Whose News? Implications of the Global Media

Event summaries from Globalization Week Spring 2005

Date: Thursday, April 7
Time: 7:00pm-9:00 pm
Location: Lindner Commons, 6th Floor, Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E St NW

Speakers:

Moderator:

Event Transcript


From left to right: Hafez Al-Mirazi,
Reha Atasagun, Mark Feldstein
(moderator), Ted Iliff, Frank Sesno.

Mark Feldstein: How has globalization affected what you do? Is it just another buzzword of this decade or does it really matter and if so, how does it matter to the media?

Hafez Al-Mirazi: Because of the development of technology that delivers media outlets around the world, we're witnessing now, outside of America, the real experience of globalization. Before, you could say that we had Americanization rather than globalization. Information exchange occurred from America to the rest of the world, but now it is able to be truly global, and also move from East to West. During the first Gulf War, Arabs were watching a war in their own backyard, fought between one Arab country, Iraq, and another, Kuwait, and watching American anchors explain it to them from the newsroom at CNN in Atlanta. Globalization now, as in the example of Al-Jazeera or the internet, has become much closer to being truly global. We can now also talk about global figures and global topics rather than Western figures or Western issues. For example, with the recent death of the Pope, we are now witnessing not just the death of a Western figure, but the death of a global figure and we are now seeing the reaction of Muslims to this death.

Reha Atasagun: There are many theories about globalization. I believe it started before satellite. When I began in this business, cutting 8mm tape, and even then, we still had American and Western news sources, like Reuters and UPI. The speed of globalization has accelerated with the addition of satellite and digital media sources, but was not created by these. I believe, as a journalist, that we have to take advantage of the positive sides of globalization and try to eliminate the negatives. Like a quote from the Washington Post this morning, "The world has never had more communication and yet produced so little understanding and wisdom." That is the negative side of globalization. My favorite definition of communication is: Communication is creating a common mean. In our times, globalization has the ability to bring us together, but do we have the ability to understand one another? With the satellite, you have the means of rapidly transmitting materials, but as a journalist, you have to be daring. I remember the first time the networks were in Ankara, to cover the Palestinian bombing of the Egyptian embassy and the foreign journalists were anxious to be there yet did not know what to do and we had to all work together. Now, it is like the fast-food packaging of news. We get satellite feeds from the agencies and we are all dominated by agency material and more and more we don't do news.

Frank Sesno: I'm not sure that I entirely buy the premise that there is more information but less understanding. What just happened in Ukraine? What has been happening in Beirut? I don't think that you can plausibly make the argument that more information has been bad for people and societies overall. Overall, more information has forced societies open: it forces governments to be accountable. Do people see different things in the same information? Yes, and as an example, Hafez Al-Mirazi came to speak in one of my classes and he put it best when he said, "[Al-Jazeera and CNN] covered the same war but principally, [CNN] covered it from when the missile was launched, and [Al-Jazeera] covered it from when the missile landed." It's a very interesting perspective; we're covering the same war but from a different perspective and I don't necessarily think that it's a bad thing. You wouldn't expect a newscaster to be rooting for the other guys because they are your countrymen, after all. And the sources that they will are going to use will come principally from sources in their local countries. I've had conversations with people from Qatar and from the Administration who are leaning hard on Al-Jazeera to change their ways and moderate what they are doing because they are inciting people. And my response is to them is simple: if they did their job exactly as you would like them to do, you'd still hate them. Because if they are doing their job properly, they are quoting from people and sources who right now very much resent America. So what is globalization? It is a cacophony, as it should be, because that is what the world is. It is varying perspectives, and that's what it should be, because there are varying perspectives. There is no one language. There is no one definition of global news, and there will not be because in the end, people derive their perspectives and their opinions not just from what they see on TV or read in the newspaper. There is personal experience, cultural experience, history, and common sense, and all those things go into a population's or an individual's sense of balance in the world. One final point: We're getting it wrong in much of the media because we are not doing globalization justice. We suffer from the two-"B" syndrome: bombs and bullets. That is what dominates global news coverage and we are very much missing the fascinating and complex components of globalization: the movement of people, ideas, science, arts, culture, trends and commerce.


Hafez Al-Mirazi and Reha Atasagun

Mark Feldstein: Would the ideal global media show as many casualties in Iraq as in 9/11? I'm sure we saw a lot more victims of 9/11 on CNN than we did on Al-Jazeera, and conversely, I'm sure that there was a lot more videos of the Iraqi victims of the US-led war there on Al-Jazeera or CNN.

