Media of Mass Communication Ch17

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The Hellfire Pictures When journalist Hayatullah Khan heard that an important Al Qaeda commander had been killed in the tribal-controlled Waziristan region of Pakistan, he rushed to the scene. Khan took photos of the shambles of the house, where, the government said, the Al Qaeda leader had been making a bomb when it blew up. Khan’s photos showed something else—fragments of a U.S. Hellfire missile. Khan’s story, with photos, reported that the missile had been fired from a U.S. spy drone—a sensational re- port that contradicted both U.S. and Pakistani official insistence that the U.S. anti-terrorism resources were honoring Pakistan’s sovereignty and staying within the borders of neighboring Afghanistan.

Officials at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which oper- ates drones, were displeased with Khan’s reporting. So was the Pakistani government. Within days of Khan’s revelations, Khan vanished. Six months later his body was found dumped in northern Waziristan, handcuffed and shot in the back.

Khan’s family blamed the Pakistani government. The govern- ment blamed intrigue—somebody out to malign the government.

Whatever the truth, Khan’s death is testimony to the danger facing war correspondents, especially in tribal no-man’s territo- ries. Over two years, five reporters who ventured into Waziristan were killed. Now almost all reporting from the area is second- hand, with reporters using telephones to call into the region from the relative safety of Peshawar and faraway cities.

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LEARNING AHEAD

� Mass media reflect a nation’s political system.

� War can force compro- mises in media freedom.

� Market forces are trans- forming some Arab media.

� Terrorists have adapted digital media as a propaganda tool.

� Media are central in a Cold War-style battle for reforms in Iran.

� China has the broadest censorship apparatus in history.

� Variations exist among national media systems, even in democracies.

Global Mass Media

Hellfire Evidence. Missile fragments photographed by Hayatullah Khan suggest that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for a remote-control bombing in a remote Pakistani region that killed an Al Qaeda leader. It was contrary to official policy for U.S. military to be venturing into Pakistan.

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430 PART THREE Mass-Media Issues

Mass Media and Nation-States S T U D Y P R E V I E W

The world’s nations and media systems fall into competing, philosophically irrec- oncilable systems. Authoritarianism places confidence in political and sometimes theocratic leadership for governance. In contrast, libertarianism emphasizes the ability of human beings to reason their own way to right conclusions and there- fore believes humans are capable of their own governance. Democracy and a free mass media are in the libertarian tradition.

GLOBAL COMMUNICATION After the 2005 terrorist subway and bus bombings in London, the British news media flooded the streets and airwaves with stories about the suspects. Understandably, coverage was emotional. When the first arrests were made, the front page of the tabloid Sun blared: “Got the Bastards.” Then the media went silent. British law for- bids news coverage once a criminal charge has been filed. The rationale is to not prejudice potential jurors. It’s a silly law by standards in the United States, where jury contamination is avoided through jury selection procedures, jury sequestering and relocation of trials. But the British system had accomplished the same purpose too—until now.

Hungry for news about the terrorism investigation and the people arrested, Britons needed to look no further than the Internet. The Internet’s most-used coding structure is called the World Wide Web for a reason. And just down the street, newsstands stocked foreign newspapers and magazines full of ongoing reve- lations about the suspects. Legally, the imported publications, as well as Internet coverage, could be banned under the 1981 Contempt of Court Act. But how? The logistics would be overwhelming.

Throughout the world, not only in Britain, the power that governments once wielded over mass communication has eroded. The challenges for governments, especially in countries with repressive regimes, is how to impede unwanted outside messages from getting in. On a global scale, the struggle is between two intellectual

Color-Coding Freedom. Freedom House, which tracks the freedom of the new media worldwide, reports relatively few countries where news and information flow freely within and across their borders. Green shows countries that Freedom House regards as free, yellow as partly free, and pur- ple as not free. The number of free countries has grown over 20 years from 31 percent to 40 percent.

In this chapter you will discover how the mass media fit into the global geopolitical environment. The media are players not only in crisis moments, like war, but also in evolving globalization.

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CHAPTER 17 Global Mass Media 431

traditions—long-dominant authoritarianism and historically more recent freedom-favoring libertarianism.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� What are the two philosophical traditions that define different media systems around the globe?

AUTHORITARIANISM Throughout mass-media history, authoritarian political systems have been the most common. The powerful monarchies were authoritarian. So were Nazi Germany and Franco Spain in the 1900s. The Soviets had their own twist on authoritarianism. Today, dictatorships and theocracies continue the tradition. A premise of authoritarian systems is that the government is infallible, which places its policies beyond ques- tioning. The media’s role in an authoritarian society is subservience to government.

� Henry VIII. When Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in the 1400s, authorities were enthusiastic. Early printers produced Bibles and religious tracts, which was consistent with the intertwined institutions of government and church. Within two generations, however, presses also were occasionally producing materials that bordered on sedition and treason. Authorities clamped down. What happened in England was typical. In 1529 King Henry VIII outlawed imported publications. So it was decreed that every printer must be licensed. Printers caught publishing anything objectionable to the Crown lost their licenses. In effect, they were put out of business. Remaining in the government’s good graces brought favors. A license was a guar- anteed local monopoly and a lock on government and church printing jobs.

In addressing a crisis of the time, Henry VIII became the model for authoritarian control of mass media.

� Censorship. Authoritarian regimes have found numerous ways, both blatant and subtle, to control mass media. Censorship is one. The most thorough censoring requires that manuscripts be read by government agents before being printed or aired. To work, prepublication censorship requires a government agent in every newsroom and everywhere else that mass-media messages are produced. Such thorough censorship is hardly practicable, although governments sometimes establish censorship bureaucracies during wartime to protect sensitive military information and to ban information that runs counter to their propaganda. Most authoritarian regimes have opted instead for post-publication action against dissidents. The effect of the execution of a media person who strayed

� libertarianism Given time and access to good in- formation, people ultimately make the right decisions; basis of demo- cratic governance

� authoritarianism Top-down governance, such as a monarchy or dictatorship

Authoritarian Execution. Authoritarian governments prevent mass-media criticism of their policies with numerous methods, including execution. In authoritarian England, the Crown made spectacles of executions. Here, a crowd gathered in 1619 to witness the execution of John de Barneveld, which had a chilling effect on other people who might have challenged the Crown.

� Henry VIII British monarch who began crack- down on printed materials in 1529

� prepublication censorship Authorities preview material before dissemination

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432 PART THREE Mass-Media Issues

beyond what’s acceptable can be chilling to like-minded people. Consider the 1663 case of John Twyn in authoritarian England. This was the sentence imposed on Twyn, a printer: “You shall be hanged by the neck, and being alive, shall be cut down and your privy members shall be cut off, your entrails shall be taken from your body, and you living, the same to be burnt before your eyes.”

� Bribery. Another method of authoritarian control, bribery, can be either overt or disguised. Germany’s “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck, maintained an immense fund for bribing editors in his 20-year reign beginning in the 1870s. Bismarck had picked up a lesson from 300 years earlier, when authoritarian England’s licensing system rewarded supportive printers with lucrative government contracts. For decades the government of Mexico had a variation on bribery by controlling the supply of newsprint. Out-of-favor newspapers and magazines went to the bottom of the distribution list for paper. Bribery remains institutionalized today in impoverished regions, where journalists, earning subsistence salaries, accept gratuities on the side for putting certain stories in the paper and on the air.

� Authoritarian Effectiveness. Authoritarian controls can have short-term effectiveness, but truth is hard to suppress for very long. In Franco’s Spain, which was allied with Germany in World War II, the news media were mum for years about Nazi atrocities against Jews. Despite the media blackout, the Spanish people were aware of the Holocaust. People do not receive all their information through the mass media. Especially if people have come to distrust the accuracy or thoroughness of an authoritarian medium, they pay special attention to alternative sources. They talk to travelers. They read contraband publications. They listen secretly to transborder newscasts. They tap into the Internet. In recent years China has created the largest censorship apparatus in history to maintain ideological control, complete with electronic and Internet monitoring and intercepts, but the system leaks. It’s an open question whether the Chinese will come to recognize the futility of prepublication censorship, as have earlier authoritarian-minded regimes.

� Global Authoritarianism. Authoritarianism dies hard. The organization Freedom House, which monitors press freedom worldwide, lists 45 nations that deny a broad range of freedoms. The eight worst-rated countries include Cuba and North Korea, both Marxist-Leninist regimes. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia are ruled by dictators with roots in the Soviet period. Arab countries Libya and Syria are under secular dictatorships. Sudan is under leadership that has elements of both radical Islamism and military juntas. Burma has a tightly controlled military dictatorship. Tibet, although not a country but under Chinese jurisdiction, rates among the bottom-most territories. So does the former Soviet republic of Chechnya, where an indigenous Islamic population is engaged in a brutal guerrilla war for independence from Russia.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Give examples of authoritarian censorship and bribery.

� Why do authoritarian governments generally favor post-publication review to prepublication censorship?

AUTHORITARIAN PREMISES Authoritarian media systems make sense to anyone who accepts the premise that the government, whether embodied by a monarch or a dictator, is right in all that it says and does. Such a premise is anathema to most Americans, but merely 400 years ago it was mainstream Western thought. King James VII of Scotland, who later became James I of England, made an eloquent argument for the divine right of kings in 1598. He claimed that legitimate monarchs were anointed by an Almighty and thereby were better able to express righteousness and truth than anyone else. By definition, therefore, anybody who differed with the monarch was em- bracing falsity and probably heresy.

Divine Right. King James I, who fancied himself a scholar, wrote a treatise in 1598 that claimed monarchies were legiti- mate because of a pipeline to God. His theory, called the divine right of kings, is a classic defense for authoritarian politi- cal and media systems.

� King James VII Articulated the divine right of kings theory

� divine right of kings Proper decisions follow the monarch’s will, which is linked to an Almighty

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A s a novelist, Orhan Pamuk does what novelists do best—cast pressing problematic issues in

such a powerful light that their resolu- tion is hastened. In memoir-style best sellers Pamuk has explored controver- sial views of the culture of his native Turkey, particularly tensions between East and West, secularism and Islamism, and past and present. Although Pamuk’s works have been lauded for their literary merit, his crit- ics would rather some things be left un- said. Some Turkish newspapers have editorialized that Pamuk should be “silenced for good.” In 2005 he went on trial, charged with the crime of “insulting Turkish identity.”

