Except in the most cataclysmic events -- like an air crash, a disaster with high levels of instant death, or a political upheaval -- there is no automaticity to a uniform, international news response. Indeed, the response of news organisations at all levels has become increasingly variable and unpredictable.
Treatment of stories will vary according to national and regional agendas. A crisis in one part of the world can easily be viewed elsewhere as irrelevant. The level of coverage (or refusal to cover) will often be a function of national interest and distance from the event. The lower the national interest and the greater the distance, the less likely it is that news organisations will have anything more than a passing interest in the developing story. There is no uniform media response that defies international borders and national identities.
Responses to conflicts depend on considerations like editorial perceptions, the nationalities of those fighting and the forces being engaged to stop them, calculations about the interests of their audiences, and cash- availability in the news organisation. Gatekeeping theory has narrowed the media trends in conflicts that are a fickle and nationalistic process.89
None of these factors offers any comfort to those working to improve international awareness of conflicts to be prevented or resolved. The outlook is increasingly gloomy. U.S. State Department spokesman Burns has publicly acknowledged a trend that other insiders are less willing to express candidly. From his perspective of promoting and explaining U.S. foreign policy, Burns has described what is now a "sorry minimum of foreign coverage, reflecting current prevailing public attitudes," especially on U.S. TV news networks.93 The European Union's Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, Emma Bonino, has expressed the new challenge in more caustic terms:
What does it take for a humanitarian crisis to make it into prime time slots on radio or television? Deaths are essential, preferably hundreds of them in places that have not captured media attention before. News is by definition new. . . . I became aware that for every humanitarian crisis that made it into the headlines, there were dozens that went unnoticed.94
One reason above all else generates such pressure: The information and media business is experiencing a technological and commercial revolution of seismic proportions. The revolution's ultimate direction cannot be predicted, but current signs indicate that it will disturb the business of conflict prevention. The ultimate paradox will result: there will be increasing and overwhelming volumes of information, but less interest in harnessing the information commercially unless a profitable revenue stream can be generated.
The conflict between journalistic instincts and commercial realities in the increasingly tough information marketplace will be profound. The relentless push for news that entertains ("infotainment") seems unstoppable, with a trend towards the "trivial and mediocre"95 and news that is predominantly domestic with scant reflection of foreign crises.96
The leading journalists and producers at the 1996 awards ceremony of the One World Broadcasting Trust were warned of the "danger of apartheid of the communications world"97 between media coverage of developed and the developing world. The audience was then presented starkly with a new challenge: "We [as broadcast journalists] can raise consciousness or retreat."98
Many fear that commercial realities have already forced the retreat. "Television and radio coverage of humanitarian issues outside the main news bulletins is dwindling throughout Europe," EU commissioner Bonino has concluded. "The sidelining of documentary and current affairs programs about humanitarian issues is also due to lack of interest among the owners and directors of broadcasting companies."99
On the positive side are programmes like Channel Four News from Independent Television News (ITN) in London and the output of quasi state-funded broadcasters like the BBC and the two German channels, ARD and ZDF. They are proud to retain a significant news-gathering infrastructure worldwide. (The BBC, for example, retains a network of about 250 correspondents in 42 foreign bureaus.) The aim remains to broadcast comprehensive news, current affairs, and documentary coverage worldwide. The journalistic mission is still to cover international issues and conflicts, even for high-profile, low-audience programmes that the commercial sector considers too marginal to support.100 However, audience shares are falling, with increasingly fragmented and transient viewing patterns across a fast-increasing proliferation of channels. Cash remains a constraint, but not because of any threat to profits. The real value of licence fees and state revenues is being cut. We must therefore ask what political impact such programmes can really be expected to have unless there is a resulting rare public outcry about a conflict that the politicians cannot dare ignore. The chances of this happening are low, and probably negligible.
