Culture Industry: From Books to Computers

The term culture industry was coined by Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973). They argued that popular culture is like a factory producing standardized cultural goods to manipulate the masses into passivity; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture (for example mass-produced music, movies and tv shows) make people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances. Adorno and Horkheimer saw this mass-produced culture as a danger to the more difficult high arts. Culture industries cultivate false needs; that is, needs created and satisfied by capitalism (that is, an economic ideology and system that worships money and driven by an obsession with wealth accumulation). True needs, in contrast, are freedom, creativity, or genuine happiness.
In works such as Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics, Adorno and Horkheimer theorised that the phenomenon of mass culture has a political implication, namely that all the many forms of popular culture were a single culture industry whose purpose was to ensure the continued obedience of the masses to market interests. In The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), they postulated a modern form of bread and circuses — the method used by the rulers of Ancient Rome to maintain their power and control over the people. This new “iron system” filled leisure time with amusements to distract the consumers from the boredom of their increasingly automated work; they were never left alone long enough to recognise the reality of their exploitation and to consider resisting the economic and social system (hence, beware of the karaoke lounges, discos, clubs, malls, etc.). This is a very pessimistic view of prevailing culture as an anti-enlightenment opiate for the masses and one which draws strongly on Marxism for its condemnation of what is characterised as being continuing capitalist oppression.
Although Western culture used to be divided first into national markets and then into highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow, the modern view of mass culture is that there is a single marketplace in which the best or most popular works succeed. This recognises that the consolidation of media companies has centralised power in the hands of the few remaining multinational corporations now controlling production and distribution. The theory proposes that culture not only mirrors society, but also takes an important role in shaping society through the processes of standardisation and commodification, creating objects rather than subjects. The culture industry claims to serve the consumers' needs for entertainment, but conceals the way that it standardises these needs, manipulating the consumers to desire what it produces (via marketing tactics, sales promomotion, advertising, etc.). The outcome is that mass production feeds a mass market where the identity and tastes of the individual consumers is increasingly less important and the consumers themselves are as interchangeable as the products they consume. The rationale of the theory is to promote the emancipation of the consumer from the tyranny of the producers by inducing the consumer to question beliefs and ideologies. Adorno claimed that enlightenment would bring pluralism and demystification. Unfortunately, man is said to have suffered another fall, corrupted by capitalist industry with exploitative motives.
Anything made by a person is a materialisation of their labour and an expression of their intentions. There will also be a use value: the benefit to the consumer will be derived from its utility. The exchange value will reflect its utility and the conditions of the market: the prices paid by the television broadcaster or at the box office. Yet, the modern soap operas with their interchangeable plots and formulaic narrative conventions reflect standardised production techniques and the falling value of a mass produced cultural product. Only rarely is a film released that makes a more positive impression on the general discourse and achieves a higher exchange value, e.g. Patton (1970) starring George C. Scott as the eponymous American general, was released at a time of considerable anti-war sentiment. The opening shot is of Patton in front of an American flag making an impassioned speech. This was a form of dialectic in which the audience could identify with the patriotism either sincerely (the thesis) or ironically (the antithesis) and so set the tone of the interpretation for the remainder of the film. However, the film is manipulating specific historical events, not only as entertainment, but also as a form of propaganda by demonstrating a link between success in strategic resource management situations and specified leadership qualities. Given that the subtext was instrumental and not "value free", ethical and philosophical considerations arise.
Normally, only high art criticises the world outside its boundaries, but access to this form of communication is limited to the elite classes where the risks of introducing social instability are slight. A film like Patton is popular art which intends controversy in a world of social order and unity which, according to Adorno, is regressing into a cultural blandness. To Hegel, order is good a priori, i.e. it does not have to answer to those living under it. But, if order is disturbed? In Negative Dialectics, Adorno believed this tended towards progress by stimulating the possibility of class conflict. Marx's theory of Historical Materialism was teleological, i.e. society follows through a dialectic of unfolding stages from ancient modes of production to feudalism to capitalism to a future communism. But Adorno felt that the culture industry would never permit a sufficient core of challenging material to emerge on to the market that might disturb the status quo and stimulate the final communist state to emerge.
