The Contents of a Televised International Event - Case Study Example

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA POLICY [Student’s Name] [Professor’s Name] [Institutional Affiliation] There are certain times that local events pique the interest of a worldwide audience. In the post-millennial age, however, local news coverage has become a less profitable venture than it was in times past. For this reason, media houses work with the aim of reaching, not only the local sphere of consumers, but also the larger audience that is the global sphere with news items that they deem to be relevant to this audience. Certain companies that were not privy of the changing trends realized too late that the old ways of doing business had become obsolete, and they could not stay in business for long unless they changed their customer base and their approach to business as well. Regardless of these changes, media houses still have to operate under the auspices of the Legislature by observing the rules and regulations stipulated by various policies. Indeed, the proliferation of technologies with which happenings can be shared implies that the conventional approach to news coverage also faces obsolescence. Today, for example, a news item regarding an accident on a major highway might best be covered by an eye witness using as simple a handheld gadget as a phone with a video camera replete with online live streaming. This paper shall make an attempt at analyzing the contents of a televised international event that took place in the year 2015 in the context of the media policies of two countries. In particular, this paper shall consider Al Jazeera (a Qatari news agency) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (a British news agency) in relation to their coverage of the recent airstrikes meted against Syria by Russian air force. Three or more concepts shall be considered in this regard including but not limited to “the power of the nation state and media” concept, the concept of “the political economy of media”, and the concept of “cultural globalization and media policy”. The analysis shall also draw from scholarly articles that make reference to the media environments and the media policies inherent in Qatar and England. As the Russo-Syrian conflict continues this month, it is expected that different media houses shall plug into the war situation to give first hand news. However, as with any other exercise at observation of ongoing events, there are definitely going to be different accounts of the same event given that each reporter has a different perspective, a different point of view. This is quite evident in the reports that Al Jazeera and the BBC give to-date. This situation may be likened to two people carrying out an experiment while each of them has a different guidebook. The media policies in Qatar differ from those of the British, if there be any, and whatever news reporters look for in any piece of news is highly likely to differ when Qatari news and British news are compared one against the other. The differences in news coverage are not only caused by personal differences among journalists, but also by the policies guiding news coverage in the country from which the journalists come. When these personal differences are set aside, what emerges is that for any two countries, media policies may not necessarily be the same, and even if they were similar, the manner through which they are interpreted would differ, say, because of language barriers. Taking a closer look at the BBCs coverage of the Russo-Syrian conflict, it emerges that very few videos have been made that capture the situation. An analyst is bound to ask the reason for this and what would emerge is that there are several factors at play. For one, the BBC is the epitome of the manner in which the power of state determines the way communication should follow. Considering the work of Puppis (2014), the nation-state is particularly equipped to influence communication. Taking it for granted that every media house is motivated by the revenue obtained from news delivered to the populace, it follows that these news agencies shall only produce such information that their clients are willing to pay for. It is illogical for BBC or any other news agency to produce news articles that their prospective clients are not willing to consume. Fundamentally, the British culture is a culture that finds reading to be a valuable pastime, and this culture also influences their choices with regard to how they shall consume news articles. Definitely, the majority of Britons shall be more comfortable reading news than watching news. It may be argued that motion pictures lend themselves to manipulation so that whatever is presented to viewers might not necessarily be first-hand information but a fabrication of the truth whose verification is often a very costly affair. Dealing with printed media, however, is much more straightforward, and this could also be a reason why politicians may opt not to make any decisions or otherwise. Whilst Puppis (2014) remains a proponent of the media as a tool for hegemony, one may contend with this viewpoint with an argument as follows. No politician would advocate for more news articles being featured as videos while knowing full well that the British populace prefer reading to watching news, even if the former would cause a spike in the annual revenue of the media house concerned. There is no case for hegemony here, because it is the masses steering the media house in terms of what they would like to see and what they would not. Hegemony would only come into play if a politician (considered as part of the elite) would decide that when reporting about the Russo-Syrian war, news reporters should show live coverage even if it meant that they would be endangering their lives in the process or even causing emotional turmoil to the audience by airing disturbing scenes. Therefore, it is no wonder that the BBC not only controls the number of audio-visual recordings to be aired, but it also endeavors to limit the length of each so that they are as short as they are economically feasible, but also just long enough for the audience to capture the general gist of the news article, or without them missing the salient features inherent in the recording. Nord and Krogh (2015) opine that for a politician to make a policy, there are preferences to be considered, enough contextual information to be gathered and the formation of a political standpoint. From the argument above, Nord and Krogh may get some backing especially when they talk about “preferences”. Nevertheless, the formation of a political standpoint with regard to whether Britons should watch news rather than read it would seem like a waste of time since they already have a bias toward the latter. Faced with such a debate, therefore, it is likely (when considering the perspective taken by Nord and Krogh (2015)) that a politician would decide to make no decision at all. The BBC, as has been discussed so far, depicts a situation of the media being a far cry from a tool for hegemonization, and this stands contrary to Puppis’ (2014) sentiments. In fact, rather than sway public opinion through persuasion or force, the BBC simply reports news as it is, leaving the masses to act at their discretion. One only sees practical democracy devoid of hullaballoo when studying news covered by the BBC and this somehow shows that Britain has no vested interests in the conflict that exists between Russia and Syria. In fact, whether there is any alliance between Britain and any of the countries actively involved in the conflict remains quite unclear. BBC somehow manages to depict Britain as an aloof, passive observer who in no way stands to benefit from an allegiance to either side of the conflict. Cultural hegemony is evident in Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war situation in Syria, with a video being used to portray Russia as a country that takes offense against Arabs in general, although the current