CNN International and Al-Jazeera Arabic - Essay Example

CNN International The CNN.com has constantly pursued to bring people the top news stories fromaround the world through international edition. Owned by Turner Broadcasting Sysem Inc., Time Warner company, it is created by dedicated staff in London and Hong Kong who has been working with colleagues at CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and with 47 bureaus worldwide for global and local reach. The Company banks intemperately upon CNN's global team of over 4,000 news professionals for operating with 25 branded networks and services, reaching 2 billion people worldwide in more than 200 countries and territories, and more than 1,000 affiliates around the globe for coverage. The Company features the latest multimedia technologies, from live video streaming to audio packages to searchable archives of news features and background information. While CNN's dedication to breaking news remains its hallmark, it acts as more than just a network with the latest national and international developments. The Company continues to be the leading multiplatform provider of news content, with programs covering business, travel, the environment and sports, twined and linked with constant investment in new technologies and channels such as mobile and internet.1 CNN International started transmissions on January 1, 1984 at first broadcasting to American business travelers in hotels. The huge bulk of the network's programming primitively consisted of simulcasts of the two domestic CNN channels, CNN/US and Headline News. However, the quantity of news programming created by CNN International especially for international viewers significantly enhanced, in 1990, which came forth as an internationally oriented news channel with staff members of various national backgrounds. On July 4, 1997, CNN International was awarded the Liberty Medal and in accepting the medal on behalf of the network, Ted Turner said: "My idea was, we're just going to give people the facts…We didn't have to show liberty and democracy as good, and show socialism or totalitarianism as bad. If we just showed them both the way they were…clearly everybody's going to choose liberty and democracy."2 CNN Abu Dhabi based in United Arab Emirates was launched on January 11, 2009 and CNN International adjusted half an hour in its schedule with a new evening prime program for the Middle East viewers “Prism”. From January till September 2009, CNN International conformed more programs that went pitched to a primetime European audience with a few titled after CNN International charismas especially the interview program Amanpour. The channel plunged a new tagline "Go Beyond Borders", accenting the international view that gives the information in this string and the plurality of the audiences and also referring to the various platforms to broadcast their contents, along with a new logo on September 21, 2009. The Channel amalgamated its general newscasts (CNN Today, Your World Today, World News, World News Europe and World News Asia) into a single newscast entitled World Report. CNN International has launched new programs for evening-prime and meliorated its schedule from 2010. The Domestic CNN has increased the CNN International schedule by adding the new talk show program “Piers Morgan Tonight” in 2011. Today, CNN International has six variants namely: CNN International Europe/Middle East/Africa, based in London, England, United Kingdom; CNN International Latin America based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA; CNN International North America based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA; CNN International Asia Pacific based in Hong Kong SAR, China; CNN International South Asia based in Hong Kong SAR, China; and CNN International Middle East, based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.3 Al-Jazeera Owned by the state of Qatar and headquartered in Doha, Qatar, Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster through the Qatar Media Corporation. Al Jazeera was initially launched as an Arabic news and current affairs satellite TV channel and since then it has expanded into a network with several outlets, including the Internet and specialty TV channels in multiple languages. Launched on 1st January, 1999, Al Jazeera was rapidly turning to be one of the most potent news agencies in the region. The Channel is accessible in several world regions and is willing to broadcast dissentient views, such as on call-in shows, which has created disputations in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. It obtained advantage of worldwide attention after the 11th September 2001 attacks, being the only channel to cover the war in Afghanistan live from its office there.4 Arabs became dedicated viewing audience for being their eager for news beyond the official versions of issues. According to an estimate