Pamuk personifies the difficulty of many tradition-bound countries in emerging from authoritarianism. Turkey, as an example, is torn be- tween strong nationalism that dates to the Ottoman empire and the need to join the European Union to grow its economy. A condition for European Union membership is em- bracing fully the Western value of free expression. The European Court of Human Rights has been unequivocal about the right “to criticize public in- stitutions in very strong terms.” Although Turkey revised its laws on free expression in 2004, parts of old laws remain intact, including the pro- vision against “insulting Turkish iden- tity.” At the time of Pamuk’s trial, 65 free expression cases were before the courts in Turkey.

The Pamuk case grew out of an in- terview in a Swiss newspaper in which he discussed the deaths of 1 million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds in the late

Ottoman period, which Western histori- ans call the first genocide of the 20th century but which Turkey officially calls “internecine fighting.” Pamuk also said that Turkish security forces shared re- sponsibility for an estimated 30,000 Kurd deaths during separatist fighting

The authoritarian line of reasoning justifies suppression of ideas and informa- tion on numerous grounds:

� Truth is a monopoly of the regime. Commoners can come to know truth only through the ruler, who in King James’ thinking had an exclusive pipeline to an Almighty. Advocates of authoritarianism hold little confidence in individuals.

� Challenges to government are based on falsity. It could not be otherwise, considering the premise that government is infallible.

in the 1980s and 1990s. Pamuk did not use the hot-button word genocide, but he must have realized he was venturing into dangerous territory. About the mass killings, he said: “Nobody but me dares to talk about it.”

For fierce Turkish na- tionalists, this was too much. A provincial gover- nor ordered Pamuk’s books burned, including several that contributed to his winning the German Peace Prize for lit- erature. Despite the at- tacks and threats, Pamuk was defiant. Awaiting trial, he honed in on the Turkish dilemma: “What am I to make of a country that insists that the Turks, unlike their Western neigh- bors, are a compassionate people, incapable of genocide, while nationalist political groups are pelting me with death threats?”

In 2005 Pamuk’s trial was adjourned on techni- cal grounds. But under pressure from ultranation- alists, the government

continued to prosecute other writers, including journalists and scholars.

W H AT D O Y O U T H I N K ?

� Will European economic pressure on Turkey be effective over the long term in softening a nationalist streak that condones censorship?

media people orhan pamuk

Insulted the State. Turkish author Orhan Pamuk found himself the victim of nationalist extremism for a critical assessment of Ottoman history. Although prosecuted for defiling Turkish national honor, Pamuk survived the trial. There were death threats. A provin- cial governor ordered his books burned.

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434 PART THREE Mass-Media Issues

� Without strong government, the stability necessary for society to function may be disrupted. Because challenges to government tend to undermine stability and because challenges are presumed to be false to begin with, they must be suppressed.

To the authoritarian mind, media people who support the government are pur- veying truth and should be rewarded. The unfaithful, those who criticize, are spreading falsity and should be banished. It all makes sense if King James was right about his divine right theory. It’s no wonder that John Twyn was sentenced to die so gruesomely.

An inherent contradiction in authoritarianism is the premise that the ruler is uniquely equipped to know truth. Experience over the centuries makes it clear that monarchs and dictators come in many stripes. Regimes have been known to change their definitions of truth in midstream, as in Henry VIII’s change of heart on Roman Catholicism. A fair question to pose to authoritarianism advocates is whether Henry was right when he was a Catholic or later, when he was an Anglican.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� What is the notion of truth that is at the heart of authoritarianism?

� Was Henry VIII right when he was a Catholic or when he was an Anglican?

LIBERTARIANISM Libertarian thinkers, in contrast to authoritarians, have faith in the ability of in- dividual human beings to come to know great truths by applying reason. This distinction is the fundamental difference between libertarian and authoritarian perspectives.

Physicists love telling young students the story of an English lad, Isaac Newton. Sitting in an orchard one late summer day, young Isaac was struck on the head by a falling apple. At that moment the law of gravity was instantly clear to

him. It’s a good story, although probably not true. Deriving the law of gravi- tation was a much more sophisticated matter for Newton, the leading 17th century physicist. But the orchard story lives on. It is a story also told to pupils in their first world history class to illustrate a period in intellectual history called the Enlightenment. In that version, young Newton not only discovered gravity at the very instant that he was bumped on the head, but he also realized that he could come to know great truths like the law of gravity by using his own mind. He did not need to rely on a priest or a monarch or anyone else claiming a special relationship with an Almighty. He could do it on his own. This revelation, say the history teachers, was a profound challenge to authoritarian premises and ushered in the era of ra- tional thinking that sets the modern age apart. Individually and together, people are capable of learning the great truths, called natural law, unassisted by authorities. The insight was that human beings are rational beings. It was a realization that began quantum leaps in the sciences. The insight also con- tributed to the development of libertarianism, which held the intellectual roots of modern democracy.

� Marketplace of Ideas. An English writer, John Milton, was the pioneer libertarian. In his 1644 pamphlet Areopagitica, Milton made a case for free expression based on the idea that individual human beings are capable of discovering truth if given the opportunity. Milton argued for a free and open exchange of information and ideas—a marketplace of ideas. Just as people at a farmers’ market can pinch and inspect a lot of vegetables until they find the best, so can people find the best ideas if they have a vast array from which to choose. Milton’s marketplace is not a place but a concept. It exists whenever people exchange ideas, whether in conversation or letters or the printed word.

� Enlightenment Period of rationalist thought; begin- ning foreshadowed by early libertar- ians

Marketplace of Ideas. A marital spat and a confrontation with the king led John Milton to write Areopagitica in 1644. The tract challenged royal authority on intellectual and moral grounds and paved the way for liber- tarianism. Milton made a case that everyone should be free to express ideas for the consideration of other people, no matter how traitorous, blas- phemous, deleterious or just plain silly. It was a strong argument against restrictions on free expression.

� John Milton Early libertarian thinker

� marketplace of ideas An unbridled forum for free inquiry and free expression

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Milton was eloquent in his call for free expression. He saw no reason to fear any idea, no matter how subversive, because human beings inevitably will choose the best ideas and values. He put it this way: “Let Truth and Falsehood grapple: whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.” Milton reasoned that people would gain confidence in their ideas and values if they tested them continually against alternative views. It was an argument against censorship. People need to have the fullest possible choice in the marketplace if they are going to go home with the best product, whether vegetables or ideas. Also, bad ideas should be present in the marketplace because, no matter how objectionable, they might contain a grain of truth.

Milton and his libertarian successors acknowledged that people sometimes err in sorting out alternatives, but these mistakes are corrected as people continually reassess their values against competing values in the marketplace. Libertarians see this truth-seeking as a never-ending, lifelong human pursuit. Over time, people will shed flawed ideas for better ones. This is called the self-righting process.

� First Amendment. Libertarianism took strong root in Britain’s North American colonies in the 1700s. Thomas Paine stirred people against British author- itarianism and incited them to revolution. The rhetoric of the Enlightenment was clear in the Declaration of Independence, which was drafted by libertarian philosopher Thomas Jefferson. His document declares that people have natural rights and are capable of deciding their own destiny. No king is needed. There is an emphasis on liberty and individual rights. Libertarianism spread rapidly as colonists rallied against Britain in the Revolutionary War.

Not everyone who favored independence was a firm libertarian. When it came time to write a constitution for the new republic, there was a struggle between lib- ertarian and authoritarian principles. The libertarians had the greater influence, but sitting there prominently were Alexander Hamilton and a coterie of individuals who would have severely restricted the liberties of the common people. The consti- tution that resulted was a compromise. Throughout the Constitution, an implicit trust of the people vies with an implicit distrust. Even so, the government that emerged was the first to be influenced by libertarian principles, and “the great ex- periment in democracy,” as it’s been called, began.

By the time the Constitution was ratified, it had been expanded to include the First Amendment, which bars government from interfering in the exchange of ideas. The First Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridg- ing the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .”

In practice there have been limits on both free speech and free expression since the beginning of the republic. Legal scholars debate where to draw the line when the First Amendment comes into conflict with other civil rights, such as the right to a fair trial. Even so, for 200 years the First Amendment has embodied the ideals of the Enlightenment. The United States clearly is in the libertarian tradition, as are the other Western-style democracies that followed.

� Global Libertarianism. On its scale of Free and Not Free, the Freedom House organization, which tracks freedom globally, says that democracy and freedom are the dominant trends in Western and East-central Europe, in the Americas, and increasingly in the Asia-Pacific region. In the former Soviet Union, Freedom House says the picture remains mixed. In Africa, free societies and electoral democracies are a minority despite recent progress. The Middle East has experienced gains for freedom, although the region as a whole overwhelmingly consists of countries that Freedom House rates as Partly Free or Not Free.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Explain how libertarianism is optimistic about human reason and how authori- tarianism is pessimistic.

� How does the Enlightenment relate to libertarianism?

� How does the First Amendment embody the ideals of the Enlightenment?

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� First Amendment The free expression section of the U.S. Constitution

� self-righting process Although people make occasional errors in truth-seeking, they eventu- ally discover and correct them

� natural rights Inherent human rights, including self-determination

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War as a Libertarian Test S T U D Y P R E V I E W

From the fog of war can come defining clarity on the irreconcilable clash between authoritarianism and libertarianism. The trials of combat, with national survival at issue, can put even the greatest democracies to a test of their libertarian ideals. Expedience can lead to contradictory policies—such as censorship and suppression of dissent.

COMBAT REPORTING The ordeal of combat is perhaps the greatest test not only of personal courage but also of democratic nations’ commitment to their ideals. In crisis situations, with national survival at issue, can a government allow unfettered news coverage? The struggle for an answer is rooted deeply in the American experience.

� Civil War. The Civil War was the first that had a large contingent of reporters accompanying the armies, about 500. After some fumbling with how to deal with the reporters, the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, ordered that stories go to censors to delete sensitive military matters. In general, the system worked, from Stanton’s perspective. Toward the end of the war General William Sherman marched all the way from Chattanooga, Tennessee, through hostile Georgia to the sea at Savannah, a nine-month campaign, without a hint in the press to tip off the Confederacy.