Observations
Critics of the theory say that the products of mass culture would not be popular if people did not enjoy them, and that culture is self-determining in its administration. This would deny Adorno contemporary political significance, arguing that politics in a prosperous society is more concernced with action than with thought. Wiggershaus (1994) notes that the young generation of critical theorists largely ignore Adorno's work which, in part, stems from Adorno’s inability to draw practical conclusions from his theories. Adorno is also accused of a lack of consistency in his claims to be implementing Marxism. Whereas he accepted the classical Marxist analysis of society showing how one class exercises domination over another, he deviated from Marx in his failure to use dialectic as a method to propose ways to change. Marx's dialectical method depended on the willingness of the working class to overthrow the ruling class, but Adorno and Horkheimer postulated that the culture industry has undermined the revolutionary movement. However, despite these problems, the concept has influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies.
References
Adorno, T. W. Negative Dialectics. New York: The Seabury Press. (1973)
Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso. (1979)
Cook, D. The Culture Industry Revisited. Rowman & Littlefield. (1996)
Hesmondhalgh, D. The Cultural Industries. Sage. (2002)
Steinert, H. Culture Industry. Cambridge: Polity (2003)
Wiggershaus, R. The Frankfurt School: its History, Theories, and Political Significance. MIT Press. (1994)
Witkin, R.W. Adorno on Popular Culture. Routledge. (2003)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry"

International Advertising
1. Definition of International Advertising
International advertising entails dissemination of a commercial message to target audiences in more than one country. Target audiences differ from country to country in terms of how they perceive or interpret symbols or stimuli, respond to humor or emotional appeals, as well as in levels of literacy and languages spoken. How the advertising function is organized also varies. In some cases, multinational firms centralize advertising decisions and budgets and use the same or a limited number of agencies worldwide. In other cases, budgets are decentralized and placed in the hands of local subsidiaries, resulting in greater use of local advertising agencies.
International advertising can, therefore, be viewed as a communication process that takes place in multiple cultures that differ in terms of values, communication styles, and consumption patterns. International advertising is also a business activity involving advertisers and the advertising agencies that create ads and buy media in different countries. The sum total of these activities constitutes a worldwide industry that is growing in importance. International advertising is also a major force that both reflects social values, and propagates certain values worldwide.
2. International Advertising as a Communication Process
In international markets the process of communicating to a target audience is more complex because communication takes place across multiple contexts, which differ in terms of language, literacy, and other cultural factors. In addition, media differ in their effectiveness in carrying different appeals. A message may, therefore, not get through to the audience because of people's inability to understand it (due to literacy problems), because they misinterpret the message by attaching different meanings to the words or symbols used, or because they do not respond to the message due to a lack of income to purchase the advertised product. Media limitations also play a role in the failure of a communication to reach its intended audience.
The process of communication in international markets involves a number of steps. First, the advertiser determines the appropriate message for the target audience. Next, the message is encoded so that it will be clearly understood in different cultural contexts. The message is then sent through media channels to the audience who then decodes and reacts to the message. At each stage in the process, cultural barriers may hamper effective transmission of the message and result in miscommunication.
In encoding a verbal message, care needs to be taken in translation. Numerous examples exist of translation problems with colloquial phrases. For example, when the American Dairy Association entered Mexico with its "Got Milk?" campaign, the Spanish translation read "Are You Lactating?" Low levels of literacy may result in the need to use visual symbols. Here again, pitfalls can arise due to differences in color association or perception. In many tropical countries, green is associated with danger and has negative connotations. Red, on the other hand, is associated with weddings and happiness in China. Appeals to humor or sex also need to be treated with considerable care as their expression and effectiveness varies from one culture to another. The dry British sense of humor does not always translate effectively even to other English-speaking countries.In addition to encoding the message so that it attracts the attention of the target audience and is interpreted correctly, advertisers need to select media channels that reach the intended target audience. For example, use of TV advertising may only reach a relatively select audience in certain countries. Equally, print media will not be effective where there are low levels of literacy. Certain media may also be more effective in certain cultures. For example, radio advertising has substantial appeal in South America where popular music is a key aspect of the local culture.
The cultural context also impacts the effectiveness of communication. In "high context" cultures, such as the collectivist Asian cultures of Japan and China, the context in which information is embedded is as important as what is said (Hall 1976). In low context cultures, which include most Western societies, the information is contained in the verbal messages. In these cultures, it is important to provide adequate information relating to the product or service in order to satisfy their need for content (De Mooij 1998). Conversely, people in high context cultures are often more effectively reached by image or mood appeals, and rely on personal networks for information and content. Awareness of these differences in communication styles is essential to ensure effective communication.
