content_analysis_again.docxContent Analysis
ESSENTIALLY I HAVE FOUND ABOUT 4 DIFERENT RESEARCH PAPERS AND HAVE COPIED OUT OF IT WHAT I THINK IS RELAVANT, SIMILAR TO THE INFORMATION I NEED TO INCLUDE. MOST OF THE INFORMATION IS FROM ARTICLES YEARS BEFORE, HOWEVER I NEED TO UPDATE INFORMATION AND MAKE IT RELATABLE TO MY TASK. THE WAY IT IS OUTLINED AND EXAMPLES USED ETC IS HOW I NEED MY WORK TO BE DONE.
I WILL SEND YOU ALL THE DOCUMENTS WHERE I HAVE GOT THIS INFORMATION FROM, AND EVERY SECOND DAY I WILL SCREENSHOT TO YOU THE NEWS FOR CNN AND AL JAZEERA AS WELL AS THE 5 TOP ARTICLES SO YOU CAN HAVE A LOOK AT
Make sure you keep all of these references included so when I go back to add the bibliography I can see who ive used and attach them at the end. I use Harvard style referencing
Seib noted that the Al Jazeera effect can be seen as parallel to the CNN effect, which states that coverage of international events can force otherwise uninvolved governments to take action (Youmans W. L, 2013). Whereas the CNN effect is used in the context of mainstream, traditional media networks such as CNN, the Al Jazeera effect generalizes this to newer media such as citizen journalist blogs, internet radio, and satellite broadcasting (Youmans W. L, 2013). He also argues that new media strengthen the identity of, and give voice to, previously marginalized groups, which previously lacked their own media outlets; an example he uses is the Kurdish people (Youmans W. L, 2013). Many of the new media organizations are affiliated with such groups, social movements or similar organizations. New media weaken the monopoly of many states on information, as even extensive Internet censorship in countries such as China is not wholly effective (Youmans W. L, 2013). He concludes that the new media, while not beyond being abused, are largely contributing to democratization and political reform worldwide (Youmans W. L, 2013). William Lafi Youmans notes that Seib's prediction that the Al Jazeera effect will lead to changes in the politics of the Middle East was realized during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, with new media provoking widespread debate and unrest within the region (Youmans W. L, 2013).
IN main body asks you to define news values and news agenda, so included this in here so you can see what they are and can include a bit of it
NEWS VALUES
News values, which can be defined as news criteria, determine the amount of notoriety a news story is given by a media outlet, thus controlling the attention it is given by the audience. Editors based on their experience and intuition are in control of the miscellany and prioritization of news in Western practice, however in accordance by J. Galtung and M. Ruge presented several factors that are dependably applied through a range of news organizations.
Galtung and Ruge, formed a system of twelve factors which together describe events that are of 'newsworthiness'. Their theory argues that the more an event accessed these criteria the more likely it was to be reported on in a newspaper. Furthermore, three basic hypotheses are presented by Galtung and Ruge: the additivity hypothesis that the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news; the complementarity hypothesis that the factors will tend to exclude each other; and the exclusion hypothesis that events that satisfy none or very few factors will not become news.
AGENDA SETTING
Drs. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw introduced the Agenda Setting Theory in 1972 in Public Opinion Quarterly (Watson, J. 1998). It refers to the ability of the news medium to inform the audience the most important information and thus creating awareness. The press and the media use agenda setting to
Determine what the viewers should think and worry about. Agenda setting is used by the media to re-shape the real events that occur in the surroundings into some simpler model that they perceive the audience would be able to deal with. For instance, a television viewer is made to believe that what he/she is presented with is the reality.
Through agenda setting, the audience not only becomes informed of the current issues, but they also know the level of importance of a particular issue. They do this by noting the amount of information in that particular issue and its position during presentation.
There are three types of agenda setting; media, public and policy agenda setting. Media agenda setting focuses on the influence the media has on the audience while public agenda setting focuses on the audience. On the other hand, policy agenda setting focuses on the influence of media and public agenda on policy makers.
