Caroline Pacl Professor Mallak News Media and Foreign Policy April 7, 2011 Wanted: Western News Media

Renaissance The ethnocentric localized angle of U.S. news must be plucked from global journali sm to cultivate stronger citizenship within the international community According to the Four Theories of the Press, Seibert et al. (1974) argue that a communication system reflects in its structure, policy and behavior the society in which it operates. The American media therefore would be seen through this mo del as an embodiment of the libertarian model, due to the freedom of the press o r absence of government influence in the system. The models: Authoritarian, Libe rtarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Totalitarian are crude and normalized examples of ways the authors saw the media operating in various societies durin g the Cold War era. Many scholars argue this analysis is outdated, while others argue for the inclusion of new models such as the Hachtens Developmental or Picar ds Democratic Socialist models (De Beer, 66). Regardless of the debated merit of Seibert et al.s theories applied to current global media, one aspect of their ana lysis remains crucial to understanding Western media today: the idea that a soci etys media can realize its independence from government influence by increasing i ts dependence on commercial support. For that reason, Western media realized its constitutional right to a free press in terms of government interference but on ly at the cost of being run by a corporate elite monopoly instead. Consequently, Western Media is no more free than it would be under the Authoritarian or Soviet Totalitarian models of the press. For the purposes of this paper and the confines of its length, I argue that the role of Western media, namely the elite global media based in the United Sta tes, is influenced so strongly by the demands of its corporate owners that work to appease their stakeholders (consumers) with entertaining stories that these m edia have ultimately failed to report global news and expand public awareness. T his process has corroded the political system over time, allowing lobbyists and elite government figures to gain access and influence within the elite publicati ons, further transitioning the medias role from a constitutionally created, gover nment-free entity into a passive, corporate-run, elite lapdog. One of the main proponents of this switch in Western media is Richard Stanto n, professor and author of All News Is Local (2007). He examines how the Western media has annulled its social responsibility to seek the truth by maintaining a lo calized model of news reporting, which results in the oversimplified or overlook ed reporting of complex issues and events throughout the world. This system is p erpetuating the narrow frames of reference of its readers, the American public, and limits their role as an informed citizen in the digitally connected, global society. This paper seeks to address how the media in the West localizes global news stories for its audiences, working under the guise of an institution of democrac y, however actually acting as its agent. To narrow the focus of how American med ia has maintained this function I will discuss its 21st Century history through the coverage of the events of September 11th that lead to the U.S. invasion of I raq and Afghanistan. This then brings the analysis to today, where glimpses of a new media paradigm is seen to be developing through the integration of social m edia and citizen reporting in the field of international communications. Finally , how the media elite in the U.S. cover events in developing nations in the Midd le East and North Africa, particularly in nations involved in the recent revolut ions and uprisings, is analyzed and compared to unique media like Al Jazeera. To begin with, American media can be looked at through the progressing model s theorized by Seibert et al. The press in the United States was born free out o f the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and was seemingly run under a lib ertarian model for the best of two centuries (Seibert et al, 70). It was not unt il the 20th Century that the idea that mass communication should uphold a respon