Frank Sesno: I don't think you can impose a quota of good journalism having 3 victims per minute, or whatever. You can look at the images of dead bodies on Al-Jazeera and ask, Are they informing or inflaming? But I think that you can look at Fox News and ask the same question, Are they informing or inflaming? And is that their job? I don't think there is a one size fits all news. But I do think that Al-Jazeera has been an immature news organization in precisely the same was that CNN was an immature news organization in its early days. You learn by doing. We did all kinds of stupid things. We were just going out to report the story, but in the end, lives are at stake.

Reha Atasagun: I was here during the war, and I watched the war and reported the war here from Washington. Watching the American perspective, I didn't see the other side. Not a bit. If I had been back in my country, I would have access to other news sources, the BBC, the French and the Germans, and I would be able to compare the news coverage. But here, I am amazed. Here, American media is rich, has everything, and in the war, the media might is there, the military might is there, but I haven't seen the other side of the story.

Mark Feldstein: Let's ask Ted Iliff. Certainly that is the criticism of Voice of America, that it is flag waving. But has globalization changed the appetite abroad for what you do, because they can now get it on Al-Jazeera or other sources?

Ted Iliff: It's changed the appetite and it has also changed the availability we have to do our job. Voice of America is not your daddy's or your granddaddy's Voice of America. My job is oriented toward news placement around the world in the local languages. We have major affiliates in large countries that are eager to get our material because we have a good reputation. We have a law that dictates to us how we have to report the news and that is accurate, comprehensive, balanced, and fair. And that is federal law. If we don't do that, if someone walks into our newsroom and says, "Let's give the Bush administration a break here," that is a prosecutable offense.

What globalization has done for us is its changes how we offer our material to television. We are late at getting into television. So now we have to find our niche. The first thing we have to do is figure out what we're up against in terms of marketing. When we launched CNN International in 1993, we just launched it, never dawning on us that there would be a problem attracting an audience for CNN International. Now, VOA is trying to do its own international TV news and we are up against old domestic media, new domestic media, old international media, new international media and new media. Old domestic media are the old state broadcast operation. They have populations that are used to seeing them and we can't go up against that. They have all the popular programming and they are locked in because of their position in society. New domestic media is guys that have come in to try to start their own TV operation. They are usually guys that have media experience and no money or money and no media experience. Old international media is BBC and CNN, established media that we can never go up against. New international media is Al-Jazeera or Euro News. These are energetic, alternative news operations that offer news in a different perspective in regional or local languages, not just English. They have a resonance among international audiences. For whatever reason, they are attractive. Finally, in terms of new media, there is the internet. That is the wildcard. I don't think that anybody really knows yet how the internet is being used as a news source internationally. It's out there and it is a real factor in trying to figure out what we, a global media market, are going to do.


Frank Sesno (seated) and Mark Feldstein
(at podium).

Frank Sesno: The fact is, we are all fighting the last war. We are all media here. There are many in the business who will tell you that linear television is just about over with. Technology is driving all of this. Another thing that drives this thing is the desire by many countries to counter American and Western media colonialism. The day after September 11 at the Bureau, a call comes in initiated from the White House and it is Ari Fleischer, the press secretary at the time. He said, "I can't tell you how to do your jobs and I won't." But he asked us to not report on the whereabouts of the president, the vice president or the cabinet members. And he said, "We're fighting a 21st century war in a 21st century media environment. And you in journalism need to know that what you broadcast or report will be consumed in Albany at the same time as it's consumed in Afghanistan by friend and foe alike." This was a no brainer, we stopped putting the information out there. A much more difficult problem occurred when Condoleezza Rice asked us to not broadcast the tape of Osama Bin Laden.

Hafez Al-Mirazi: She said at best it could be propaganda and at worst it could contain coded messages. And I think that this is coming from their own experience with the Iran-Contra scandal where a branch of VOA was used to send coded message about the shipment of weapons. Yet I don't think that if they are watching Al-Jazeera in Arabic directly from satellite here in America, and if we assume that the sleeping cells must be Arabic or Muslim or at least related to the people from 9/11, why do they have to go to CNN to watch coded messages?

Mark Feldstein: Let's address the inflammatory things that have been said. Frank Sesno suggested that Al-Jazeera was immature and you have said that VOA at least in the past was an element of US propaganda.

