"!o«J<L<a^2?\ •l!i/Y.iC'i

\ V^JO e^^J^JL^ '^^! 0!e. 'zy!<y! ^6

S^!e® — %<>^><^<^ ! ! ^<» ! ^V ! ' ^ J! ^

(^^^^Ji^^c^^!^ ^ !'S G^ ! a ! L!a !! 5! )

&^^ 0!AS"! !! 1 Cs^^!^^^w,^

s.SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM, MEDIA AND CULTURAL STUDIES

BA COURSEWORK ASSESSMENT

Module title:

Semester and academic session:

Student's name:

Essay question no.

Global Communications

Autumn 1998!99

.. ).6>.(=. ... . S.P^&. .

s

Comments:

nr (L(XA CA CU iy\ £U£. c^cdua^u^ a. {JiU^\w

'W^ (}1\.<A!\ CL\W (\ W c\ CWQW^ (vij ATLKA

w a [,vw (QL^VI ^ ww\e, 'SCAWA! % &m^.

cL s^iA^ 4 L ziU ^uwuw\J( (X ^M ^6z( W l

ippfar ^ olu< I'VuikLi &(C c^LAel^^^^ l u

6\,w^,^\ <W^ & lla "[t! a^u;u^c6^ c^n'M

^0 ^ (A^A^ ^^ (L . (S^ S=? l£, OOacI pcK/ife"

^ JJ .

Second marker's comments (if applicable):

Mark: / ^6^