� World War II. In World War II correspondents wore uniforms with the rank of captain and usually had a driver and a Jeep. The reporters generated lots of field coverage, but the reporting, reflecting the highly patriotic spirit of the times, as evident in the reporters wearing military uniforms, was hardly dispassionate and sometimes propagandist.

� Vietnam. Reporters had great freedom in reporting the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. Almost at will, reporters could link up with South Vietnamese or U.S. units and go on patrols. The result, dubbed rice-roots reporting, included lots of negative stories on what was, in fact, an unsuccessful military campaign that was unpopular among many troops and a growing majority at home. For the first time the reporting was filmed for television, with gruesome footage being pumped by the networks into living rooms across the nation on the evening news, deepening opposition to the war.

Commanders didn’t like negative reports, which some blamed for losing the public’s support for the war. In the end, demoralized, the United States withdrew in defeat—the first war in its history the nation had lost.

� Grenada. For the next wars, relatively quick incursions, the Pentagon had new rules. In 1983, when the United States took over the Caribbean nation of Grenada, a naval blockade kept reporters out. The war, secretly planned, surprised the news media. Scrambling to get on top of the story but barred from the action, enterprising reporters hired small boats to run the blockade but were intercepted.

Major newspapers, the networks and news agencies protested loudly at being excluded from covering the Grenada invasion. Acknowledging that the policy had ridden roughshod over the democratic principles on which the nation was founded, with an informed electorate essential for the system to work, the Pentagon agreed to sit down with news media leaders to devise new ground rules. The result was a pool system, in which a corps of reporters would be on call on a rotating basis to be shuttled to combat areas on short notice for the next quick war.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Would news audiences have problems today with a policy to put journalists in military uniforms?

� What are the advantages and disadvantages of reporter pools?

436 PART THREE Mass-Media Issues

� Edwin Stanton Union secretary of state who organ- ized Civil War censorship of sensi- tive military news

� rice-roots reporting Uncensored field reporting from the Vietnam War

� pool system Reporters chosen on a rotating basis to cover an event to which access is limited IS

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media timeline

GLOBAL MASS MEDIA MILESTONES PIVOTAL EVENTS

1600s

1500s Censorship Henry VIII placed limits on imported publications (1529)

Licensing British set up Stationers Company to license printers (1557)

Authoritarianism Justified James I claimed kings held a divine right to rule (1598)

Areopagitica John Milton argued for robust discourse in seeking truth (1644)

1700s First Amendment U.S. Constitution bars government control of press (1791)

1800s Civil War U.S. government limited war reporting (1862)

2000s Chinese Censorship China installed filters on incoming Internet communication (2001)

Pan-Arab Media Dubai launched media enterprise for multinational audiences (2003)

Iraq Infowar Digital media used by Iraqi insurgents for propaganda (2003– )

1900s Global Shortwave British Broadcasting Corporation created (1927)

Uniformed Journalists U.S. government credentialed reporters (1942)

Airwave Propaganda U.S. created Voice of America (1942)

Satellite Broadcasting CNN launched a 24/7 news channel, later went global (1976)

Reporter Pools Government allowed coverage of Panama invasion through reporter pools (1989)

Embeds Reporters embedded with combat units (1993)

Al-Jazeera Qatar sheik created Al-Jazeera news channel (1996)

� Printing presses throughout Europe (1500– )

� Age of Science, Age of Reason, Enlightenment (1600s– )

� Revolutionary War (1776–1781)

� Morse invented telegraph (1844)

� U.S. Civil War (1861–1864)

� World War II (1941–1945) � Russian–Western rivalry

triggered Cold War (1945)

� Vietnam War (1964–1973) � Soviet empire imploded

(1989)

� Persian Gulf War (1991)

� 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001)

� Iraq War (2003– )

Milton would let Truth and Falsehood grapple

Voice of America as a Cold War tool

Al-Jazeera sought pan-Arab, global news audience

Liu Di under lifetime of Chinese government “permanent surveillance”

King James saw divine anointment.

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media people kimberly dozier

again being anyplace as dangerous as Iraq had become. By mid-2007 104 journalists had died covering the war.

She noted an irony about the embed duty for which she and Paul Douglas and James Brolan had vol- unteered the day they were at- tacked. They had chosen to go with soldiers assigned to a neighborhood thought to be relatively safe al- though a bomb had exploded there just the day before.

Another irony: The bomb that day was relatively small for the improvised

devices that insurgents had been per- fecting since early in the Iraq War.

Although a veteran war reporter, Dozier said the experience that fateful day was a revelation: “You think how many lives, day after day after day, are being torn apart, how many sacrifices are being made. I thought I under- stood that, but I didn’t really under- stand it until I lived through it.”

W H AT D O Y O U T H I N K ?

� What if reporters were all afraid to volunteer for Iraq assignments?

F or a story on U.S. soldiers on patrol in a ravaged Baghdad neighbor- hood, a three-person CBS televi-

sion crew joined an infantry unit for the day. Embeds, the reporters were called. For most practical purposes, they were part of the unit, embedded. As their Hummer negotiated the streets, a yellow taxi alongside, packed with 300 to 500 pounds of explosives, was detonated remotely. Cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan were wounded mortally. So were an Army captain and his Iraqi translator.

The wounded also included CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier. Near death with shredded upper legs, severe burns and shrapnel in her head, Dozier was rushed to a combat hospital. Unconscious, having lost tremendous amounts of blood, Dozier’s heart stopped twice. Technically she was dead. Both times surgeons brought her back and kept her alive.

Two dozen surgeries later back in the United States, Dozier was consid- ering how to resume her work as a for- eign correspondent. She had been in Baghdad three years, knowing every day the dangers. The work, she said, was essential: “The world is watching. The story needs to be told.” At the same time, Dozier was hesitant to put her family through the trauma of her

438 PART THREE Mass-Media Issues

EMBEDDED REPORTERS The Iraq War, beginning in 2003, was covered by journalists like no other. The U.S. government, after flip-flopping on rules for war correspondents for 50 years, seemed to recognize the futility of trying to manipulate information in the digital age. Months before the invasion, the Pentagon chief for media relations, Victoria Clarke, invited news organizations to send reporters to special combat mini-courses to get up to speed—and also into physical shape—to go to war with combat units. Commanders were told to let the cameras roll whenever the journalists wanted.

The embed system has been fine-tuned as the war has ground on. Even so, the system has problems. A military unit with an embedded reporter needs to assign additional soldiers to address security. If a reporter is wounded, resources have to be diverted from the mission to evacuate the reporter. This became a growing issue in the Iraq War. By mid-2007, more than 100 reporters had been mortally wounded.

Medical Evacuation. CBS reporter Kimberly Dozier survived a car bomb in which two crew members were killed, among 104 reporters who had died in the Iraq War by mid-2004. Also killed in the explosion were an Army cap- tain and a translator.

� embeds News reporters who are with mili- tary units on missions

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case study

Pay-to-Publish When the U.S. Defense Department realized it couldn’t control news and information getting to Iraqis during the war in Iraq, it turned to private companies, including the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm.

To Willem Marx, it looked like his dream of being a foreign correspondent was coming true. After his final semester at Oxford, he was offered an internship with Lincoln. Marx was ready for some real-world experience before starting journalism school in the fall.

In a tell-all piece in Harper’s magazine, Marx described his job as choosing which stories submitted by U.S. military writers would be translated and published in Iraqi newspapers. He knew the stories were “far from exemplars of objective journalism.” But, he said, he was told to think of them “not so much as news but as messages Iraqis needed to hear.” Propaganda? That’s the issue. Certainly, the stories being planted in Iraqi newspapers were not from the detached, neutral journalistic perspective that is the American democratic ideal.

During one two-month period the Lincoln Group proposed a $19 million multimedia blitz. Marx found an Iraqi company that would produce a half-minute television spot for $10,000. Iraq’s national station said it could air the spot during its most expensive time for $2,000. The Lincoln Group was charging the military $1 million for the spot. Marx found himself driving through Baghdad with $3 million in cash in the trunk of the car. For his summer internship, Marx was paid $1,000 a month.

The Los Angeles Times broke the story about Lincoln’s contract with the Pentagon to pay Iraqi news media to anonymously publish stories written by U.S. military person- nel. Soon after, the Pentagon launched an investigation, which ultimately found that indeed the government could legally spread propaganda in foreign nations.

The Lincoln Group defended its work as an attempt to level the playing field in Iraqi media. Said one Lincoln adviser: “The opposition is very clever and basically gets a free run in the media over there.” Other Pentagon defenders argued that different ethical standards are needed in a combat zone.

There is no evidence that the stories planted in Iraqi media were untrue. The con- troversy is whether the stories, for the sake of honesty and transparency, should have been attributed to the U.S. military.

Government manipulation of media content bothers John Schulz, dean of commu- nication at Boston University. Schulz sees the issue going to the core of an American ideal. “In the very process of attempting to either lead by example or actually instill a democracy, which is the main mission in Iraq as we understand it now, we’re subverting democracy at the very core by subverting the legitimate process of journalism,” Schulz said. “There needs to be an agonizing reappraisal of what they mean about trusting the news media and whether soldiers and plants and public relations firms can function in the place of effective news media. I don’t think so.”

DEEPENING YOUR MEDIA LITERACY

E X P L O R E T H E I S S U E

List the reasons the U.S. military would pay to have its own stories published in the Iraqi press. Then list ways that democracy and an effective media interact.

D I G D E E P E R

Do you see any intersections between your two lists? Where do ethics fit into them?

W H AT D O Y O U T H I N K ?

Is a trust in the media necessary for a successful democracy? Is it OK to follow different media ethics in a new, unstable democracy? Was it worth the price the U.S. paid to get its stories in the Iraqi press?

Old Tech Message. Despite a costly U.S. information campaign that vilified Iraq leader Saddam Hussein, the people of Fallujah renamed one of their streets the Street of the Martyr Saddam Hussein. Slickly produced media mes- sages for television, no matter the budget or talent that goes into them, failed to offset insurgents’ YouTube-type calls for resistance. George Bush was there, old-media style, and not getting through. Everybody, it seems, has a video cell phone.