sibility to the public through truth seeking was conceptualized among media organi zations and their stakeholders and was applied to journalistic reporting. The So cial Responsibility theory assumes the media will act as a watchdog to monitor t he government and become a social good for the public. This model allows for no government oversight, trusting in Adam Smiths invisible hand of the market to selfregulate. The functions of the press according to both libertarian and social re sponsibility theories include: servicing the political system with information a nd debate; enlightening the public to make it capable of self-government; safegu arding the rights of the individual by services through the medium of advertisin g; providing entertainment; and finally maintaining self-sufficient finances to avoid conflict of interest (ibid, 74). These six aspects are still present in perceived Western media today, and one mu st only look to the 400 schools of communications and increasing enrollment coun ts at U.S. colleges and universities to see its influence on the system. The rol e of the media as an arbiter of global news has in many ways become romanticized , and is imagined to play a very different role than what it does in actuality. The term fourth estate was coined by the 19th Century English politician/journalis t, Thomas Macauley, to describe the members of the press, because they sat with the members of parliament and not with the public. Although their role was to re port and watch over their government and report back to their fellow citizens, i n actuality, their elevated status privileged them beyond the public and is demo nstrative of todays press-government symbiotic relationship in the West. As Stanton suggests, Western media are merely local agents representing the intere sts of corporate and government elites, while the real institutions of globaliza tion are the World Bank, or United Nations. Differentiating between agent and in stitution are critical to understanding the Western media and how it came to be disguised as an institution upholding social responsibility. The three pillars of globalization government, corporations, and media make up t he public sphere present in Western society today, according to German philosoph er Jrgen Habermas and American sociologist Leon Mayhew (Stanton, 193). The amalga mation of state power, private/corporate revenues, and finally the medias influen ce on the masses is the result of this Western tripartite. Stanton uses Mayhews i magined New Public was rooted in Habermas philosophy, but instead focuses on publi c relations agents extreme ability to persuade and erode the publics ability to di stinguish fact from fiction in the output of media (ibid, 192). No pillar, according to this model, has more influence over the other, and likew ise they all benefit from the others. Stanton explains the Western medias rationa lization for its partnership and its deviation from its responsibility to society . The news media narrow the frames of reference and imagine the institutions of globalization actually represent the same interests as corporations and governme nts (Stanton, 194). Corporations, although slightly more reformed after the econ omic crash in 2009, still remain loyal to making money to satisfy their stakehol ders and maintain their elite status. Foreign policy issues take a back seat mor e often than not with government, because each administration is limited to four -year terms. This changes the focus to domestic issues first and lastly allottin g much time to campaigning for reelection. Therefore, the media, being allied wi th these institutions, must delude itself into believing its purpose still remai ns to serve the public, all the while really existing to feed the capitalist sys tem. This model of reporting is unacceptable, because it exemplifies how the medi a acting in their own interest (as is their constitutional right) end up doing a disservice to the public they purport to serve, by narrowing its exposure to th e global community. What the American public see instead, is what De Beer calls the Victim-Villain Discourse, in which the most valuable foreign stories are thos e that can be cast as binary opposites (159). These binary stories become the foc us of media reporting abroad because it provides American audiences with a false

sense of involvement in helping to save one of the victimized others in the world when they send five-dollars to Haiti after seeing the Red Cross on TV. While Western media have worked alongside governments and corporations for nearl y its entire existence, the current model as a pillar grounded next to them was heightened by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. For sixty years, America had not been attacked or provoked in such a way as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade C enter towers and the Pentagon in 2001. American journalists, arguably were broug ht back down from the perceived role as the fourth estate on 9/11, and embodied th e role as citizens in the public sphere once more. The tragic events that occurr ed brought ideology of patriotism, freedom and liberty to Americans and further penetrated into the rhetoric of the media. At the same time it further stretched the dichotomy that existed between American (civilized society, role-models) an d the developing world. Instead of the mainstream media investigating the events to understand why their country was under attack, they remained ever focused on domestic issues and reaction stories that built unity and solidarity throughout the country in such uncertain times. How the media elites in the U.S. handled the coverage of government policy leadi ng up the war in Iraq was irresponsible, no matter how it is justified. During s ocial conflicts, media scholars and researchers like Gurevitch and Blumler sugge st that it is imperative the media report on "the representation of the diverse viewpoints of various parties to the conflict and the necessity of evaluating th ese viewpoints and rendering decisions in light of the preponderance of facts th e process of getting the truth (McLeod, 4)." Instead, journalists overwhelmingly stopped all investigative reporting and took what the government said as unques tionable facts. Despite lacking hard evidence linking Saddam Hussein with Al Qae da the responsible Islamic fundamentalist group that allegedly orchestrated 9/11 the government used its relationship with the media to win over the public atti tude and earn support for invading Iraq. The complicity of American media after 9/11 is further seen in CNN broadcast cov erage showing the White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at Colin Powells famo us press conference the Bush Administration used to gain support for going to wa r. Fleischer incoherently stated, I think the reason that we know that Saddam Hus sein possesses chemical and biological weapons is from a wide variety of means. Thats how we know (ibid, 13). Public figures like Fleischer were able to say such meaningless things, because it added to the consistent reports of government auth orities supporting the war, and would eventually win the publics approval. Further more, McLeod cites in his article, Derelict of Duty, that when journalists reiter ated elements of Powells speech, they rarely, if ever, treated his contentions as anything other than established fact. During this time, the owner of Fox news, R upert Murdoch, hired Roger Ailes, the most important and effective PR strategists for the Republican Party to become the networks new president in 2003 (Boyd-Barre tt, 127). There could not be a more clear demonstration of the marriage between the U.S. media and government than this. It exposes the direct interference of t he government in its countrys prescribed free press. These qualities of the elite m edia in America are not widely known by the public majority, because they are th e medias stakeholders and consumers and greatly rely on the media to educate them on an array of topics. American media after 9/11 has furthered dichotomized the relationship betwee n the U.S. and the developing world by reporting global events in an us versus them manner. The developing world (them) will then only be reported by the media elite based on the level of interest it has to us (stakeholders, governments, businesses ). This may be entertaining news of a bizarre and corrupt dictator like Libyas Mu ammar Gaddafi or news of how the U.S. was able to get its citizens safely out of Egypt during the Jan, 25, 2011 revolution. The dichotomy that exists underlines how the news is localized and ethnocentrically reported in order to appeal to U .S. readers, and its failure to attempt to interpret the issues and events outsi de of its own public sphere. Stanton sums this divide up by saying that without