PLEASE SKIM THROUGH THIS
I am not able to copy and paste from here as it is a locked website, but this is where I got the below quotes from and a lot of what is said e.g. INTRODUCTION is really good and pretty much exactly what I need to say however it needs to be re-phrased so it isn’t plagiarised
INCLUDE THESE QUOTES!!! Phillip Seib, Author of The Al Jazerra Effect, writes: ‘The Media’ are no longer just the media. They have a larger popular base than ever before and, as a result, have unprecedented impact on international politics. The media can be tools of conflict and instruments of peace; they can make traditional borders irrelevant and unify peoples scattered across the globe. This phenomenon- the Al Jazeera effect- is reshaping the world (P. Seib, 2008)
Pintak has described the contrast to Western reporting:
“Al Jazeera specialised in an up-close, in-your-face approach to covering the Muslim worlds first television wars. Dead babies, wounded children, screaming mothers dominated the channel’s coverage of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palenstine. Almost nothing was too gruesome to show: close-ups of open wounds, limbs torn asunder, people collapsing in agony. But those pictures were largely ignored by the U.S. networks. Where audiences watching Al Jazeera and the other broadcasters saw bleeding children and destroyed homes, Americans experienced the war as a Hollywood extravaganza on the small screen, billed in advance by the White House as certain to evoke ‘shock and awe’”(Ibid., 208-209).
KEEP ALL THE REFERNCING
Mass media draw attention to certain attacks and present them in specific ways (cf. Weimann and Brosius, 1991), make them appear relevant to citizens (Borgeson and Valeri, 2008: 128), may influence individual and institutional decision making (cf. Oates, 2006), and contribute to the (de)legitimation of certain political movements (cf. Scheufele et al., 2005).
Within the media landscape, television plays a particularly important role, as it is widespread and commonly used in many countries (cf. Hans-Bredow-Institut, 2009; IP International Marketing Committee, 2008). Furthermore, due to its audio-visual char- acter and the possibility of live reporting, it can provide timely and (supposedly) realistic depictions of terrorist events (Hoffman, 2007: 276).
The aim of this study is to investigate the specifics of mass media representations of ter- rorism. We analyze these specifics in a comparative study because it enables us to determine the specific domestic features of such representations. Since international terrorism has been interpreted and structured primarily in terms of the ongoing conflict between the Arab and ‘Western’ worlds (cf. Rapoport, 2006), we examine news broadcasts from both sides of this alleged conflict By including Al Jazeera, we extend the scope of our analysis beyond the commonly investigated ‘Western’ context. Moreover, we do not analyze print media, as is frequently done elsewhere (cf. Altheide, 2006; Schaefer, 2003), because their significance often remains limited, especially in regions with high rates of illiteracy. Instead, we focus on TV coverage, i.e., on probably the most relevant medium for a comparative analysis of terrorism coverage.
Some scholars assume that media coverage is mainly influenced by national contexts. Accordingly, coverage would be expected to vary considerably from country to country. The domestic factors influencing media reporting have been systematized by Shoemaker and Reese (1995) as well as Weischenberg (1992, 1995), in a model of concentric circles of influence on media coverage. The outer circle consists of a country’s historical and cultural characteristics which may differ according to national traditions of journalism (Esser, 1998: 25), geographical or linguistic particularities (Thomaß, 2007: 23), religious differences (Hafez, 2005a: 148), or the differing value systems of political elites (cf. Bennett, 2009; Bennett et al., 2006). The next layers of influence consist of country- specific structural, institutional and organizational characteristics such as economic fac- tors, technological influences (Weischenberg, 1992: 249, 1995: 13) or typical working processes in newsrooms (Esser, 1998: 26). In the inner circle, we find socio- demographic characteristics, attitudes, self-perceptions and motivations of journalists (Esser, 1998: 26).