Hafez Al-Mirazi: I spent 12 years there. When you compare Voice of America to other ventures that the government got itself into, here we have a problem from the 1976 charter that imposes VOA to be balanced and that is because of abuse in the past. I worked at Voice of America, and there is another law that prevents VOA from beaming their media into the US. Because of that, you cannot have control or monitor what Voice of America is doing. I wish that they would allow the media in, so that people from different ethnic groups, listening to Voice of America in their languages could call up their congressmen and complain about the coverage.

Ted Iliff: I have no problem with that. I would welcome that. It really frustrates our staff that the United States has no way of knowing what we do. Except for the internet, that is the one loophole. VOA has a live feed on the internet. We have email, phone calls, we have all kinds of feedback. The embassies are not shy in letting us know if we've stubbed their toes. Now we have another source of feedback and it is our affiliates. Because now we are placing reports, television segments, and so on, on very popular, very successful cable television stations in various places. These are all commercial ventures with verified ratings and verified audience feedback. If we put out something that is out of line, not only will the affiliates howl at us, but it jeopardizes our whole affiliate relationship. It kills our business.

Mark Feldstein: Frank, you used the word immature. Is Al-Jazeera propaganda? Is the VOA propaganda?


Audience members listen to the speakers.

Frank Sesno: No, I actually don't think Al-Jazeera is propaganda at all. I worked at the VOA, and for the most part, I don't think VOA is propaganda. If by propaganda, we mean getting straight news out in the way that we view it in the West, then it's propaganda. If it's propaganda in the sense that you're putting the President on with a soundbite because you want the rest of the world to hear it, then yes, it's propaganda. In fact, Hafez and I were at an Arab media conference in Salzburg recently, and we had an opportunity to watch some of Al-Arabiya's coverage of the Iraq war. And it was very interesting. Al-Arabiya, which is funded by the Saudis partly as a counterweight to Al-Jazeera, set 8 or 9 live trucks to be around Iraq on Election Day. They did 18 hours of live coverage. The newscast that CNN showed—the first official that was quoted was Condi Rice. And when the President of the US stepped to the podium to say that the election had been successful, Al-Arabiya took it live. Is that propaganda? I want to raise one other thing: the loss of editorial control. Al-Jazeera is maturing, and they're not any more immature than CNN was at that age. We made so many mistakes. So you're learning as you're going. CNN—24 hour news—was an evolution in the US. Al-Jazeera is a revolution. There has been no comparable media outlet ever to Al-Jazeera in the Arab world. How many of you think Al-Jazeera is primarily anti-Western? How many think it is fair and balanced? The biggest thing that Al-Jazeera has done is to put debates and people on the air and challenge governments that had not been challenged before. And if you listen to American officials, it's all about inciting viewers to be anti-US. But they are revolutionary. So it's trial-by-error, and I don't mean that in any disrespect. But some of the stuff that was on in the early days...

Ted Iliff: Let me jump on the word "perspective." When I was in Iraq a little over a year ago, being aware of what Jazeera was reporting...You ever listen to a ballgame on the radio that's being commented on by the guys from your team? You listen to your team's guys call the shots for years, and it becomes your reality. Then your team goes on national television, and all of a sudden they're criticizing your guys. And you think, "They're biased against us!" But they just have a different perspective. Now, Jazeera presents a perspective that is unusual to us. It is strange to our ears. You talk about the violence. I was working in Montenegro one time, and someone put on a piece that was very gory, and afterwards I commented on the piece. And she said, "We've seen worse."

Frank Sesno: This is a very interesting thing: how different cultures portray death and violence. I think the American media has so sanitized things. I watch BBC pieces that are quite restrained but they really take me there. You can watch American media until you're blue in the face, and you won't see it. We're a strange society, and we're very puritanical in some ways, and that's one of them.

Ted Iliff: There are differences even between CNN USA and CNN International—International shows things that USA would never touch.

Mark Feldstein: What about after 9/11, though? I felt that we saw a lot of death.

Frank Sesno: CNN wouldn't show the people jumping out of the buildings.

Hafez Al-Mirazi: I felt that we saw a lot of grief.

Ted Iliff: That's a very good point.

Hafez Al-Mirazi: I did something on Al-Jazeera on the first anniversary of 9/11, and we debated about showing people jumping from the towers. But we did put that, for a very simple reason: to gain or keep the sympathy of the Arab viewers. Because they are seeing more graphic pictures of the suffering of the Palestinians, and the Afghan war. So we had to meet the same standards in covering the American victims. You wanted to do that out of leveling the playing field. The other point I'd like to mention: some time people confuse things when they talk about culture. I would like to hear things talked about in terms of "political culture," because "culture" alone sometimes gets confused with ethnic or nationality or something wrong with people or their religion. When we say political environment, you capture the time dimension. It depends on what they are going through. If people are going through conflicts, and they are seeing terrible things in the streets, what you would do in TV would be different.