the mainstream media objectively reporting the issues and events of the developin g world poverty, famine, disease citizens in the developed world would be persua ded less that there is need to apply themselves to these issues (191). If the Wes tern news media continue to frame complex global news parallel to simplistic loc al news, citizens will remain feeling fragmented and without any strong attachme nt to either area of the news. Global news is derived mainly from the corporate owners of the elite media, who frame the news based on what they assume will interest their stakeholders. Weste rn journalists, however, also add to the quality of global news based on how the y were trained to report abroad. In his chapter, Challenges and Barriers to Globa l Journalism Arnold De Beer writes that journalists carry their own cultural bias es with them when they report on foreign issues abroad. Furthermore, they carry b y extension the biases of their news editorsthat is, journalists necessarily resp ond to requests and pressures from their home base to deliver stories conforming to home needs (156). The concept that predominates Anglo-American media is that th e assumption that these values set the bar of normalness in global news communic ations. This plays into Stantons theory that all news is local, because Western j ournalists believe that the way that they report the news is the civilized truth , and further demonstrates the Western ambition of exporting its ethnocentric vie w of democracy through the media. Another issue that has developed in global journalism from the West is the simpl ification of the issues and events being reported abroad. Because of the basic s tructure of hard news stories the reverse pyramid that places the leading issue at the top and follows with facts of decreasing importance Western journalists a re compelled to open with the most attention-grabbing part of the story to incre ase readership. This often strays from the true news occurring in a foreign coun try and gives the American public a false representation or misinterpreted idea of the events taking place. De Beer explains that, ultimately, the journalistic p ractices of labeling and seeking the visually dramatic and sensational necessari ly eschews complexity in favor of decontextualized, dehistoricized reductions (1 58). This focus on reporting news with the end goal of appeasing the curiosity of the public is detrimental to society and perpetuates the publics limited underst anding of issues and events occurring beyond their provincial communities. Media scholar Robert McChesney says in his new book The Death and Life of Americ an Journalism (2010), that without a civic counterbalance to the inconsistencies of the market, the odds of the possibility that Western journalism will wither and die is high. McChesney says, Its replacement would not be a void but the soph isticated propaganda, be it private or public, of a modern age in which it is po ssible to tell people much of what they need to know to consume products and sup port spurious wars, but nothing that they need to know to be voters and citizens (McChesney, 2)." McChesney offers little hope for any of the current ideas on r eforming the media, but says that until Americans face the truth that journalism is a public good and is no longer commercially viable, the media of America wil l continue on its path toward becoming a complete tool of corporate propaganda. Whats more, top U.S. officials also feel disparagingly about the states media. Cur rent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Commit tee in early March that: Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because its real news. Y ou may not agree with it, but you feel like youre getting real news around the cl ock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking he ads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news, which, you know, is not partic ularly informative to us, let alone foreigners. Al Jazeera English was launched in 2006 and became the worlds first English langu age satellite news system based in the Middle East. The live online streaming ne