On the negative side, are the new commercial realities. Much to the regret of many (though not all) journalists, their editorial instincts to cover a conflict are increasingly being heavily constrained by the ever-tougher conditions in the media marketplace.101 For commercial TV news organisations, the ratings or circulation figures produce revenue. The conventional industry view is that coverage of domestic issues will buoy up flagging sales and public interest, even though advertising agencies say well-researched documentaries, including those covering international issues, generate good revenue streams.102 The typical commercial view, however, is that only in exceptional circumstances will coverage of an international crisis raise circulation or viewing numbers. Coverage by way of news or docu mentary is therefore increasingly rare.103
In addition, the new data and news software embraced by information technology has an ominous potential power to distort the integrity of information. The Internet and multimedia products like CD-ROM are in the infant stages of challenging the monopoly of news organisations to disseminate "news." It seems likely that they will further fragment the market in a way yet to be charted accurately. The proliferation of unchecked and uncorroborated "facts" circulating in cyberspace may also serve to distort the perception of conflicts. When reading a newspaper or watching most TV news programmes, the average reader or viewer assumes that the output has been checked and verified by editors and skilled journalists. In the future, with unfiltered Internet access to cyberspace, the typical consumer is unlikely to have the skill to discriminate between "facts" and carefully disguised propaganda or polemics circulating freely under the likely guise of independently verified "facts."
Meanwhile, on the commercial side, information technology is slicing the market into ever-smaller portions. As a result, revenue at the marginal end of each market is being cut. To preserve profit, newspaper and broadcast groups have to drive costs down. Thus the high costs (and risks) of committing editorial manpower to a conflict in a distant country in which there is no national interest to become involved will increasingly militate against conflict coverage. In mainstream daily journalism, senior editors and managers have been heard to say: "If we don't cover it, no one will know the difference, so let's not bother."
As a result, for both text and video reporting of conflict, the international news and video agencies like Reuters, the Associated Press, and Worldwide Television News (WTN) have become the conscience of many (though not all) large broadcast and newspaper organisations. The agencies provide the words and pictures for a fixed annual contract price. This satisfies the accountants because it ensures that there are no financial surprises. Editorially, it ensures rapid, real-time coverage of a story well before a correspondent and crew can be scrambled and sent to the airport, at a considerable extra cost. The agency material is assembled at base in either a TV edit room or on a journalist's video display. In this way, above-the-line costs of such coverage are rock bottom, if not negligible. A degree of editorial honour can be retained, allowing editors to claim correctly: "But we covered the story."
To the purist, the sight of a company's own correspondent in situ is what field reporting of conflicts is all about. But for many organisations, the cost of securing that image and presence is disproportionate and of questionable value. No great compensatory revenue is generated. Regrettably, most viewers and readers cannot tell the difference between a company's experienced correspondent on the spot and a cheaper (though not always) credible journalist sitting in a head office merging text and images into a convincing, if not always accurate, package. To reduce costs and preserve profits, the commercial news organisations are prepared to risk the disaffection of the handful of readers or viewers who notice the difference, along with any errors in interpretation of the second-hand information. The risk is more than offset by the big saving made by not dispatching the company's own staff and resources. The bottom line is that having a named, recognised journalist on location increasingly carries a high marginal cost that many news organisations will not pay.
Naturally, many editors will reject indignantly this kind of analysis as inaccurate or unduly cynical. In many countries, news organisations remain answerable to regulators or oversight boards which continue to insist on extensive coverage of international news, which invariably means conflicts. The regulators have the power to censure those organisations who fail to live up to their mandates. By and large, however, the impression is one of public praise for foreign reporting by news companies, even those claimed by some critics to be falling short of their international news coverage responsibilities.104
However, insiders in some news organisations are not convinced. Journalists detect a carefully crafted editorial sleight of hand designed to give the impression of a greater commitment to on-the-spot foreign coverage than is actually the case. Sceptics even claim that many editors will only assign a reporter to "bang-bang" or big "death-and-destruction" foreign stories if there is a good chance of coverage that will win high-profile awards. These enhance the organisation's prestige and image as a committed provider of foreign news when the reality is somewhat more questionable. As a result, crises that break closer to the deadline for award submissions (usually towards the end of a calendar year) have a better chance of being covered than those that break near the start of the award-year cycle. After all, awards are about marketing and securing a position in the market. Newspaper readers and TV news audiences like to feel part of a success.
This is the new reality. There is no point taking a moral view and expecting matters to change. It is virtually impossible to see how they can. A yearning for the plentiful days of international coverage in the late 1980s and early 1990s is now only for nostalgic dreamers.105 Hence, the warning about the "danger of apartheid in the communications world" is pivotal, as is the new dilemma: "to raise consciousness, or retreat."106 Now the dominant question in deciding whether to commit increasingly scarce resources to a conflict tends to be: "What's the value added by going there ourselves?" Often the answer is: "Nothing worth paying for."
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