situation in Syria implies that the Syrians have been singled out to face Russia’s wrath. Al Jazeera, on the fourth day of October 2015, posted a video of a would-be Russian airstrike on Syrian soil that was a close call for Al Jazeera’s journalists (Jazeera, 2015). A cursory look at the clip would not yield much information but for the fact that there is chaos after a bomb has been dropped by an aero plane. However, some questions remain unanswered with regard to the motion picture. Ideally, reporters from one media house ought to know each other and apart from that, when a reporter covers a certain news article, it is a matter of convention to have his/her name appended to that news piece. This particular recording by Al Jazeera shows no semblance of good reporting practice because the names of the journalists who might have been killed had the bomb struck home have not been revealed. Al Jazeera makes no mention of any name known to them in this regard. There is a possibility that the clip may have been recorded from a random movie and posted online for “agenda setting,” a concept that is discussed in detail by Zhang and Meadows (2012). Indeed, the Al Jazeera video clip is a synthesis of cultural hegemony and agenda setting. Qatar, the home of Al Jazeera, is an Islamic state and so is Syria. It is not unusual for one Islamic state to stand in solidarity with another Islamic state when international conflicts of the Russo-Syrian kind crop up. The agenda mostly in circulation would be that the non-Islamic belligerent is the ‘bad’ one, and the Islamic state need to be supported by their kind (that is, other Islamic states). Not only does the video clip reveal the role that media can play in international relations and the promotion of a national image, but it does employ some aspect of critical journalism as intimated by Nohrstedt & Ottosen (2012). Therefore, the media can cause international relations to become stronger (for example, the case of Syria and other Islamic states when the latter come to Syria’s aid), or they can cause such relations to deteriorate (for example, the escalation of the Russo-Syrian conflict). On the other hand, the media can also be the tool that helps paint a certain country in negative light. Consider, for instance, how Russia should look in the eyes of other Islamic groups when the latter are presented with the video clip if not that Russia is an enemy to Islamic countries, because of the indiscriminate manner it launched the airstrike. Further critique would actually reveal that there was no way the pilot could have kept the journalists (if they were really Al Jazeera journalists) from being hit by friendly fire, let alone evacuate them. Therefore, whether it has done this deliberately or not, Al Jazeera is a propagandist media house bent on using sensationalistic approaches to manipulate the minds of its audience so that the audience might be biased against one country, regardless of other factors that might have caused the conflict. It is said that for the situation of marginalized groups and disadvantaged nations to improve, it is imperative communication and new information technologies be used without commercial interests, which would worsen the situation of those groups. Looking at the BBC and Al Jazeera footages of the conflict in Syria, one cannot help but notice that both media houses have corporate commercial interests, but their approaches to meeting their corporate goals are entirely different. The BBC employs succinct brevity while a sensationalist approach is the purview of Al Jazeera. The BBC, rather than try to sway the audience in a predetermined direction, let’s them not only decide how they are going to receive the news, but also how they are going to react to it. Brevity may also be observed in the Al Jazeera footage, but the audience’s reaction is premeditated in that they are expected to react in a certain manner that shall fulfill the purposes of the footage. Having thus seen the differences that exist in the way the Russo-Syrian conflict has been covered by these two media agencies, the question that arises is, “How does one reconcile the disconnect that exists between the BBC and Al Jazeera products?” The answer might lie in media plurality as discussed by Smith and Tambini (2012). Nevertheless, the plurality approach suggested herein differs from the Smith & Tambini (2012) in that the audience does not only have to utilize the news agencies within their own country, but if policies therein should allow, then they may explore many stations, analyze the information being presented to them by each station independent of the others and later on synthesize the information so collected prior to making informed decisions concerning the same. It is unfortunate, however, that in every country there are policies, some of which would be against information being accessed from outside the country without having undergone some form of censorship. In effect, the populace has no choice but to consume that which the polity avails to them through such censorship. Therefore, the polity determines what the consumers of media products think, and the way they think is also a function of what the polity allows them to utilize. All is not doom and gloom when one tries to think about hegemonization and a minority determining what the majority shall be able to access. Zhang and Meadows (2012) look at state branding as a function of media, and allude to a market brand, saying that the way a foreign country perceives another state shall determine how their interaction shall be as far as foreign trade is concerned. This implies that when appraising the media content from one country, the bodies so concerned shall be in a position to determine whether what they uncover is worth releasing to the general public, and when they find that it is worthwhile, this is an indication that international ties with the country from which that material came can be maintained awhile longer. In conclusion, this paper has discussed how different media houses shall view the same international event differently, based not only on the policies their countries have put in place with regard to the information they shall share, but also based on individual factors. The paper has shown that certain agenda may also determine what is shown to the general public, and that when the national image is at stake, the government steps in to control what the populace utilizes from outside. This has been shown to be a way through which hegemonization becomes a positive undertaking that seeks to protect the citizens rather than keep them enslaved to certain ways of thinking. Finally, during times of conflict, as is the case between Syria and Russia presently, the media has been found to have the potential of either escalating the conflict or assuaging the conflicting parties. Therefore, it is easy to tell which countries value peace, and which ones do not. References Jazeera, A. (Director). (2015). Al Jazeera journalists narrowly escape air strike [Motion Picture]. Nohrstedt, S. A., & Ottosen, R. (2012). Wikileaks and war laws. In D. a. Freedman, Media and Terrorism (pp. 205 - 222). Sage. Nord, L. W., & Krogh, T. V. (2015). The Freedom of The Press or The Fear Factor? Analysing Political Decisions and Non-Decisions in British Media Policy 1990-2012. Observatorio , 1 - 16. Puppis, M. (2014). The regulation of political communication. In C. R. (ed.), Political Communication, (pp. 39-61). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. Smith, R. C., & Tambini, D. (2012). Measuring media plurality in the United Kingdom: Policy choices and regulatory challenges. Journal of Media Law, 4(1) , 35 - 63. Victor, D. (2015, September 25). What Causes a Super Blood Moon? The New York Times , p. n.p. Zhang, C., & Meadows, C. W. (2012). International coverage, foreign policy and national image: Exploring the complexities of media coverage, public opinion and presidential agendas. International Journal of Communication, 6 , 76 - 95. Read More