ws saw an increase of more than 2000 percent in the wake of the 2011 Pan-Arab re volution. The organization cites that more than 60 percent of that traffic origi nates from the United States (Khanfar, 2011). With its coverage of the Arab revo lutions, Al Jazeera ran information from citizens in throughout the region with less vetting and counted on the crowd to correct the errors. This model is signi ficant as it demonstrates the effectiveness of crowdsourcing, the act of using t he public crowd to help perform a task in this case reporting events through an op en call to a community. The West can learn a valuable lesson from Al Jazeera Eng lish, in its ability to reach an enormous audience without having to resort to u sing the post-9/11 framework for describing the developing world (especially the Middle East) as a clash of civilizations. Al Jazeera English has worked to debunk cross-cultural stereotypes and has recently been influential in altering how th e Western media reports Middle Eastern events as well. One noticeable change tha t took place in the Western media was seen in its replacement of the word Muslim w ith Arab, thus emphasizing the people instead of the faith. Furthermore, the media model with which Al Jazeera English adheres to could be u sed likewise by the Western media in order to improve the quality of its global news reporting. Since media organizations have increasingly become actors able t o shape opinions and policy revolving around international conflicts, it is ther efore increasingly critical that Western media see reformations in the near futu re. Al Jazeera English uses a conciliatory method of news reporting, allowing it t o cover contentious issues in a way that contributes to creating an environment t hat is more conducive to cooperation, negotiation and reconciliation. Many cross-cultural media scholars like Dov Shinar (2004) recognize that many me dias standards are more compatible with war than with peace. Because of the visua lly stimulating aspects of war, news media use this coverage to increase their a udiences, while at the same time spreading the propaganda of commercial and poli tical institutions that stand to benefit from the it. War coverage by the West i s associated with heroism and conflict, according to Shinar and focuses on the em otional rather than on the rational, and satisfies news-value demands: the prese nt, the unusual, the dramatic, simplicity, action, personalization, and results (el-Nawawy, 2008). Just as Al Jazeera is based out of the Gulf state Qatar and ha s a vested interest in seeing peace in its region; the Western media knows news consumption increases during active conflicts and therefore has an increased int erest in covering news with an overstated proclivity for violence (ibid, 13). Fu rthermore, many media use outdated historical reasoning to describe global confl icts that alter its meaning or purpose. For instance, during the U.S. invasion o f Iraq, many Arab media cited Western imperialism as their justification for war , while the Western media cited national security of which neither reasons were accurate. Because of the post-9/11 relationship the American media has maintained with its government, the reporting on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq; the Israeli-Palesti nian conflict; and Pan-Arab revolution, have largely been biased and framed in a localized angle for the interest of American public. This post-9/11 global new coverage by the elite media has unsatisfactorily educated and misinformed the Am erican public of global events and issues that transpire. This has especially be en an issue with regard to the broadcasted news over the radio, cable and satell ite and as put by Sec. Clinton, contains so many commercials and opinions that A mericans are beginning to seek out new alternative purveyors of news like Al Jaz eera English. McChesney says that the American media may very well disintegrate into a sys tem that bears no news in it if some form of media reform is not endorsed sooner or later. While citizen and social media are on the rise and help with crowdsou rcing during escalating-conflicts like the Pan-Arab revolution, it is not enough to maintain an honest and socially responsible media in the West. As McChesney suggests, government funding of public media is necessary to counterbalance the

corporate-influence and bring consistency to globalized reporting. Government fu nding also should not be equated with government interference, as the U.S. Supre me Court has ensure this precedent and it would act as many other public goods t he federal government funds. Reforming the American media will be a highly diffi cult task, because the majority among the public are either already disenfranchi sed and are not media consumers, or they have been consistently misinformed by t he media for long enough that they see no need for reforms at their (tax payers) expense. It will be a long but worthy road to seek American media reform; and b y starting with one network free from regulations, but funded by the government, the American media elites can set their own example of a diverse global news sy stem, and influence others just as Al Jazeera English has done.

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