of year 2000, Al Jazeera ranked first in the Arab world over the London's Arab News Network (ANN) and Saudi Arabia-sponsored Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC). The Channel has approx 70 satellite or terrestrial channels, most of them in Arabic, being transmitted to the Middle East. In January 2001, Al Jazeera launched a free Arabic language web site and in addition, the TV feed was soon accessible in UK for the first time through British Sky Broadcasting.5 In 2006, Al Jazeera launched an English language channel, originally called Al Jazeera International and the broadcast of the new operation was turned over between foundations in Doha, London, Washington, D.C., and Kuala Lumpur on a daily cycle. The new English language channel fronted significant regulatory and commercial vaults in the North America market for its comprehended sympathy with ultra causes, while others felt Al Jazeera's competitive advantage hive away programming in the Arabic language. However, there were hundreds of millions of potential viewers among the non-Arabic language speaking Muslims in Asia and Europe and many others who might be concerned with watching news from the Middle East in local voices.6 Egyptian Revolution A popular uprising began on 25th January 2011 and is still continuing as of November 2011 has led to the 2011 Egyptian revolution. It was mainly a crusade of non-violent civil resistance featuring a series of marches, demonstrations, acts of civil disobedience and labor strikes, for demand to overthrow the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak by Millions of protesters from diversified socio-economic and religious backgrounds. Despite being preponderantly peaceable in nature, the revolution went through violent clashes between security forces and protesters, with around 846 people killed and 6,000 injured.7 Ultimately on February 11, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt. The decision was made in response to protestations of 18 days across the nation and was met with rampant cheers. The Egyptian military got to be in control of the country later on.8 CNN International Approach to Egyptian Revolution 2011 CNN International has been consistently providing coverage updates regarding Egypt Revolution. In a Press Release, on 11 February 2011, CNN said that the Channel increased its presence in Egypt with the addition of Nic Robertson, who had reached to Cairo that day, joined by Fionnuala Sweeney, who had been reporting from Israel and then Abu Dhabi during the Egyptian protests. Six CNN teams were there on the ground in Egypt. More than 30 CNN staff had been newsgathering and reporting for all of CNN Worldwide's platforms and rendering all-inclusive live coverage which depicts CNN's worldwide resources of journalists and video production. In addition to the reporting from Egypt, CNN had reporters for coverage of this story from other primal places in the region. The Channel had also been taking advantage of its large newsgathering hub in Abu Dhabi and the International Desk in Atlanta, which had legion Arab speakers and specialists. It had also been covering the upshot through the lens of social media as the clamp down on media and communications kept on and showing the story in a different light practicing CNN iReport and other platforms including live blogs.9 CNN International reporting of Egyptian Revolution was criticized by many analysts for being biased reporting in terms of not discussing people’s efforts to continue with peaceful demonstrations. The videos were knocked for suggesting a manic scene as on-the-scene reporters screaming over crowds with concerned tones. According to an analyst, CNN had not been reporting any mention of the events or some parts of a long list of accelerators, such as rampant Egyptian police brutality, specifically towards bloggers and plainspoken protesting citizens, far-flung poverty and neo-liberal economic policy, which led to the uprising.. The main subject of CNN coverage as to why Mubarak was being brought down was that he had been president for more than 30 years. In most of CNN videos, the anchor attempted to lead his reporter to figure that there were more pro-Mubarak protesters than anti-Mubarak.10 In a talk to MarketingHub.me, Ahmad Humeid, Jordanian expert on branding, shared his view on the importance of labels, saying: “Labels are extremely important for Western audiences […] They are detached from the events happening in our region and many do not have sufficient backgrounds to understand the event in question. For us here in the Arab world, all our attention is directed toward Egypt as it is so close to home, and because we strongly relate to the Egyptian people; so we can see beyond the labels.” Still Humeid went on saying that labels were not as important today as they had been before the days of social media. “With social media there is an