From the living room to the world:

The globalization of television news

By Andrew White

Andrew White is a producer at the Fox News Channel, covering business news. He has worked in the media since his junior year in high school, when he covered high school sports for his town’s daily newspaper.

White graduated from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications with a B.S. degree in Television/Radio/Film Production. He is scheduled to finish the Media Studies Master’s program in 2005. He is a news junkie and a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox.

Picture this:

It is September 11, 2001. You live and work in New York City, but on this particular day, you are in Paris on a business trip. It is early afternoon, and you are in between meetings. You decide to go back to your hotel and take a rest, but before you nod off, you turn on the television and flip through the channels. And you stop as the flaming images of the World Trade Center dominate the screen. You are seeing world history as it unfolds, live and unedited.

You are watching CNN. You are alone in your room. Yet at the same time you are connected with millions of people, sharing the same experience at the same time. Your emotions might be different than a person watching in another country. But you can be certain that wherever there is television with access to a news network, people are watching right along with you.

Now imagine that the same events happened 25 years earlier, in 1976. You are in Paris, over 4,000 miles away from home, and there is an attack in New York City. You are in your hotel room watching television, but you are only connected to the immediate world of local French television. The only way you would know about the attacks would be via phone call, from the radio (assuming you understand French) or by a special broadcast within France. Otherwise, you would have no idea about the events.

And for the time being, that would probably have been fine. Your life would not have changed dramatically if you didn’t find out about the attacks immediately. Maybe it would have been 30 minutes. Maybe it would have been an hour. But you would have been able to survive without the immediacy of the news.

Today – that would be unthinkable.

Clearly, society was able to function without the benefit (or availability, depending on your opinion) of live cable news. But the questions remain:

Are we better off with this technology, this immediacy of the news, and what has been its overall effect on globalization?
To answer those questions, we need to go back in history to examine where the news business was, and how it has developed. A vital development in the effect of news on globalization was the creation of what we call international “news agencies”. Two other major developments in the growth of the industry, specifically occurring in America, helped the news to become a global industry: the creation of the program “60 Minutes”, ushering in the era of news magazines and a new form of news narrative, and the creation of CNN, introducing the era of 24-hour news reporting. These developments covered not only structural changes within the industry, but also made enormous economic impacts, which have become a driving force behind how news programming is produced.

This passage arrives at the crux of a very important theory on news: that news, although an essentially “intangible” entity, is still a commodity – something that can be bought and sold. And while it took a long time for news to become a real profit-making machine (within the framework of the media business), the elements were always in place for the news to be a generator of revenue.
In order for the news to be a global commodity, there needs to be a supplier of “news as product”. This begins with the news agencies. Later in this essay, the development of news magazine programs and cable news networks will be examined, but before these are discussed, the international news agency must be explored.

What is a news agency? Quite simply, it is an organization that supplies print and broadcast outlets with news information. When a newspaper uses a story coming from the Associated Press (AP) or Reuters, or a television station uses a report that comes from World Television News (WTN), these are products of a news agency. The agencies specialize in what is called “spot news”, or the “journalism of information” (as opposed to the “journalism of opinion”). The key to the success (or lack of success) of a news agency lies in its ability to cover news on an international basis. Because most newspapers and television networks rely so heavily on news agencies for information, they (the agencies) are in a unique position to set the world news agenda. Even though the agencies are not engaged in the “journalism of opinion”, they are able to influence how international news is covered.

One of the major criticisms of news agencies throughout the years is the fact that even though they are global entities, their coverage still tends to focus on western news and events, meaning coverage of America and Europe. While they are considered to be autonomous organizations, there is no denying the pressure to cover events that will appeal to the greatest number of readers and viewers. And this means appealing to a western audience. Again, this comes back to the notion of news as a commodity. In today’s global age, the news must be sold by the agencies so that the organization can remain in business.

Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, television news divisions for the major broadcast networks in America (ABC, NBC and CBS), were all money-losing operations. There was certain prestige and importance that came from the nightly news broadcasts, but there was no real advertising revenue generated from the programming.

Then in 1968, CBS aired a news program called “60 Minutes”. With its now iconic ticking stopwatch starting each show, “60 Minutes” broke ground with a new format of news presentation. Its in-depth reporting, focusing on a few different stories throughout the duration of each edition, was a fresh way of examining world events. It also did what no national network newscast was able to do: turn a profit. The program proved that news could make money, as “60 Minutes” became a top-rated show, bringing in advertising dollars.

Since the inception of “60 Minutes”, both NBC (“Dateline”) and ABC (“20/20”) have introduced “news magazine” programs to the rosters. All three shows have thrived, all three have given birth to spin-offs (which amount to the same format aired on several nights during the week). And all three programs have done financially well in an environment where network news ratings have faltered. The magazine programs have appealed to a younger audience (especially “Dateline”), and therefore are able to generate more advertising dollars.