(a) In line with the structural pattern of contemporary terrorism, which is often per- petrated by Arab Islamists against ‘Western’ victims, some scholars expect the strongest differences between the coverage in Western and Arab media. Most often, these assump- tions are rooted in alleged cultural differences or, in turn, similarities. Some scholars draw on Samuel Huntington’s controversial thesis of a ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ (1998, for critical accounts see Bantimaroudis and Kampanellou, 2007; Barber, 1995) to under- line their claims. Huntington has posited that the 21st century world is characterized by opposing ‘‘cultures,’’ especially by the conflict between the Christian-dominated ‘‘West’’ with the US as its ‘‘core’’ state, and the ‘‘Islam’’ residing primarily in the Arab world. He argues that this conflict finds its expression, among other aspects, in the public rejection or devaluation of the other side (Huntington, 1998: 345); and accordingly, dif- ferences between ‘‘Western’’ and Arab media reporting might be expected (cf. Seib, 2004: esp. 79 ff.). Coming from an entirely different theoretical background, research on the role of cultural proximity in media reporting leads to similar assumptions: it has been argued that cultural proximity functions as a news value, i.e. meaning that cultu- rally proximate issues and aspects are more likely to be taken up and highlighted by journalists (see Galtung and Ruge, 1965), and that similar preferences can be found among culturally similar audience members (Ksiazek and Webster, 2008).
These the- ories, similar to Huntington in this respect, lead to assumed differences in terrorism cov- erage between Western and Arab media. Comparative studies have indeed found such differences and mutual stereotyping, for instance in media coverage on the September 11 attacks, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the ‘‘image of Islam’’ in Western media, or inversely in the presentation of the ‘‘West’’ in Arab media (cf. Abrahamian, 2003; Aday et al., 2005; Hafez and Richter, 2007; Jasperson and El-Kikhia, 2003). While some scho- lars explain differences between Western and Arab media with cultural factors, others suggest that similar differences can be ascribed to differences in the respective media system. Comparative media systems’ analyses show clear differences between Western and Arab countries. While western media systems are classified as liberal (like the US) or socially responsible and public service-oriented (like the UK or Germany, Blum, 2005 and Siebert et al., 1963), Arab media systems are seen as more authoritarian (Rugh, 2007; Selber and Ghanem, 2004) even if they are currently undergoing rapid change and differ from each other internally (cf. Iskandar, 2007; Rugh, 2007).
(b) Regional differences in coverage may also be assumed because the analyzed coun- tries and regions are involved in crucial conflicts to different degrees. It has been argued that a part of a journalists’ profession is to provide a ‘‘national outlook’’ (Nossek, 2004: 349), so that nationally significant events tend to be discussed in more detail. News value theory provides a simple explanation for this phenomenon, and empirical studies show that terrorist events are interpreted by journalists as more or less ‘newsworthy’ and cov- ered accordingly (Kelly and Mitchell, 1981; Weimann and Brosius, 1991).
In the case of terrorism coverage, several authors have demonstrated how such simi- larities manifest themselves: Norris et al. (2003) argue that a worldwide normative assessment has been established with regard to terrorism: attacks are to be rejected by political elites almost everywhere, even by (former) leaders of countries like Libya, Syria, and Iran which, according to intelligence services, may be secretly supportive of terrorism (cf. Townshend, 2002: 12; Tuman, 2003: 6). Norris et al. argue that the con- demnation of terrorism has become part of a ‘global script,’ in the sense of Meyer (2005) that has to be supported – at least officially – by all nation states and expressed by the United Nations in several resolutions (cf. UN General Assembly, 2006: 3). Norris and colleagues go on to assume that this script would also be characteristic for media cover- age, in which the portrayal of terrorism would then become standardized across countries and, thus, a ‘‘one-sided’’ case’ (Norris et al., 2003: 12). The attacks and their perpetrators are condemned and compassion is shown for the victims. The assumed connection between media coverage and the views of political elites corresponds to Bennett’s Index- ing Theory (1990; see also Robinson, 2001).
In times of international conflict, he argues, the constellation of actors in the media environment, especially the positioning of polit- ical elites, plays a particularly large role in shaping the coverage (see also Altheide, 2006; Oates, 2006). Accordingly, a consensus among elites about the importance and the evaluation of a subject would strongly be reflected in the media. In turn, when political elites were divided, this would lead to a pluralization of media positions. These findings seem to be consistent with the US coverage of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Within the US political elites there was an initial consensus on the legitimacy of military interventions resulting in a largely consistent portrayal across the range of US media. But this consensus was not shared by the political elites of other countries, especially in the Arab world. Accordingly, Jasperson and El-Kikhia (2003) found significant differences between CNN and Al Jazeera in their evaluation and interpretation of the Afghanistan war, and Aday et al. (2005) provide similar findings for coverage of the Iraq war.