overwhelming amount of 'unlabeling' taking place, […] Media consumers no longer need an established news company like CNN that takes an event and packages it in a certain light. As the audience, you can see a tweet from a person on the street, directly relaying what he or she is seeing, and you can label it however you want in your mind as a consumer. The problem with mass consumption, whether it is a label on a cereal box or through mass media, is that you are consuming a brand like a popular broadcaster such as CNN, as opposed to cold, hard facts.”11 Al Jazeera Approach to Egyptian Revolution 2011 The Qatar-based channel's hailed coverage of the Egyptian crisis has been pertained to as the broadcaster's "CNN moment", making it for al-Jazeera English what the first Gulf war made for CNN, forcing it to the cutting edge of the public's cognizance. It had been a must-see TV, but the challenge was to interpret the enthusiastic approvals into the major cable or satellite distribution deal the channel had long looked for without success in the US. Al-Jazeera English is available in around 220 million homes in more than 100 countries throughout the world, including viewing audience with Freeview, Sky or Freesat in the UK, but less than 3 million of those homes are in the US including Washington, DC which has been helpful for the White House.12 Al Jazeera had been providing updates of the story regarding Egyptian Revolution, with reporting from Al Jazeera staff in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez, from their headquarters in Doha. Despite of headquartered in the Middle East, Al Jazeera’s has far more resources and networks available as the time they dedicated to the revolution and efficiency in covering breaking news supplanted that of other channels. Apart from these apprehensible differences, Al Jazeera made a witting effort for their coverage to mirror the momentum of the revolution in the region. The same coverage on CNN or other channels would be often disrupted by lengthy commercial breaks of the automobile industry, the Super Bowl, snow storms in America and even the royal nuptial arrangements, trickily puncturing the energy that reverberates in the viewers when watching the protests. The reality and tenderness of the Egyptian revolution was captured by Al Jazeera as it directed through a genuinely people centric approach and their journalists anchored amid those on the streets letting the people tell their story not have it told by an interminable stream of analysts and diplomats garbled from the eye of the tempest. They exhibited an overpowering necessity to give the Egyptian revolution an Islamist twist with anchors on CNN and BBC systematically calling analysts and diplomats to comment on the likeliness of a Khomeni like takeover and compulsively talking about the Islamist bona fides of the Muslim Brotherhood and their popularity amidst the Egyptian people.13 Stephen Claypole, the former senior BBC News and TV news agency executive currently is the chairman of the London and Abu Dhabi-based consultancy, DMA Media, says: "Al-Jazeera has the game by the throat, both in Arabic and English, and it has certainly lived up to its reputation as the most watched broadcaster in the Arab world in spite of intimidation and violence against its staff in Egypt. […] I have heard that [US secretary of state] Hillary Clinton [pictured] watches it constantly and that Barack Obama has been viewing from the situation room. Although al-Jazeera English has been competent since its launch, it has been waiting for a huge story to call its own. Egypt is certainly that."14 On January 30, during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution protests, the Egyptian government ordered the TV channel to close its offices and on January 31, six Al Jazeera journalists were arrested and their camera equipment were seized by Egyptian security forces for several hours, and Al Jazeera Mubasher's Broadcast to Egypt was also reported to be disrupted.15 The Channel has been knocked by Egyptian newspapers and television shows for its allegedly biased coverage of news related to Egypt and its government, and many of them argued and suggest that these uninterrupted attacks against Egypt is to destruct Egypt’s image in the region.16 Works Cited Vassileva, Ralitsa. "China's media crackdown" (video). CNN. 2008. Retrieved on 17 Nov 2011. Whitaker, Brian "Battle station". The Guardian (London). 7 Feb 2003. Retrieved on 17 Nov 2011. Robert Fisk: The Independent, 2 Nov 2011. Retrieved on 17 Nov 2011. Naomi Sakr. Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization & the Middle East. 2001. London: I.B. Tauris, pp.57 Hugh Miles, Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel that is Challenging the West. 2005. New York: Grove Press, p.346. Almasry-alyoum.com. 16 Mar 2011. Retrieved on 17 Nov 2011. BBC. 8 Jul 2011. Retrieved on 17 Nov 2011. Read More