The differences in news coverage are not only caused by personal differences among journalists, but also by the policies guiding news coverage in the country from which the journalists come. When these personal differences are set aside, what emerges is that for any two countries, media policies may not necessarily be the same, and even if they were similar, the manner through which they are interpreted would differ, say, because of language barriers. Taking a closer look at the BBCs coverage of the Russo-Syrian conflict, it emerges that very few videos have been made that capture the situation.

An analyst is bound to ask the reason for this and what would emerge is that there are several factors at play. For one, the BBC is the epitome of the manner in which the power of state determines the way communication should follow. Considering the work of Puppis (2014), the nation-state is particularly equipped to influence communication. Taking it for granted that every media house is motivated by the revenue obtained from news delivered to the populace, it follows that these news agencies shall only produce such information that their clients are willing to pay for.

It is illogical for BBC or any other news agency to produce news articles that their prospective clients are not willing to consume. Fundamentally, the British culture is a culture that finds reading to be a valuable pastime, and this culture also influences their choices with regard to how they shall consume news articles. Definitely, the majority of Britons shall be more comfortable reading news than watching news. It may be argued that motion pictures lend themselves to manipulation so that whatever is presented to viewers might not necessarily be first-hand information but a fabrication of the truth whose verification is often a very costly affair.

Dealing with printed media, however, is much more straightforward, and this could also be a reason why politicians may opt not to make any decisions or otherwise. Whilst Puppis (2014) remains a proponent of the media as a tool for hegemony, one may contend with this viewpoint with an argument as follows. No politician would advocate for more news articles being featured as videos while knowing full well that the British populace prefer reading to watching news, even if the former would cause a spike in the annual revenue of the media house concerned.

There is no case for hegemony here, because it is the masses steering the media house in terms of what they would like to see and what they would not. Hegemony would only come into play if a politician (considered as part of the elite) would decide that when reporting about the Russo-Syrian war, news reporters should show live coverage even if it meant that they would be endangering their lives in the process or even causing emotional turmoil to the audience by airing disturbing scenes. Therefore, it is no wonder that the BBC not only controls the number of audio-visual recordings to be aired, but it also endeavors to limit the length of each so that they are as short as they are economically feasible, but also just long enough for the audience to capture the general gist of the news article, or without them missing the salient features inherent in the recording.

Nord and Krogh (2015) opine that for a politician to make a policy, there are preferences to be considered, enough contextual information to be gathered and the formation of a political standpoint. From the argument above, Nord and Krogh may get some backing especially when they talk about “preferences”. Nevertheless, the formation of a political standpoint with regard to whether Britons should watch news rather than read it would seem like a waste of time since they already have a bias toward the latter.

Faced with such a debate, therefore, it is likely (when considering the perspective taken by Nord and Krogh (2015)) that a politician would decide to make no decision at all. The BBC, as has been discussed so far, depicts a situation of the media being a far cry from a tool for hegemonization, and this stands contrary to Puppis’ (2014) sentiments.

Read More