METHOLODGY
Deductively (on the basis of research questions) and inductively (based on the qualitative coding of the coverage), the following categories were established as being use- ful for the description of coverage: (i) significance (the presented importance of the event), (ii) evaluation (how is the event evaluated?), (iii) victims (which victims of the attack are depicted and how?), (iv) perpetrators (which perpetrators are depicted and how?), (v) motives and objectives (how are the motives and targets of the perpetrators described?), (vi) reactions (what kinds of reactions to the event are shown and how?), and (vii) emo- tional representations (what emotions are represented and how?).
The primary data for this study are top stories collected from Al Jazeera news sites (http://www.aljazeera.com), for fourteen consecutive days, from September 5th to September 19th, 2014; the top 5 stories from each news page were downloaded twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. Top stories are defined as stories that appear near the top of the page and are often accompanied by videos and photographs. Each site has a section dedicated to top stories (Figure 1).
Methodology
For my research I chose to focus on two news sources, Al Jazeera and CNN. I chose these two sources because of their similarities as well as their differences. For instance, both news sources run news stories 24 hours a day and both have achieved recognition and prestige both locally and nationally. They also differ in the types of information and stories on which they focus. While CNN is privately owned and has to compete for funding and audiences by broadcasting “an ‘attractive’ programme” in order to stay on air and relevant (Volkmer, 199, p.127); Al Jazeera is funded by the Emir of Qatar and focuses on exposing Arab political and social issues even if this causes problems with other governments around the world (Zayani, 2005, p.2).
EXAMPLE OF LANGUAGE USED, KEEP ONLY CNN AND AL JAZEERA QUOTES AND UPDATE TO 2014
The evaluation of the attacks – the ‘‘moral evaluation’’ component of media frames (Entman, 1993: 52) – was almost identical across all broadcasters. They clearly condemn the attacks and emphasize the illegitimacy of terrorism, even if the broadcasters – as we will discuss later – differ in the strength of their condemnation. These negative evaluations are manifested, first, in rhetoric: attacks and perpetrators are described as ‘‘brutal’’ (BBC, 8 July 2005), ‘‘barbaric’’ (Al Jazeera, 8 July 2005),7 ‘‘hateful’’ or ‘‘criminal’’ (ARD, 7 July ‘‘barbaric’’ (Al Jazeera, 8 July 2005),7 ‘‘hateful’’ or ‘‘criminal’’ (ARD, 7 July 2005, 10 July 2005), ‘‘insane’’ (CNN, 12 November 2005), and ‘‘atrocity’’ and ‘‘shocking’’ (BBC, 10 November 2005).
Third, the illegitimacy of the attacks is stressed further by highlighting the innocence of the victims and by represent- ing them as uninvolved politically, militarily, and economically, i.e., as civilians who, regardless of religion or ethnicity, deserve sympathy. For example, the BBC highlights the ‘‘simple Londoners’’ (7 July 2005) that were attacked, and that in Amman, ‘‘innocent life’’ (BBC, 10 November 2005) and ‘‘innocent civilians’’ (Kofi Annan, ARD, 11 November 2005) were hurt or killed. Al Jazeera declares that the ‘‘attacks [in Amman] made no dis- tinction between people with different political positions or between men, women and chil- dren’’ (11 November 2005).8 Finally, a fourth stylistic device is found across all stations: the juxtaposition of carefree everyday individual victims before the deed with their pain and suffering caused by the attacks, which underlines the negative evaluation of the attacks.
Differences in coverage: The interpretive framework
Apart from these similarities, however, there are also differences between the analyzed media. For example, even though the victims of the attacks are portrayed similarly on all channels, there are differences in the frequency of this representation. Similarly, the perpe- trators and their motives, as well as possible or expected reactions to the acts, appear to dif- ferent extents in the analyzed news shows. Such differences can be found in the basic definition of the terrorist incidents – or as the framing literature would say, in the ‘‘problem definition’’ – as well as its ‘‘causal interpretation’’ and the respective ‘‘treatment recommen- dations’’ (see Entman, 1993: 52 ff.). As we will see, there are even some, albeit small dif- ferences to be found in the ‘‘moral evaluation’’ dimensions. Overall, these varying emphases give rise to two different frames which are used by two broadcasters each.