Frank Sesno: Remember, in Salzburg, when the Palestinian leaned across the table and said, "You are not helping us, the way you portray the territories as violent and awful. All you show is the death and destruction. That doesn't help us."

Hafez Al-Mirazi: Yes, but he was asking for showing more grief than the death itself. I heard a story once, where you ask children to draw a picture of a chicken. You ask kids in big cities like New York, and then you ask kids from rural areas. The kids from the cities will draw a frozen, packaged chicken, not a live chicken. That takes us to the environment. People are living in cities, where they haven't ever seen a turkey being slaughtered for Thanksgiving—maybe their tolerance for death is different. The paradox is, what about the violent video games that my son likes to play? How many people can you kill in a minute in those? I wonder how the same American culture that is very sensitive about BBC or Al-Jazeera is the same culture that is producing these graphic video games for kids?

Mark Feldstein: Reha, people here tonight have been suggesting that, even with its different biases or perspectives, more information is good. But you might disagree?

Reha Atasagun: No, I pointed out that we are flooded with information. We have to choose—we can't be overwhelmed. We have to be selective.

Mark Feldstein: Everyone seems to agree that media globalization is good. Is there anything bad about the globalization of media?

Hafez Al-Mirazi: The more, the merrier!

Frank Sesno: We've lost control. You used to have editors and producers who would make reasonable decisions. Remember when we, at CNN, said that we would be sensitive to information that could jeopardize lives or operations. CNN found out early that the first American troops were on the ground in Uzbekistan prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, and we did not report that story when we first got it. But a Pakistani news organization got the same information and put it on their website. And that night, ABC put it on the air. The ability to make decisions is limited now because the media and information are global.

Ted Iliff: We're watching the Pope's situation, and a third-level Italian news organization reports that he has died. Who would think that is how it would be reported? What happens? Fox and CNN. It goes out on the wire, and Reuters and AP just pass it along.

Hafez Al-Mirazi: Even Al-Jazeera reported it. (audience laughter)

Ted Iliff: We have a two-source rule in our office, and it's very strict. We had people running in and saying, "Can we go with this?" And we said no.

Frank Sesno: Which is why VOA took three days to report the fall of Vietnam. (audience laughter)

Ted Iliff: We wanted to be real sure. (audience laughter) Stuff comes at you, and you have to make smart instantaneous decisions. And there's still the thing about being first. To me, why would you worry about that? Who cares? Especially now, if you're first, you're only first for about 20 seconds. It's not like the newspaper days, when it was two days.

Hafez Al-Mirazi: The problem with a news item like that, is that you're expecting the Pope to die; it's only a matter of hours for you...You just want it to get over with (audience laughter). I was talking to a friend of mine after we retracted, and he said, "Why did you retract [reports of the Pope's death]?" And I said, "Well, it wasn't true." And he said, "But he's going to die anyway!"

Mark Feldstein: You laugh, but some of us are old enough to remember when ABC reported that Franco, the dictator of Spain was dying. And then he didn't die, but they led with it for an entire week: Franco is still dying! (audience laughter)

Hafez Al-Mirazi: With Arafat, we reported he was dead, but he wasn't. If only we had just waited one more day! (audience laughter).

Reha Atasagun: Of course, it's a very tough choice: be the first one or the right one? Before things sped up this much, journalism was based on verification. Now you don't have time to do that.

Mark Feldstein: There are so many blogs now, and other unverified information—even though much of it is false, we sometimes discover truths.

Frank Sesno: I think we have to learn a new language: the language of "global" and the language of "live." People in journalism now, and public officials who communicate with the public, need to be much more deliberate about what they say. We have news by increment now: every little small drip of information, one at a time. Increments can be wrong: many news organizations reported that we were looking for two individuals of Arab origin. But that's what law enforcement was actually doing. News actually follows the same bum leads as law enforcement. So bad information goes out there. So the language has to be very clear and deliberate. It has to reflect where the information is coming from. You have to let people know so they can make a judgment.

Ted Iliff: There's another pressure of live: you have to say something, even if you don't have anything to say.

(A question-and-answer period followed.)