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Bureau chiefs for U.S. news organizations in Baghdad left it to individual reporters to decide whether to embed with a combat unit.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Have embedded reporters given you a clearer feel for what’s happening in the Iraq War?

� Does embedding as a policy resolve the vexing issue of how an independent news media can cover combat without jeopardizing military tactics?

� As a reporter in a Baghdad news bureau, would you volunteer for embed missions? Explain.

Arab Media Systems S T U D Y P R E V I E W

Media in Islamic regions do not fit a single mold. They operate in diverse political systems, some driven by theologies that themselves are inconsistent. Others are pragmatically oriented to create pan-Arabic mass audiences. Among the most successful is Al-Jazeera.

DIVERSE MEDIA STRUCTURES Media systems of the nations comprising Islam-dominated regions are as diverse as the nations themselves. These nations span from northern Africa to southeast Asia. Many resemble classic authoritarian systems, some being among the planet’s last theocracies with clerics dominating public policy. Variations, however, are signifi- cant. Islamic dogma ranges widely among sects vying for dominance. The civil war into which Iraq fell during the U.S. occupation, for example, was a clash of different traditions and strains of Islam going back centuries. In contrast, in the sheikdom of Dubai, whose governance resembles a monarchy, economic growth has trumped divisive issues with overt pan-Arabic attempts to accommodate diverse traditions.

Media systems in some Arabic areas reflect values from periods of overbearing European dominance, mixed with resurgent indigenous traditions and values. Some of this Western influence continued long after this dominance had ended. In the 1990s, for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation, with a history of inter- national broadcasting in the region, spent two years setting up an Arab-language service. Obstacles led BBC to abandon the project in 1996. But, seeing a vacuum, the government of the tiny Gulf state of Qatar, already committed to creating itself as a regional media center, created a 24/7 television news service, modeled on U.S.-based CNN. Sheikh Hammad bin Khalifa put up the money. Thus Al-Jazeera was born, which today has been ranked the world’s fifth-best-known brand.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Describe the diversity in political systems and their media components in Arabic and Islamic regions.

AL-JAZEERA Al-Jazeera picked up its journalistic tradition largely through Brits who had been with the abandoned BBC project. For the Middle East, the approach was fresh—live coverage of breaking news told dispassionately and as thoroughly as possible, no holds barred. Viewers glommed to the channel. Call-in shows were uncensored. Arabs suddenly had an avenue to unload on their governments, many of them despotic and unevenly responsive to public needs.

Al-Jazeera was applauded in the West as a voice for democracy and reform. But things changed after Arab terrorists killed thousands of people in New York City and Washington in 2001. As the Bush administration moved toward war in Iraq, the Arab perspective inherent in Al-Jazeera included independent reporting that sometimes was at odds with U.S. portrayals. Commentary was from all sides, including

� Hammad bin Khalifa Founder of Al-Jazeera television news network

� Al-Jazeera Qatar-based satellite news channel for Arab audiences; now global

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insurgents whom the U.S. government wanted to deny a voice. According to news reports, in a 2004 meeting with the British prime minister, President Bush stepped out of the U.S. libertarian tradition in an unguarded moment and suggested bombing Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar.

Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera’s reporting continued in the BBC tradition, seeking mul- tiple perspectives to get at the facts and truth. The reporting carried a high price to intolerant factions that claimed their own monopolies on truth. Twice Al-Jazeera bureaus were bombed, including a 2001 U.S. aerial attack on the Al-Jazeera bureau in Baghdad. Several Arab governments banned Al-Jazeera, although with little effect. The audience, already 50 million in 2000, has continued to grow.

So has Al-Jazeera’s influence. In 2003 the network entered a news-sharing agree- ment with BBC. CNN added Al-Jazeera to its sources of video feeds. Al-Jazeera launched an English-language network in 2006 to extend its global reach. The English- language anchors have familiar faces, some formerly with CNN, Sky News and BBC.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� What are challenges facing Al-Jazeera and its competitors in reaching Arab audiences?

� When agents of master terrorist Osama Bin Laden supplied video of his anti- Western political messages to Al-Jazeera, the network aired them as news. Was this the right thing to do?

� The White House said the Bin Laden tapes might carry embedded instructions to terror cells and asked U.S. television networks not to air the tapes. How would you as a network executive respond to the White House request?

TRANSNATIONAL ARABIC COMPETITION The Arabic television field is becoming increasingly crowded. Saudi satcaster MBC has set up an all-news channel. Dubai TV’s One TV has added an English-language entertainment network. Lebanon has become a powerhouse of pan-Arab television pro- gramming, including reality shows and talent contests. BBC, meanwhile, has decided to try an Arab-language news network again. The global reach of Arab media has ex- tended to Latin America, where Telsur has gone into multinational satellite newscasts.

In Arab countries, the proliferation of satellite channels is expected to peak at some point soon. The survivors will be operations with deep, deep pockets. The business development manager at MBC in Saudi Arabia, Michel Constandi, estimates the combined operating budgets of the region’s free satellite channels at $3 bil- lion a year. The estimated ad market is only $30 million.

Control Room. The Al-Jazeera control room in Qatar is staffed by a mix of former British Broadcasting Corporation employees and Arabian jour- nalists. Al-Jazeera’s reporting during the U.S.-led war on Iraq displeased President Bush, who, according to British press reports, suggested to British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004 that the network’s head- quarters be bombed.

� satcaster A television station that transmits to an orbiting satellite, which beams signals back down directly to individual receivers

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The significance of these multinational Arab media services is that, to attract large enough audiences to survive financially, they need to address audiences that subscribe to variations in Islamic readings of the Koran holy book, as well as diver- gent traditions, many of which have evolved confusingly and become intertwined with religious values.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� How can media companies seeking pan-Arab audiences be successful in such a fractured part of the world?

DUBAI MEDIA INCORPORATED As a nation, Dubai might seem a mere speck of sand on the Persian Gulf—674,000 people, only 265,700 in its main city. From under the sand, though, has come oil that has brought spectacular wealth to the tiny emirate. But what will happen when the wells run dry? Resources extractable from the earth inevitably run out.

The government has set a deliberate course to create a post-oil financial infra- structure. The plan includes lavish hotels to transform Dubai into a tourism magnet. Beaches line the Gulf for miles, easily only a day’s flight from major population centers in Europe, south Asia and, of course, the rest of the Arab world.

And so much sunshine. Could Dubai also become the Arabian Hollywood? It was California sunshine, after all, that drew the infant U.S. filmmaking industry from the East Coast to Hollywood early in the 1900s. The more sunshine, the more days for outdoor shooting. With moviemaking could come a host of related media industries—particularly television.

The brainstorming that began with a tourist-oriented Dubailand complex mushroomed. In 2003 the government converted its Ministry of Information into Dubai Media Incorporated to run the nation’s television system. DMI is a quasi-government agency but is set up to operate like a private company. Ninety- seven billion dollars has gone into construction. More than 1,000 television and film companies have taken up residence, availing themselves of the sunshine and also the government’s tax-free incentives.

Dubai Media Incorporated, with audience goals far beyond the emirate’s bor- ders, operates four television channels. These include an Arab-language general entertainment channel. The channel became the second-most-watched pan-Arabian satellite station, second only to the older Saudi-owned, London-based MBC. The Dubai Sports Channel, the only 24-hour Arab sports channel, has exclusive rights to the World Cup of horse racing. Arab soccer also is exclusive. An English-language service carries mostly movies and imported programs. In addition, a local channel aims at audiences within the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part.

In the culturally and religiously fractured Arab region, Dubai TV and its com- petitors are on a tightrope in choosing content. Hussein Ali Lootah, chief executive, sees Dubai TV’s greatest achievement in introducing Gulf-oriented programming that has not alienated Arabs on the Mediterranean. Creativity is within the bounds of local sensitivities, he says. For news, Dubai TV avoids the hard-hitting journalism of Al-Jazeera by having a deliberately friendly, informal approach. On magazine and talk shows there is more analysis, less polemics.

On the English-language One TV, programs and movies are chosen because they are “relevant and sensitive to our culture,” says manager Naila Al-awadhi. Shows are subtitled and promoted in Arabic.

Dubai TV claims 50 percent market penetration, which means a reach of 100 million Arabs across the region. Dubai’s pre-2004 predecessor earned less than $4 million. The 2006 gross reached $40 million. DMI claims English-language One TV can reach 70 million Arab households.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� How is the emirate of Dubai seeking to become a global entertainment industry player?

� What obstacles does the Dubai enterprise face?

� Dubai Media Incorporated Quasi-government agency building Dubai to be a Mideast entertain- ment production center

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Media and Terrorism S T U D Y P R E V I E W

Mass media are a new battleground in civilization’s great struggles. Saudi Arabians have tackled terrorism with pan-Arab television drama. But old-style media may have maxed out their effectiveness. In Iraq, despite the high production quality and big spending, U.S. messages have failed to offset the insurgents’ YouTube-style video calls for violent resistance.

SAUDI ANTI-TERRORISM What a difference a major terrorism attack can make. Until November 2003, some members of the royal family that controls Saudi Arabia were channeling their oil wealth into Al Qaeda terrorism and to militant Islam imams who saw their holy book, the Koran, as justifying terrorism. Then came a 2003 terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia itself. Eighteen people, all Arabs, were killed. It was a pivotal mo- ment. Soon came a wave of mini-series and dramas, some produced in Saudi Arabia, challenging the notion that Islam somehow justifies terrorism. These pro- grams play on Arab channels throughout the Middle East. Some, like The Beautiful Virgins, lead the ratings with an anti-terrorism theme woven into a trans-Arab story line with characters of Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, and Syrian descent.

Beautiful Virgins, written by a former Al Qaeda member, is narrated by a Syrian girl who was burned in the 2003 attack. Amid all kinds of problems, including marital infidelity, drug addiction and wife beating, the core issue is the loving versus the dark side of Islam as told through the conflict within a young Saudi man torn between militant and moderate readings of the Koran. Which way does he go to find the virgins whom the Koran, at least metaphorically, says await good Islamic men in paradise?