The ‘‘war on terror’’ frame of CNN and Al Jazeera. CNN and Al Jazeera differ from the other channels in their interpretation of the attacks. They portray them as an expression of a geopolitical conflict in which the liberal Western democratic societies under US leader- ship on the one hand are confronted with transnationally organized Islamist terror net- works, particularly Al Qaeda, on the other (cf. Reese and Lewis, 2009).
This interpretive framework becomes obvious through the choice of words and pic- tures: both broadcasters use explicit and often warlike vocabulary to describe the conflict and visualize the events with scenes from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars such as moving tanks or other military equipment. They also argue that countries like Britain and Jordan have become targets of terrorist attacks because they are ‘‘staunch American allies’’ (CNN, 9 November 2005; Al Jazeera, 7 July 2005). They do not interpret the attacks in local, regional, or national terms, but within a global context and often visualize this by using a world map of international terrorism or ‘‘modern war’’ – a stylistic device used by both CNN and Al Jazeera.
Moreover, the geopolitical framing of the terrorist attacks is manifested in a specific presentation of the victims, perpetrators, and overall reactions to the attacks. As mentioned previously, the difference in the representation of the victims by CNN and Al Jazeera in comparison to the other channels does not lie in the manner but in the extent of the victims’ portrayal – both CNN and Al Jazeera show pity for the victims and portray them as inno- cent civilians but these representations are far less prominent than in the respective BBC or ARD coverage.
Finally, both CNN and Al Jazeera focus strongly on the consequences and reactions to the attacks, and in doing so, pay less attention to domestic investigations, clean-ups or rescue missions than on foreign policy reactions and, at times, military implications. Again, the geopolitical situation structures the coverage. CNN has a more aggressive style in which foreign policy preferences and options for military action are clear. The question is: ‘‘what can be done to stop it from happening again’’ (CNN, 7 July 2005), and George W Bush is quoted as saying: ‘‘In the face of such adversaries there is only one course of action: We will continue to take the fight to the enemy. And we will fight until this enemy is defeated!’’ (CNN, 11 July 2005). Al Jazeera, too, focuses mostly on geopolitical responses to the attacks. For example, the channels news anchors and experts discuss in detail how Tony Blair should be interpreted when he spoke of the need to show strength and fight terrorism ‘‘from its roots’’ (Al Jazeera, 8 July 2005). This is done cautiously and from a more defensive position but is often accompanied by fears of sweeping and exaggerated reactions.
There are further sub-distinctions between CNN and Al Jazeera which go back to their different evaluations of the geopolitical situation. With CNN, the legality of US actions with respect to the Western alliance and the illegitimacy of terrorist attacks are not drawn into question. The attacks are condemned strongly (‘‘horror,’’ 7 July 2005; ‘‘carnage,’’ 9 July 2005; ‘‘insane,’’ 12 November 2005; ‘‘barbaric,’’ 9 November 2005; ‘‘diabolic,’’ 10 November 2005) and the perpetrators are described in pejorative words (Al Qaeda as a ‘‘hydra-headed movement,’’ 7 July 2005 and splinter groups as ‘‘cancer metastasis of Al Qaeda,’’ 13 July 2005). CNN deals at length with the identification of the perpetrators but not with individual offenders and their personal motives; instead they are rather inter- ested in the ‘‘enemy’’ terrorist networks. Moreover, in describing them as ‘‘British-based radical Muslims’’ (CNN, 7 September 2005) the CNN ‘classify’ the perpetrators not only in terms of their nationality but also in terms of their religion.
