James Painter has just produced a study called Counter-Hegemonic News [download pdf] — looking at Qatar’s Al Jazeera English and Venezuela’s Telesur.
I have to say, in the case of AJE, I think both the personnel and the traditions they draw on are simply those of conventional foreign news.
My — admittedly — flip summary of Al Jazeera English is that it looks like Sky News after a coup d’état by the foreign desk.
Painter bases his conclusions on a rather lengthier and more rigorous analysis:
AJE is consciously following a weak political agenda by covering far more news from the south. There are pitfalls to such an approach. Ignoring or down-playing events in the West can mean a viewer will miss out on what actually drives a large part of international relations.
Covering under-reported parts of the world in great depth may be a very worthy policy, but it may sound like an Oxfam or UN channel and put off viewers if the journalism does not remain sharp-edged. Putting more ‘voices of [the] oppressed south’ on air can slide into too uncritical a view of their actions or proposed solutions to their suffering, or it may focus too much on a ‘suffering south’ at the expense of an ‘assertive south.’
He concludes:
AJE’s arrival should be elebrated for its attempt to correct the cultural and information bias of the main Western TV channels…
Telesur, on the other hand…
I think Painter has a point — AJE really does reverse, or try to counteract, the typical news flow, even through its structure: multiple broadcast centers, news that follows the sun, etc.
I once wrote a paper about whether AJE and Al-Hurra were two sides of the same coin, with Jazeera (Arabic) being the response to CNN, Al Hurra being the response to that, and now AJE.
It will be interesting to see what part the Middle East expansion of big broadcasters will play, like CNN in Abu Dhabi. Not much, I think.
Hello Adrian — ‘a coup d’état by the Sky News foreign desk.’ What a good idea. On the serious side — I agree with Painter re: the dangers of being too ‘worthy’ and uncriticial.
Yes — it was an approving comment — but they’re all too nice to take to the barricades.
I’m with you on the need for a bit more AJE editorial ‘bite’ — you don’t have to breathe fire to exercise judgment. What AJE has in ‘global’ perspective it currently lacks in character, altho perhaps it US election coverage will change that perception.