Militant imams deride Beautiful Virgins as sacrilege, which points out that Islamic Arabs are hardly of one mind. The show was panned on militant Web sites. Station executives have received death threats. Even so, the show has led viewer- ship not only in Saudi Arabia but also in other Islamic countries. At the Saudi- owned Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, based in Dubai, production manager Abe al Masry has described Beautiful Virgins as an integral part of the new Arab battle against terrorism.

It wasn’t always so. The producer of a 2001 show, The Road to Kabul, which por- trayed the Afghan Taliban negatively, caved to death threats after eight install- ments. But that was before the 2003 attack in Saudi Arabia. Today The Rocky Road story line hints at hypocrisy and Afghan corruption. Another show, What Will Be, Will Be, portrays conservative village sheiks as bumbling bumpkins, not unlike the sheriff in The Dukes of Hazzard, albeit with political edginess.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Why has anti-terrorism become fashionable in Saudi Arabian media?

MEDIA AS TERRORISM TOOL Islamic radicals including Al Qaeda have adapted low-cost digital media to their needs. During the U.S. presence in Iraq, insurgents have learned to plan multicamera, high-resolution video shots of large-scale attacks on U.S. forces. The videos are quickly edited into hyped narratives and spliced with stock clips of snipers felling U.S. soldiers, all with backgrounds of religious music or martial chants. The videos are meant to inspire triumphal passions. The videos sell in Baghdad markets, fund- raisers for the cause. More potently, they make the video cell phone rounds incred- ibly quickly. Within minutes after an attack, video is in virtually unlimited circula- tion on handheld devices.

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The adroit use of technology—all it takes is a laptop—figures into internecine tensions. A ghoulish sectarian video of a Sunni militiaman sawing off the head of a Shiite prisoner with a five-inch knife stirred Sunni emotion. The Shiites, of course, have no monopoly on the new tools of the information and propaganda war. When secretly shot video of the hanging of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein leaked onto the Internet, his neck cracked in the noose, close up, incensed Shiites rioted in Anbar province.

New media can give underdogs an identity against forces that are superior by traditional measures. In Fallujah, an insurgent stronghold northwest of Baghdad, the United States created a multimillion-dollar campaign with traditional public relations and propaganda tools to win over the people. The other side, however, carried the day. The people renamed a major thoroughfare the Street of the Martyr Saddam Hussein.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� How have underground forces glommed onto inexpensive new media forms to mobilize many Iraqis to their cause?

� How can the United States deal with grassroots media tactics that use new digital media?

Battle for Iran S T U D Y P R E V I E W

Geopolitically strategic Iran has emerged in the crosshairs of the East-West confrontation that has been shaped by global terrorism. In Los Angeles, where many Iranian expatriates live, satellite television stations aim at homeland reforms. The U.S. State Department, meanwhile, has implemented soft diplomacy with its own media messages. In reaction, the Iran government is trying to block transborder communication.

TEHRANGELES Outside of Iran itself, no city is home to more Iranians than Los Angeles. The nick- name Tehrangeles, however, didn’t catch on much until Zia Atabay realized he could lease time on an orbiting satellite to send television programs from Los Angeles to anybody with a dish receiver in Iran. Atabay’s goal: To encourage political reform and democracy in an Islamic society that’s divided between old ways and new. Thus in 2000 was born, in Los Angeles, the National Iranian Television network.

Atabay poured $6 million into NITV, hoping it would become financially self- sustaining through advertising. It didn’t. In 2006 the operation went dark. By then, however, 20 other satellite stations, funded by Iranians in the United States, were beaming signals to Iran. Although most are talk shows, programming at surviving Tehrangeles operations is all over the map. Think Iranian MTV. Or Iranian ESPN.

How effective has Tehrangeles television been as an alternative to state- controlled television and radio in Iran, all heavily censored? Measures are hard to come by. No doubt, though, the Los Angeles stations have audiences, judging by talk-show call-ins from Iran. Too, although satellite television is illegal in Iran, about half the population, roughly 20 million people, have dishes. But is it effective? The 2005 election of conservative Islamic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president has been called a backlash against the often-virulent anti-regime polemics from Los Angeles. Some observers say, however, that the music clips and sports on other satellite stations may be doing more to encourage social and other fundamental reforms by broadening the cultural exposure of Iranian young people.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Is it wrong for Iranian ex-patriates to try to influence public policy in Iran with appeals directly to the Iranian people?

� Can such projects succeed?

� Tehrangeles Nickname for Los Angeles as home to more Iranians than any city other than Tehran

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U.S.-SPONSORED MEDIA For years the U.S. government has funded Radio Farda, a 24-hour service in the Farsi language. Farda transmits from facilities in the Czech Republic. There also is a Voice of America satellite television service that the State Department beams into Iran. Unlike the fiery commercial stations broadcast from Los Angeles, the State Department hopes to sway Iranians with “soft diplomacy.” This in- cludes news programs that, although from a U.S. perspec- tive, are not propagandistic.

The U.S. State Department has decades-long experience in broadcasting directly to people in repressed areas. Radio Free Europe and Voice of America were created after World War II, first under the guise of being citizen-generated proj-

ects. The goal ostensibly was to present information on U.S. positions on issues that were being distorted or unreported in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It was soft-sell propaganda, but also was exposing people behind the so-called Iron Curtain to insights into Western pop culture and music, as well as dangling lures of advanced Western countries before repressed, impoverished people.

Old-style Voice of America and similar U.S. projects, including Radio Martí and television aimed at Cuba, also carried an antagonistic message to regimes in target countries. The projects have since added digital components. Attempts by the gov- ernment to connect directly with Iranians, for example, include a Farda Web site. The main Iranian target is young adults, who tend to be well educated and techni- cally savvy and more inclined as a group to political reform.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� What do you know about the role of Voice of America in facilitating the collapse of the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War?

� What are the prospects for the U.S. State Department’s Radio Farda?

IRAN BLOCKAGES Typical of authoritarian regimes, the Iranian government tries to block signals from sources it considers unfavorable. The militia-like Revolutionary Guard jams signals. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s Farsi service is a frequent target. The state Administration for Culture and Islamic Guidance assumed control of blogs in 2006

� Radio Farda U.S. government-funded Farsi- language service aimed at Iran

� Voice of America U.S. government-funded broadcast service sent into nations with state- controlled media to articulate U.S. policies directly to the people

Voice of America. From studios in Washington, D.C., Luna Shadzi anchors a Persian-language news program beamed into Iran. Voice of America broadcasters believe Iranians deserve an alternative to the propoganda from their government.

Tehrangeles. Half a world away in Los Angeles, Alireza Nourizadeh offers commentary aimed at Iranian viewers of Channel One’s Window on the Fatherland. Nourizadeh, who favors regime change, takes calls from Iranians in the country and out.

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with robot and human censors and blocking. In addition, the agency hired hun- dreds of agents to create blogs carrying the government’s message.

Blogging has worked against the government in specific cases. In 2006 word came from a prison that dissident journalist Akbar Ganji, who had been locked up five years earlier, was engaging in a hunger strike and could die. After bloggers spread the word about Ganji’s prison treatment, re-igniting public interest in his case, the government freed him.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Eastern European regimes jammed Voice of America and similar programs during the Cold War but with limited success. VOA changed frequencies often. Would you expect Iran to be more successful in its blockage attempts?

China Media S T U D Y P R E V I E W

The struggle between freedom and tyranny plays and replays itself out with the mass media offering case studies on broader issues. Among major nations, China has suppressed challenges to government authority with the most labor-intensive censorship initiative in history.

CHINESE POLICY Chinese authorities were less than amused at the free-wheeling satire of someone on the Internet going by the name Stainless Steel Mouse. The Mouse was tapping out stinging quips about ideological hypocrisy among the country’s communist leaders. When government agents tracked the commentaries to Liu Di, a psychology major at a Beijing university, they jailed her for a year without charges. Finally, figuring the publicity about the arrest would be enough to chill other freethinkers into silence, the authorities let Liu Di go—on condition she not return to her old ways.

The government’s rationale has been articulated at the highest levels. In a speech, President Jiang Zemin put the necessity of absolute government control this way: “We must be vigilant against infiltration, subversive activities, and sepa- ratist activities of international and domestic hostile forces. Only by sticking to and perfecting China’s socialist political system can we achieve the country’s unifica- tion, national unity, social stability, and economic development. The Western mode of political systems must never be copied.”

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� How does China justify its tight controls on media content?

� Liu Di Under the pseudonym Stainless Steel Mouse, she satirized the Chinese government until arrested and silenced

Web Censorship China and Iran are the most aggressive nations in blocking political content from other countries but they are not alone. The Open Net Initiative—a consortium of Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Toronto universities—says at least 25 nations restrict citizen access to certain Web sites, some for political reasons, some for cultural reasons, some for both. The consortium noted that the study was limited to 40 countries and the Palestinian territories, so this may be only a partial picture of the state of the Web internation- ally. Besides China and Iran, the study reported that Myanmar, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam focus on political content. Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen try mostly to filter socially unacceptable sites featuring pornography, gambling and homosexual material.

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CHINESE NEWS CONTROL The rise of a market economy in China has loosened the financial dependence of newspapers on the ruling Communist Party. Competing for readers in this emerg- ing marketplace, the predictable and dull propagandist thrust of many newspapers has begun to dim. More reporting is appearing, for example, on disasters and other previously off-limits spot news.

In 2005, after 121 Guangdong miners died in a mine flood, China Business Times launched a journalistic examination that concluded that mine authorities had known of safety violations and had taken bribes to look the other way. With the revelation, there was no choice but for the government to prosecute. Eighteen men, including a high-ranking government official, were hauled into court. In the past, misdeeds within the power structure had been ignored or dealt with quietly. That is no longer so easily done, now that a journalistic dragon is stirring.

Most accidents, even disasters, still go unreported. Of the 3,300 mine accidents in China in 2005, few garnered much coverage. But some newspapers have started going after these kinds of stories. When a Jilin factory explosion dumped 100 tons of toxic chemicals into the Songhua River, the government naïvely assumed it could keep a lid on the situation. Wrong. Chinese newspapers told the story, albeit in bits and pieces. The government was embarrassed when downstream Russians learned the river was dangerous. It was an international incident that the govern- ment blamed on the newspapers.