Altogether, Al Jazeera represents the perpetrators in as much detail as the CNN, but does so differently: first, Al Jazeera devotes more airtime to the perpetrator’s own per- spective. It also gives them an individual face by allowing people from their commu- nities to speak, people who understand their backgrounds (‘‘What can you expect from people who are persecuted and are constantly threatened with death? [They] are constantly attacked with rockets, like in Falluja and Anbar,’’; 9 November 2005). Sec- ond, Al Jazeera clearly distinguishes between the perpetrators and Muslims in general, and stresses, for example, that ‘‘Many Muslims have condemned the attacks’’ (9 July 2005; see 8 July 2005). Third, in some cases Al Jazeera implicitly blames Western elites, partly implicating them as co-culprits: Tony Blair and George W Bush, in Iraq and Afghanistan, ‘‘acted mercilessly against an enemy’’ (Al Jazeera, 7 July 2005). This, it is argued, is reciprocated in the form of terrorism in Britain and the United States. Gen- erally, however, Al Jazeera focuses more than other stations on the illegitimacy of the foreign policy of the United States and its allies, which represents a failure (a ‘‘lost war,’’ 8 July 2005, and ‘‘mistake,’’ 7 July 2005) and they speculate, for example, on whether the British would withdraw their military from Iraq (10 July 2005).
In the presentation of the victims, several other specifics of Al Jazeera’s coverage can be found. The channel is the only one that describes occasions where Muslims were vic- tims of discrimination in the West.
Overall, however, these differences are arranged into a frame of interpretation Al Jazeera shares with CNN, Both interpret the attacks as expressions of a global political conflict – one in which their constituencies are strongly involved and often seen as the main conflict parties.
Our comparative analysis of TV news cover- age has shown that, on the one hand, the reporting of terrorism in different countries and regions has many similarities. CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC, and ARD devote nearly iden- tical amounts of attention to the four attacks, and the stylistic devices used to describe them are very similar regardless of where the events took place and regardless of the location of the broadcaster. The evaluation of the actions of the perpetrators and the atti- tude towards the victims are also similar across all four channels. The attacks are uni- formly condemned, and the victims are presented as innocent civilians who were unjustly injured or killed and deserve everybody’s sympathy. In this regard, all of the channels underline the illegitimacy of the terrorist attacks. In this sense, we find a cross-national standardization of terrorism coverage which corresponds to the theoretical model of a ‘‘global standardization of coverage’’ outlined above.
First, the far-reaching similarities in evaluation may be due in large mainly to the con- stellation of actors surrounding the media, especially to the political elites. A consensus in the evaluation and interpretation of terrorism is likely to lead to similar media presenta- tions – and in turn, differences between media will increase if elites are divided (e.g. Ben- nett, 1990; Robinson, 2001). This is particularly true in conflicts, and particularly so in international conflicts. In the case of terrorism, there is a strong consensus on the illegiti- macy of terrorist attacks (Norris et al., 2003: 12), which is not confined to individual nation states and not only to the ‘West’, but, at least officially, is supported throughout the world. This can be understood as part of a world culture which is codified by the decisions of the United Nations (cf. UN General Assembly, 2006: 3). Under these conditions, the mass media’s evaluation of a topic can be expected to be largely uniform because there are no high-status actors from outside the media who publicly approve of the terrorist acts.
The nuancing in the evaluations, which differs between Al Jazeera and other broadcas- ters, could be explained as follows: under conditions of a hegemonic interpretation of events, dissent must be concealed through indirect means of articulation. They would first be formulated by actors of low social standing and are rarely expressed by large institutio- nalized media outlets. Second, evaluations which diverge from the hegemonic opinion shift to subtleties, to overtones and emphases. This is precisely what we found. Al Jazeera gives the perpetrator’s perspective a little more time, discussing family background, the- matizing more strongly the illegitimacy of the foreign policies of the US and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan or the Israel-Palestine conflict, and reporting on a second group of victims – Muslims in the West who were targeted in the wake of the attacks. Thus, the neg- ative assessment of the terrorist attacks, while extant, is mitigated slightly.
Nevertheless, the existence of such a consensus cannot account for the different frames we found, i.e. why CNN and Al Jazeera interpret the events as a ‘‘war on terror,’’ while the BBC and ARD interpret them as ‘‘crimes against humanity.’’ We suspect that these differences are due to country differences in the political landscape and in the posi- tions of political elites in particular (Bennett, 1990; Nossek, 2004, 2008).