What does this have to do with the globalization of television and the way the public views news? The answer is in the fact that these programs, and this format specifically, is easily exported. It is virtually impossible to translate the evening news to a foreign audience (literally and figuratively). But a news magazine program features a more-accessible narrative. And this caused the evening news in America to shift the focus of its own narrative. Instead of news anchors strictly reading the stories of the day, more and more short-form taped pieces from reporters were featured on the broadcasts. The news became almost pulp novel-like in its approach: short chapters and striking visuals to keep the viewers watching.

A new global product was created: news as entertainment, easily emulated by news divisions across the world.

If the creation of “60 Minutes” changed the way networks presented the news, then the fundamental structure of the actual news organization changed in 1980.

That is when Ted Turner launched CNN – Cable News Network. Even with the profitability of “60 Minutes”, no one had dreamed up the notion that news could be a non-stop, 24-hour a day, seven-day-a-week money making machine.
But the bold Turner had a vision, and during a time when the networks were trimming news budgets (in the 1980’s), CNN was expanding its organization, quadrupling in size from 1980 to 1990. And today CNN, the Fox News Channel (a 24-hour news network created by Newscorp in 1996) and MSNBC (NBC’s 24-hour news network) have all seen huge ratings and profit increases, especially at the start of the 21st century:

But cable news would not have seen such an explosion were it not for some key moments that allowed the medium to show its full power.

Four major international events have occurred during the recent history of cable news that shaped and altered the way the entire world viewed itself, and how specific parts of the world in turn viewed competing areas. All four events carried significant symbolic meanings as well as major cultural ramifications that are still being felt today.
The first two occurred in 1989: the protests in Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Both events bring very strong visual images to mind, in part because of the global reach of television.

During a time when the Soviet Union and communism were in rapid decline, the images of a student standing in defiance before a tank in Tiananmen Square and of Germans scaling the Berlin Wall were not only physical showings of solidarity, they were symbolic visuals signifying the end of an economic and political system. These were the first major international events that, because of CNN, could be watched live by an international audience. Television essentially “shrunk” the world, bringing the unfolding images of Beijing and Berlin to a global audience.

The third was the Gulf War in 1991. This is the event that catapulted cable news into the consciousness of a world audience. If the Vietnam War was the first conflict that television brought into the living rooms of Americans, the Gulf War brought a war to the entire world.

The fourth was the Al Qaeda attack on 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” (which is an ongoing story). This has made the most impact in terms of the globalization of the news industry.

Start with the scenario presented at the beginning of this essay. It is not hyperbole to say that the world was watching when the Twin Towers came crashing down. Granted, cable news does not reach every television in the world; not all sets are wired with the technology to receive CNN, FOX, MSNBC or any other cable network devoted to news (via cable or satellite). But hundreds of millions of television sets throughout the world are able to pick up some form of live news at any point during the day.

And the coverage was distinctly American. In the days after the attacks, Fox News began featuring an American flag in the upper-left corner of its screen (something it still uses). CNN and MSNBC followed (both have dropped the flag). It was a national show of unity, but because of the international reach of cable news, there was a sympathy that was extended to America from the rest of the world.

However, as the war in Afghanistan began and as the following war in Iraq is now being waged, American coverage is increasingly being viewed almost as a version of state-run media. Chomsky and Herman discuss a “propaganda model” in the book “Manufacturing Consent”, where the private media is essentially seen as an arm of the state. The international audience has begun to sense that this is the model being used. The international press has become increasingly critical of the American cable news “machine”, causing the sympathy towards America to evaporate.

Cable news has created a total contradiction in terms of what it has meant to a world audience:

Cable news has made the world smaller – meaning international outlets such as CNN, Fox News Channel, the BBC and Al Jazeera have created a “global news village”, where those with the means can watch stories from around the world. This has given people several commonalities on which to base a shared experience (albeit from different world perspectives).

Cable news has also made the world a more separate place – meaning that the heavy influence of “Americanized” news has made the division between America and the rest of the world more severe. Instead of uniting the “global news village”, the news has placed a wedge between civilizations.

The overall development of the news industry has certainly made some positive impact on the global community. The vast resources that news stories are given for coverage has added to the quality of the production of news reporting. However, as the actual ownership of media outlets has been reduced to a few very powerful companies, there is a danger that international news reporting will become narrower, instead of becoming wider in its scope.

CITATIONS, SOURCES, LINKS, NOTES:

Works Cited
Boyd-Barrett, Oliver and Tehri Rantenen. The Globalization of News. London: Sage Publications, 1998.