The extent to which the Chinese go to keep negative information out of circu- lation was demonstrated in 2007 when a contaminated ingredient imported from China began killing pets in the United States. When international inspectors arrived at the facilities of origin, the equipment was nowhere to be found. It was like the place had never existed. The Chinese explained that they had completed their own inspection and corrected any problems. No plant, no story.

To rein in journalism, the influential State Council has proposed an Emergency Response Law to “manage news” about emergencies. Censorship? The proposal’s language is iffy. Permission would be required for reporting that “causes serious consequences.” What does that mean? The State Council says “normal” reporting would be OK under its law, whatever that means.

The government’s justification for the restrictions on coverage is to encourage stability. News about government corruption, as in the Guangdong mine flood, or government incompetence, as in disaster relief, does not inspire public confidence

Chinese Quandary. A guard on solemn duty at the bird’s nest at National Olympic Stadium in Beijing metaphori- cally poses the question of how China would accommodate 20,000 foreign journalists for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and also maintain the so-called Firewall, whose censors monitor all incoming communications. Reporters need unfettered com- munication back and forth with their editors back home to cover the games, which China wants to be a national showcase.

Liu Di. Government agents arrested college student Liu Di for her Internet essays, some of which mocked the government. Agents jailed her in a cell with a convicted murderer. After a year she was released subject to “permanent surveillance.” She was told never to speak to foreign journalists.

� Emergency Response Law Chinese limits on news reporting of disasters, ostensibly to ensure social stability

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in the government. The nation’s leadership is aware of an estimated 87,000 demon- strations in 2005 alone, many directed against public policies and government action—and inaction.

The Emergency Response Law would cover 812,500 news outlets. Some news- papers, feeling a new sense of journalistic self-empowerment, have taken strident positions against the proposed law. Editors have scoffed in print at the law’s provi- sion for local governments to be the sole source of disaster and accident informa- tion and to report such information in “a timely manner.” The problem, the editors argue, is government cover-ups. And who defines “timely”? Who decides how much information is released? And which is, and which isn’t?

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� How would China’s proposed Emergency Response Law affect reporting about disasters?

� If the United States had such a law, how would government sluggishness have been reported in the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster on the U.S. Gulf Coast?

� Do you accept the Chinese government’s argument that restrictions on journalists are needed to prevent inaccuracies in reporting that could work against social and political stability?

CHINESE FIREWALL The Chinese government has expended major resources to limit Internet commu- nication, particularly from abroad. To exclude unwanted messages, the Chinese government has undertaken numerous initiatives. One of them has been likened to a 21st century version of the Great Wall of China, a 1,500-mile fortress barrier built in ancient times along the Mongolian frontier to keep invaders out.

The Chinese didn’t invent their firewall. It came from the U.S. network design company Cisco, which devised filters in the early 1990s for corporate clients to filter employee access to the Internet. The goal of these firewalls was productivity, to keep employees who are equipped with desktop computers from whiling away company minutes, hours even, on sites featuring entertainment and diversions. When Cisco went courting the Chinese as customers, the filters seemed perfect for China to block unwanted material from outside the country. Cisco filters soon were installed at the gateways for Internet messages into China. Here’s how it works: The filters subtly “lose” messages from banned sites abroad. If a Chinese user seeks access to a verboten foreign site, an error message or a message saying “site not found” appears on the screen. Whether it’s censorship or a technical glitch, the user never knows.

Never Happened. A major industrial fire in China wasn’t what authorities regarded as something that should be re- ported. A careful reading of Jilan newspapers, however, revealed bits and pieces that something catastrophic had occurred. When pollution from tons of toxic chemicals released in the explosions and fires reached the Russian border downstream, the fire became an international issue.

� firewall A block on unauthorized access to a computer system while permitting outward communication

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media people bill xia

C hinese Web surfers who crave uncensored news have friends at a handful of U.S. companies

that penetrate the Chinese govern- ment’s firewall that’s designed to block outside information. Bill Xia, a Chinese expatriate in the United States, operates one such company, Dynamic Internet Technology. Xia sets up Web sites with pass-through links to Voice of America and other outside sites that the Chinese government bans.

It works this way:

• The sponsor of a censored site, such as Voice of America, Human Rights in China, or Radio Free Asia, hires DIT to create a proxy site at a new Internet address.

• DIT sends mass e-mails to Chinese Web surfers with the address of the new site.

• Chinese Web users can then down- load software that hides their visits to the DIT site.

• When Chinese Web police identify the proxy sites and shut them down, often within 24 hours, never more than 72, DIT creates a new proxy site at a new address. And the process begins again.

It’s cat-and-mouse and also a hassle, but DIT, always a step ahead of the censors, claims as many as 160,000 users. A few other companies, includ- ing UltraReach, provide similar proxy services.

Xia sees traffic spikes after the occurrence of major events on which the Chinese government has placed a lid. This happened when authori- ties tried in 2003 to conceal news of an epidemic of the virulently infec- tious SARS virus. It happened again in 2005 when police shot protesters in a village in south China.

Traffic also increased in 2006 when Google yielded to Chinese pressure to cooperate with the government’s

censorship in order to be allowed to build its business in China. Microsoft and Yahoo earlier had made the same business decision.

DIT and other proxy companies re- flect a zealous aversion to censorship. In some cases they reflect insurgent politics. DIT’s Bill Xia, for example, is a member of the revolutionary Falun Gong movement, which Chinese leaders particularly fear. Concerned that his family back in China might be persecuted, Xia declines to be pho- tographed or even to identify his home region or divulge his birthday. He won’t even talk about DIT’s loca- tion except to say that it’s somewhere in North Carolina.

W H AT D O Y O U T H I N K ?

� Who will win the cat-and-mouse game between Chinese web censor- ship and companies like DIT? Could it go on forever?

There is dark humor among critics of the Chinese firewall. Noting the role of Cisco, they say: “The modern Great Wall of China was built with American bricks.”

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� How does the Chinese firewall work?

INTERNAL CHINESE CONTROLS To control communication within the country, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security bans Internet service providers from carrying anything that might jeopardize national security, social stability—or even to spread false news, superstition or ob- scenity. As a condition of doing business in China, the U.S. company Yahoo agreed to the terms in 2002. So have Microsoft and other service providers. The system is called the Golden Shield. The shield complements the work of the firewall against un- wanted foreign messages by controlling communication inside the country.

Even tighter control is expected through a huge intranet that the Chinese gov- ernment is building within the country—the Next Carrying Network. CN2, as it’s called for short, was designed from scratch—unencumbered by the older techni- cal standards that have been cobbled together for the system that serves the rest of the planet. CN2’s technical advantages include exceptional capacity and speed. Also, because CN2 uses its own technical standards that are not easily compatible with the global Internet, the system fits neatly with the government’s policy to limit contact with the outside. Communications from abroad can be received on

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� Golden Shield Chinese system to control Internal Internet communication within the country

� Next Carrying Network (CN2) Fast Chinese Internet protocols built on new technical standards; incom- patible with other protocols

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CN2 only after code translations that stall delivery and, not unimportantly, make them subject to more scrutiny.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� How will China’s CN2 strengthen the Golden Shield?

� How could CN2 work against Chinese integration into the global community? Could this work against China’s commercial goals?

CHINESE CENSORSHIP APPARATUS Because prior censorship, reviewing messages before they reach an audience, is hugely labor-intensive, seldom in human history has it been practiced on a large scale. Past authoritarian regimes have relied almost wholly on post-publication sanctions with severe penalties against wayward printers and broadcasters to keep others in line. The Chinese, however, are engaging in prepublication censorship on an unprecedented scale.

Chinese censorship is partly automated. Internet postings are machine-scanned for words and terms like human rights, Taiwan independence and Falun Gong (a forbid- den religious movement) and dropped from further routing. The system also catches other terms that signal forbidden subjects, like oral sex and pornography.

No one outside the government has numbers on the extent of human involve- ment in censorship, but there appears to be significant human monitoring at work. Western organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, occasionally test the Chinese system by posting controversial messages, some with terms that machines can easily spot, some with trickier language. Postings with easy-to-catch terms like Falun Gong never make it. Postings with harder-to-spot language but nonetheless objectionable content last a bit longer, although seldom more than an hour, which suggests a review by human eyes.

Who are these censors? How many are there? The consensus among experts outside the country is that China, whose Internet users number 100 million-plus, must be a massive censorship bureaucracy. A rare peek into the system appeared in a 2005 interview in Nanfang Weekend with a censor in Siquan, Ma Zhichun, whose background is in journalism. Ma discusses his job as an Internet coordinator in the municipal External Propaganda Office, where, without identifying himself online as a government agent, he guides discussions in the government’s favor. Ma is part of elaborate mechanisms to keep online dialogue on the right track, particularly in chatrooms, but like thousands of other propaganda officers throughout the coun- try, Ma is in a position to spot banned postings and report them.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� If you were a Chinese censor, what terms would you use to intercept Internet content that should be checked?

OVERT CHINESE CONTROLS Although a lot of Chinese government control of Internet postings is invisible, some is overt. Because users are required to use a government-issued personal iden- tification number to log on, citizens know they’re subject to being monitored. Operators of blog sites, which number 4 million, need to register with the govern- ment. Cybercafés, which have been woven into the lifestyles of many Chinese, must be licensed. At cybercafés, cameras look over users’ shoulders for what’s on- screen. Police spend a lot of time in cafés looking over shoulders too.

The government’s seriousness about regulating the Internet was unmistakable when thousands of illegal cafés were shut down in a series of sweeps in the early 2000s.

Arrests are publicized, which has a chilling effect. One especially notable case involved Wang Youcai, who, during President Clinton’s historic 1998 visit to China, proposed an opposition political party in the U.S. tradition. Wang filed papers to

450 PART THREE Mass-Media Issues

� prior censorship Government review of content before dissemination

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register the China Democratic Party. Within a day, government knocked on his door, interrogated him for three hours, and hauled him away. He was sent to prison for 11 years and ordered into political abstinence for an additional three years for “fomenting opposition against the government.”

The later case of the imprisonment of Liu Di, the Stainless Steel Mouse, for sat- irizing the government was a similarly chilling warning to those who want to engage in full and open dialogue.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Chinese punishments for bloggers who engage in frowned-upon content has a chilling effect. What is that chilling effect?