(d) As a pan-Arab broadcaster, Al Jazeera cannot be assigned to any particular Arab country, which makes reference to a specific constellation of policy difficult. However, Al Jazeera has been characterized as critical towards Arab governments. This applies both to Arab countries that are US allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, as well as those who are more likely to be classified as opponents of US foreign policy like Syria or Iran. In this situation, it can be assumed that Al Jazeera reflects less the positions of certain Arab elites than, as Robinson (2001) suggests, its own unique position. As with the BBC, Al Jazeera’s position has many parallels with the views of the Arab populations of many countries – the so-called ‘‘Arab street’’ (Center for Strategic Studies, 2005; Lynch, 2003).
1. Due to restrictions on availability of archival material, we were not able to include all the broadcasters we were initially interested in. As a result, we were only able to include the pan-Arab station Al Jazeera, rather than other Arab national broadcasters. We selected CNN and Al Jazeera because, unlike BBC and ARD, they are not general entertainment channels and broadcast only news. However, we analyzed only the main daily news programs of CNN and Al Jazeera as we assume that the most important events of the day are summarized in these broadcasts and which enables a comparison with the daily news programs of the general broadcasters.
AL JAZEERA
The Al Jazeera network was launched in 1996 as a news satellite channel broadcasting in Arabic. Since its start, Al Jazeera has been rattling governments in the Arab world by its controversial coverage of sensitive issues related to religion, politics, the role of women in society, sex, poverty, unemployment, and so forth. Its treatment of such issues, as well as the free platform Al Jazeera offers intellectuals, opposition figures— islamists as well as secularists—and lay persons, boosted the network's popularity worldwide. The programs offered on Al Jazeera featured persons with (sometimes extremely) opposing views, and these, as well as talk shows where anybody could call and talk directly on the air to the audience, were novel, bold, and challenging in a region whose audiences' minds have for a long time been bombarded with messages launched exclusively from state-owned television channels (see, e.g., Ghareeb, 2000). Some claim that Al Jazeera's hard-hitting programs and on-the-ground news reporting have revolutionized media work in the Middle East (El-Nawawy & Iskander, 2003; Zayani & Saraoui, 2007) and have educated the Arab world about democracy (Miles, 2005). In November 2006, the Al Jazeera network launched Al Jazeera English, with an aim to "revers[e] the North to South flow of information" (Wikipedia, 2008, January 12). According to Josh Rushing, a former U.S. marine who joined Al Jazeera English in 2005, Al Jazeera English's mission is to cover the developing world, which has been largely ignored by other global networks (Rushing, 2007). Al Jazeera English hired a number of anchors and media experts who had formerly worked at CNN, the BBC, and other large networks
CNN needed to focus on things that Americans and wealthy elites around the world would care about to garner interest and funding (Volkmer, 1999). Al Jazeera on the other hand was more interested in discerning the different issues and turmoil around the event in order to get a more rounded, thought-provoking story (Zayani, 2005).
6. Conclusion
Critical discourse analysts have long claimed that different newspapers construct different social realities (Fowler, 1991; Trew, 1979b). The possibility that different language "versions" of the same news site do so as well is intriguing, and has implications for cross-cultural understanding, diplomacy, and foreign policy.
Conducting this study I was able to see first-hand the different reporting styles of Al Jazeera and CNN. Especially the focus on foreign implications as opposed to focus on the individual, respectively. I think this directly correlates to American media focusing on the sensational and missing bigger trends. The fact that CNN focused on a few small issues while Al Jazeera focused on the broader implications exemplifies that assertion.
At least for the day after the attack, CNN seemed to be playing catch-up with Al-Jazeera who had already moved on past the original event and on to the way it affected the surrounding countries and groups around the world. I think that this should indicate that in terms of foreign affairs, it would be beneficial for Americans to look to outside media sources in the areas where the news is occurring rather than the news stations like CNN which are primarily stationed in America. Unfortunately, it is a hassle to find these other news sources and even more of a hassle to acquire a translation of these news sources in order for Americans to see them as a reliable news source. Until Americans are able to access and understand other stations around the world in a way Americans would be willing to use, their foreign news coverage will continue to be spotty and sensationalized, which prevents us from seeing the full picture.
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