� As a traveler in China, would you be comfortable in a cybercafé engaging in the kinds of everyday Internet communication that you do at home?

CHINESE BROADCASTING Although political issues are the major focus of Chinese censorship, the govern- ment discourages what it sees as a creeping intrusion of Western values and sexuality. In a clampdown on racy radio gab and, lo and behold, orange-tinted hair on televi- sion, the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television issued an edict: Enough. To television hosts, the order was no vulgarity. That includes “overall appearance.” Specifically forbidden: “multicolor dyed hair” and “overly revealing clothing.” There also are new bans on things sexual. Violence, murder and horrors are out until 11 p.m. So too are “fights, spitting, littering and base language.”

The restrictions, which are periodically issued as media stray, are consistent with the communist notion that government and media are inseparably linked in moving the society and culture to a better future. As the Chinese put it, the media are the houshe, the throat and tongue, of the ruling Communist Party.

Chinese nationalism takes unexpected turns. Broadcasters, for example, peri- odically are instructed to use only Mandarin. Foreign words, including Westernisms like OK and yadda-yadda, are not allowed. Not allowed either are dialects from separatist Taiwan. Also, a strict cap was put on imported soap operas and martial arts programs for television. Imports can’t constitute more than 25 percent of the total of such programs.

Even in Hong Kong, the British colony that was returned to China in 1997 and that was to be governed by different rules that honored its tradition of free expression, Beijing-approved governors were appointed to comport with official policies. Political cartoonists also have been reined in.

Is government pressure effective? In Fujian province, the hosts of the program Entertainment Overturning the Skies gave up their blond dye jobs after one crackdown.

CHAPTER 17 Global Mass Media 451

Yogurt Girl. A touch of democracy swept China when people were asked to vote for their favorite talent in an Idol- style television show sponsored by the Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt brand. Authorities didn’t much like the idea. Whether societal reforms will be inspired by the show seems dubious, al- though Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl winners have catapulted their acts into enter- tainment careers.

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Some television programs imported from Taiwan, the United States and elsewhere suddenly and quietly disappear. Hong Kong radio is tamer. But clampdowns come and go. Kenny Bloom of the Beijing-based AsiaVision production house told a Wall Street Journal interviewer: “Commentators will follow the rules for a couple months, and then their clothes will get tighter and their hair will get wilder.”

Even so, legal scholars Jack Goldsmith of Harvard and Tim Wu of Columbia, who have studied government controls on media content globally, say controls do not have to be absolute to be effective. Goldsmith and Wu offer copyright law as an example. Infringements of copyright in, say, illegal music downloads, are in- evitable, but the threat of civil or criminal sanctions keeps violations at a rate that copyright owners are willing to live with. Such, they note, is the same with the cen- sorious Chinese government. Nobody is so unrealistic to claim that all dissidence can be suppressed. The goal, rather, is to keep dissidence from breaking beyond an easily manageable level.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Why are Chinese media discouraged from using Westernisms in scripts, like yadda-yadda and OK?

EFFECTIVENESS OF CHINESE CONTROLS An Idol-like mania swept China when an upstart television station in remote Hunan province put its show Supergirl on satellite. Despite admonitions against lyrics in English and gyrating hips, contestants pushed the envelope of govern- ment acceptability in front of huge audiences. That viewers could vote their prefer- ences by mobile phones raised a specter of nascent democracy in a country where people can’t vote for their leadership. Most analysts, however, have concluded that the phenomenon was an anomaly in the tightly controlled society. Even so, winners, who are called Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirls, because of the dairy that sponsored the show, have gone on to singing and modeling careers.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� Could American Idol-like television shows that encourage viewers to vote be a preamble to democracy in China?

Distinctive Media Systems S T U D Y P R E V I E W

Nations organize their media systems differently. Even largely similar systems like those in Britain and the United States have distinctive methods for funding. Some countries like India have unique features. Some countries have unique developmental needs.

BRITAIN Almost everybody has heard of the BBC, Britain’s venerable public-service radio and television system. Parliament created the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927 as a government-funded entity that, despite government support, would have as much programming autonomy as possible. The idea was to avoid private owner- ship and to give the enterprise the prestige of being associated with the Crown. The government appoints a 12-member board of governors to run the BBC. Although the government has the authority to remove members of the board, it never has. The BBC has developed largely independently of the politics of the moment, which has given it a credibility and stature that are recognized worldwide.

The Beeb, as the BBC is affectionately known, is financed through an annual licensing fee, about $230, on television receivers.

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The BBC is known for its global news coverage. It has 250 full-time correspon- dents, compared to CNN’s 113. The Beeb’s reputation for first-rate dramatic and en- tertainment programs is known among English-speaking people everywhere. The 1960s brought such enduring comedies as David Frost’s That Was the Week That Was and later Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation debuted in 1969. Then came dramatic classics like The Six Wives of Henry VIII, War and Peace and I, Claudius.

The great issue today is whether the BBC should leave the government fold. Advocates of privatization argue that the BBC could exploit its powerful brand name better if it were privatized. The privatization advocates also say that the BBC’s government ties are keeping it from aggressively pursuing partnerships that could make it a global competitor with companies like Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. But continuing to do business as always, they say, will leave the Beeb in everybody else’s dust.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� What sets the BBC apart from other international broadcast organizations?

� Is the BBC a government mouthpiece? Explain.

INDIA The world’s largest democracy, India, has a highly developed movie industry that took root by providing affordable entertainment to mass audiences when the coun- try was largely impoverished. The industry, called Bollywood, a contrivance of its historic roots in Bombay and the U.S. movie capital Hollywood, is adapting as India moves rapidly out of its Third World past. Today India is becoming a model for new media applications, like wi-fi, as the country brings itself into modern times.

� Bollywood. At 85 cents a seat, people jam Indian movie houses in such numbers that some exhibitors schedule five showings a day starting at 9 a.m. Better seats sell out days in advance in some cities. There is no question that movies are the country’s strongest mass medium. Even though per capita income is only $1,360 a year, Indians find enough rupees to support an industry that cranks out as many as 1,200 movies a year, twice as many as U.S. moviemakers. Most are B-grade formula melodramas and action stories. Screen credits often include a director of fights. Despite their flaws, Indian movies are so popular that it is not unusual for a movie house in a Hindi-speaking area to be packed for a film in another Indian language that nobody in the audience understands. Movies are produced in 16 Indian languages.

Bollywood. The Indian movie industry, centered in Bombay and sometimes called Bollywood, pumps out an incredible 1,200 movies a year, Although India has some internationally recognized movie-makers, most Bollywood productions are formulaic action movies that critics derisively label “curry westerns.”

� Bollywood Nickname for India’s movie industry

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The movie mania centers on stars. Incredible as it may seem, M. G. Ramachandran, who played folk warriors, and M. R. Radha, who played villains, got into a real-life gun duel one day. Both survived their wounds, but Ramachandran exploited the incident to bid for public office. He campaigned with posters that showed him bound in head bandages and was elected chief minister of his state. While in office, Ramachandran continued to make B-grade movies, always as the hero.

Billboards, fan clubs and scurrilous magazines fuel the obsession with stars. Scholars Erik Barnouw and Subrahmanyam Krishna, in their book Indian Film, characterize the portrayals of stars as “mythological demigods who live on a highly physical and erotic plane, indulging in amours.” In some magazines, compromising photos are a specialty.

� Wi-Fi. India has taken a lead in linking remote villages with the rest of the world through wireless technology. Villagers and farmers who once had to walk several miles to pay their power bills now go to a “knowledge center” as it’s called—several rooms equipped with desktop computers, connected by wi-fi to the Internet—and pay online. Such “knowledge centers” are being installed in 600,000 villages in a government-enterpreneurial program launched in 2005. Eventually, all 237,000 villages in India large enough to have a governing unit will be equipped.

The Indian experience is a model for extending mass-media links into isolated, poverty-ridden areas in Africa and eastern Europe. Farmers can learn market corn prices to decide when it’s best to sell. Faraway doctors can diagnose illnesses through digital electrocardiography. In India a company named n-Logue has designed wi-fi kiosks for rural villages at $1,200 a unit, complete with a computer, software, a digi- tal camera, paper and a backup power supply. Kiosks can have ATM banking too.

A remaining obstacle is the diversity in languages in many underdeveloped parts of the world. Google doesn’t translate universally.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� How do you explain the powerful influence of the Indian movie industry?

� Is wi-fi the way to bring remote parts of India into the country’s mainstream economic expansion? How so?

� wi-fi Wireless fidelity technology, which offers limited-range downloading

454 PART THREE Mass-Media Issues

India Censorship. After 207 people were killed by terrorist bombs on Mumbai commuter trains, India’s Department of Telecommunications ordered Google and other Web portal companies to block access to specified Web sites. The action was inconsistent with India’s democratic tradition, but the government decreed that con- tinuing access to the sites was a threat to security. The bomb- ings were blamed on militant Islamists from neighboring Pakistan.

COLOMBIA High drama is popular on Colombian radio stations, but it is hardly theatrical. In Colombia thousands of people, both wealthy and ordinary, are kidnapped captives. Families go on the air to express their love and support in the hope that their kid- napped kin are listening. It makes for powerful radio. Tragically, it’s real.

Drug lords and petty criminals alike have found kidnapping to be lucrative in a country where anarchy is practically an everyday reality. The mass media are

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hardly immune. In the 1990s, according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists, 31 journalists were killed because of their work. Sixteen others have died in incidents that may or may not have been related to their work. In a typical year, six to 10 journalists are kidnapped in a country whose population is less than that of the U.S. Pacific Coast states.

A political satirist, Jamie Garzón, was shot to death in 1999 after a television show. El Espectador, a leading newspaper, has armed guards at every entrance and around the perimeter, as do most media operations. Many reporters are assigned bodyguards, usually two, both armed. Two El Espectador reporters have fled the country under threat. The editor of another daily, El Tiempo, fled in 2000 after sup- porting a peace movement.

Beset with corruption fueled by the powerful cocaine industry, the government has no handle on assaults against the media. Although hypersensitive to negative coverage, the drug industry is not the only threat to the Colombian media. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other watchdogs blame renegade paramilitary units and guerrillas, some of whom are ideologically inspired. Also, the Colombian military itself and some gov- ernment agencies have been implicated.

L E A R N I N G C H E C K

� What steps can be taken in a country like Colombia to create an environment in which newspeople can perform their highest service?

A fter Jineth Bedoya Lima wrote about executions during a Bogota prison riot, she got

word that a paramilitary leader inside the prison wanted to give her his side. “Come alone,” she was told. Like all Colombian journalists, Bedoya, 25 at the time, was aware of the dangers of reporting news, especially on subjects sensitive to warring factions. Her edi- tor and a photographer went with her.

As they waited outside the prison, the photographer left to buy sodas, then the editor followed him. When they came back, Bedoya was gone. Guards at the prison gate said they had seen nothing.

Many hours later, a taxi driver found Bedoya at a roadside garbage dump. She said that two men had grabbed her and forced a drugged cloth over her face. She regained consciousness in a nearby house, where her captors taped her mouth, blindfolded her and bound her hands and feet. They then drove her three hours to another city. They said they were going to kill her, as well as sev- eral other journalists they named. Then they beat and raped her and threw her out at the dump.

Her story, typical of violence against media people in Colombia, was dis- seminated widely by the Committee to Protect Journalists. It’s a cautionary tale. Bedoya, who believed that she was still be- ing trailed months later, was assigned two government bodyguards. Even so, she feels at risk. Why does she still do it? Frank Smyth of CPJ, writing in Quill maga- zine, quoted her: “I love my work, and I want to keep doing it. The worst thing that could happen has al- ready happened.”

W H AT D O Y O U T H I N K ?

� Consider a world where journalists refuse to take risks. How would so- ciety be different?

In Pursuit of a Story. Lima was kidnapped and raped while pursuing a story.

media people jineth bedoya lima

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Chapter Wrap-Up Mass Media and Nation-States (Page 430) � The world’s nations and media systems can be measured on a scale of media

freedom. At one extreme are nations in a libertarian tradition, which accords high levels of autonomy and independence to the mass media. Libertarianism emphasizes the ability of human beings to reason their own way to right con- clusions and therefore believes humans are capable of their own governance. Democracy and a free mass media are in the libertarian tradition. At the other extreme are authoritarian nations with top-down leadership in control, some- times overtly and onerously, sometimes less so. Libertarianism and authoritari- anism are philosophically irreconcilable systems, a fact that explains many divi- sions in the world.

War as a Libertarian Test (Page 436) � For all of its attractions for Americans, whose traditions are libertarian, the con-

cept has had a rough history. U.S. leadership hasn’t always been responsive to the idea of grassroots governance nor to the ideal of a free press as embodied in the nation’s Constitution. In times of war, even little wars like Grenada, leader- ship consistently has declared that national survival trumps free expression and a free press. The trials of combat put even the greatest democracies to the test of libertarian ideals. Contradictory policies result, including censorship and sup- pression of dissent.

Arab Media Systems (Page 440) � Although most nations in Islam-dominated regions are authoritarian, they also

are diverse. Some are theocracies for all practical purposes, even when internal Islamic sects are hardly of one mind. Some of these countries, however, have moved beyond religion and pragmatically sought to be part of the modern world. Examples include the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news network that seeks pan-Arabic, even global mass audiences. Media production centers, notably in Lebanon and Dubai but also elsewhere, are cultivating transborder and transcul- tural Arab and Islamic audiences.

Media and Terrorism (Page 443) � Terrorism has emerged as a major weapon in the global culture wars, aimed

both at Western institutions from Islamic-dominated regions and at battling Islamic factions. The techniques of terrorism, low cost and mostly with easily mastered technology, have become a major propaganda tool in stirring odd mixes of religious pride and intolerance and also mindless hatred. Partisans find video cell phones a powerful tool for recruiting support. Insurgents in Iraq use YouTube-style videos to easily outflank sophisticated U.S. appeals for popular support.

Battle for Iran (Page 444) � Strategically located Iran, bristly in international relations, has become the

target of outside media bombardment for reform. The U.S. State Department has fine-tuned its lessons from the Cold War and regeared its Voice of America to influence internal affairs in Iran. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, home to thousands of Iranian expatriates, entrepreneurs have financed satel- lite television stations to encourage change. The satcast services are a trans- forming entry in global communication. In response, the government of Iran is employing traditional methods from the Cold War to block out transborder communication.

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China Media (Page 446) � China’s emergence as a global economic power hinges in part on its tightly con-

trolling mass media. Government policy is to let nothing interfere with the sta- bility necessary for the nation’s economic engine to remain in high gear. The government has created the largest prepublication censorship apparatus in human history, called the Chinese Firewall, to monitor and censor incoming communication. Within the country, both entertainment and news media are kept in check—although signs of loosening appear from time to time.

Distinctive Media Systems (Page 452) � Nations organize their media systems differently. Even largely similar systems

like those in Britain and the United States have distinctive methods for funding. Some countries like India have unique features. Some countries have unique de- velopmental needs. In a nation like Colombia, where drug lords and gangs exer- cise heavy influence on media content through threats of violence, including kidnapping and murders, media have a unique set of obstudes.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. List countries that fit the definition of libertarian. List also those that fit the defintion of authoritarian. Justify your choices.

2. How well have various wartime efforts to accommodate free news reporting worked throughout U.S. history?

3. What generalizations can be made about government and media systems in Islam-dominated regions? How do these generalizations miss many realities?

4. Are insurgents destined to forever have an advantage through low-cost new technology in information and propaganda wars?

5. What are the echoes of the Cold War in the battle over information and ideas in Iran? What are the differences?

6. How effective have China’s efforts at controlling mass media been? What do you see as the future of these efforts?

CONCEPTS authoritarianism (Page 431)

divine right of kings (Page 432)

libertarianism (Page 431)

marketplace of ideas (Page 434)

self-righting process (Page 435)

TERMS Al-Jazeera (Page 440)

embeds (Page 438)

Enlightenment (Page 434)

Emergency Response Law (Page 447)

pool system (Page 436)

PEOPLE Henry VIII (Page 431)

Liu Di (Page 446)

Hammad bin Khalifa (Page 440)

John Milton (Page 434)

MEDIA SOURCES Scholarly journals that carry articles on foreign media systems and issues include the International Communication Bulletin.

� Thomas L. Friedman. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. Friedman, a journalist, seeks an overview of how me- dia resulting from new technology are transforming global economics.

� Michael S. Sweeney. Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II. University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Sweeney, a scholar, examines the U.S. government’s World War II censorship program and attempts to explain its success. Sweeney, once a reporter himself, draws on archival sources.

� Daya Kishan Thussu, editor. Electronic Empires: Global Media and Local Resistance. Arnold, 1999. Sixteen essays evaluate media globalization, especially television, from a diverse range of perspectives, including cultural imperialism and audi- ence liberation.

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In this chapter you have deepened your media literacy by revisiting several themes. Here are the- matic highlights from the chapter:

Media Technology Media technology that’s accessible on a small budget is changing global mass communication. With $6 mil- lion, a fraction of what it would cost to build a traditional television sta- tion, Iranian expatriate Zia Atabay built a satellite station in Los Angeles to encourage political reform in his homeland. Now 20 such stations in the United States are beaming mes- sages to Iran. Low-cost media tech- nology is leapfrogging traditional media thinking. The government of Iran, for example, is trying old-style broadcast blocking and Internet in- tercepts with limited success. Elsewhere, financially accessible technology, especially cell phone videos, have given terrorists an advantage in propaganda wars against major powers, like the United States. (Pages 443–446 )

Media Economics Advertising revenue goes to the media that amass audiences that advertisers covet. This financial in- centive has become a factor in burgeoning broadcast services in Islamic-dominated regions. The 24- hour Arab television news service Al-Jazeera, for example, was designed to attract a pan-Arab audi- ence that never existed before. Other Middle East enterprises have the same goal, some aiming for global audiences. (Pages 440–442)

Media and Democracy The democratic ideal of government en- acting the will of the people requires an informed populace. The ideal is from the philosophical school of libertarianism, which holds that people can reach good conclusions through the open exchange of ideas. This principle was articulated by the English poet and novelist John Milton in 1644. Libertarianism became the philo- sophical basis for the form of democracy pioneered by the United States when it was a new country in the late 1700s. (Pages 434–435)

Who’s Watching? The U.S. message to Iraqis, omniscient in a big- budget media campaign, hasn’t carried the day. Meanwhile, insurgents are splicing motivational music with anti-American combat scenes and getting their message out on ubiquitous video cell phones.

Al-Jazeera. The pan-Arab news channel has become the world’s fifth most-recognized brand.

G L O B A L M A S S M E D I A : A Thematic Chapter Summary IS

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Media Effects Although media effects are difficult to measure, gov- ernments, including that of the United States, have invested heavily in directly reaching people in other countries to encourage political reforms if not out- right revolt. The United States became heavily in- volved in transborder broadcasting during World War II with Voice of America. VOA and similar services

continued into the Cold War with pro- gramming aimed at Russia and Eastern Europe. Today vari- ants are targeting people in Cuba, Arab nations and wherever it suits U.S. national policy. Governments of target nations hardly see these projects as benign. Attempts are made to block incoming programs. (Page 445)

Elitism and Populism Authoritarian government systems are elitist. A monarch or a co- terie of governing elite are presumed to hold answers that common folks can’t recognize without guidance. This monopoly on knowing what’s best includes social policies, cultural affairs and other mat- ters, including media content. In contrast, libertarianism has confi- dence in individual human beings. Given enough time to sort through even the most complex issues, according to libertarians,

people individually and collec- tively will reach correct conclu- sions. To work well, libertarianism requires that mass media be an un- censored forum for people to gather information and exchange ideas. (Pages 431–435)

Measuring Freedom. The greening of the planet by Freedom House, which tracks global press freedom, has been gradual but steady for 20 years. Russia wobbles. Most of Asia and Africa have consistently been in the authoritarian tradition.

Rival Theorists. What a conversation King James and John Milton would have had. The scholarly British king defended monarchal systems as divine and thus beyond criticism. Two generations later, Milton made the case for libertarianism in Areopagitica.

Chinese Democracy. Cell phone voting for the Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl may be as close as China has come to democracy. Could a taste of majority rule be a prelude?

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