3. International Advertising as a Business Practice
International advertising can also be viewed as a business activity through which a firm attempts to inform target audiences in multiple countries about itself and its product or service offerings. In some cases the advertising message relates to the firm and its activities, i.e. its corporate image. In other cases, the message relates to a specific product or service marketed by the firm. In either case, the firm will use the services of an advertising agency to determine the appropriate message, advertising copy and make the media placement.
An important issue in determining international advertising strategy is whether or not to develop a global or regional advertising campaign, or rather tailor communication to differences in local markets (Peebles and Ryans 1984). If the purpose of advertising is to develop a strong corporate or global image, a uniform global campaign is more likely to be used. When, on the other hand, the objective is to launch a new product or brand, or to more clearly differentiate the product or brand from other competing brands or products, local campaigns tailored to local markets are more typical.
A global campaign offers a number of advantages. In the first place, it can be an important means of building a strong and coherent global image for the firm and/or its products worldwide. Use of the same image in different countries builds familiarity and generates synergies across world markets. It allows utilization of good ideas and creative talent (both of which are scarce commodities) on a worldwide basis. In addition, use of a single campaign provides substantial cost savings in copy development and production costs. Conversely, development of multiple local campaigns can lead to duplication of effort, result in inconsistent brand images across countries and confusion in consumers' minds with regard to the benefits offered by the brand and corporate image.
While use of uniform advertising appeals offers a number of advantages, differences in customer perceptions and response patterns across countries and cultures, as well as media availability and government regulation are major barriers to use of a standardized campaign. Even though technological developments allow adaptation of advertising appeals to different languages (for example, TV can have audio channels in two languages, Internet messages can be automatically translated), development of visual and verbal copy that works effectively in multiple countries poses major creative challenges.
Faced with this dilemma, firms may use a global umbrella campaign combined with local country or product-specific advertising. The global umbrella campaign develops a uniform image for the company or brand worldwide, often relying on consistent visual images and the corporate logo. Product-specific or country advertising builds on this image, modifying the appeal and providing information tailored to the local market. The objective of the umbrella campaign is to provide an integrating force, while local campaigns provide greater relevance to specific local customers and markets.
The organizational structure of the firm often plays a key role in the choice of global vs. locally adapted campaigns. If international operations are organized on a country-by- country or geographic basis and operate as local profit centers with local advertising budgets, pressures exist for use of local advertising campaigns. If, on the other hand, the company is organized by product divisions, with centralized advertising budgets at corporate or regional headquarters, use of regional or global advertising campaigns is more likely (See Douglas and Craig (1995) for more information on global strategy).
4. International Advertising as an Industry
The world advertising industry is characterized by a large number of small and medium sized advertising agencies that operate primarily in one country and by a small number of very large advertising agencies with operations in many countries. These agencies have developed extensive networks of offices throughout the world in order to coordinate the advertising process in all the countries where their clients do business. These networks often include both wholly-owned subsidiaries and formal relationships with local advertising agencies to establish a presence in new markets, particularly in emerging markets. In an effort to establish greater control over their advertising, many major advertisers are consolidating all their advertising with one agency. For some major advertisers such as IBM and Citibank, this represents annual advertising expenditures in excess of $500 million worldwide (Grein and Ducoffe, 1998). As a consequence, advertising agencies that do not have a global network are at a serious disadvantage when competing for new advertising accounts or attempting to retain existing ones that are expanding globally.The majority of these large advertising agencies are headquartered in the US. Of the ten largest advertising agency groups, seven are headquartered in the US, and one each in the UK, France and Japan, although WPP, the British agency holding company, is made up of two large US-based agencies. With the exception of Dentsu, the Japanese agency, most other agency networks generate the majority of their revenues outside their home country. The largest agency group, Omnicom, places over $37 billion of advertising for its clients around the world and derives half its revenue from outside the US. Omnicom has 891 offices in over 85 countries and employs 35,600 persons worldwide (57 percent work outside the US). US-based advertising agencies and their subsidiaries are responsible for most of the advertising throughout the world. For example, of the approximately $60 billion in advertising placed by the top 25 agency networks in Europe during 1955, 89 percent of the total was placed by subsidiaries of US-based agencies. This general pattern holds in most parts of the world that do not have restrictions on foreign ownership. The major exception is Asia where the three major Japanese agencies account for 62 percent of the advertising placed by the top 25 agency networks. Current and comprehensive information on advertising can be obtained from Advertising Age's web site, www.adage.com.
Worldwide over $400 billion is spent on advertising. Approximately half of that amount is spent in the US and the other half outside the US. Information on advertising spending can be obtained from Advertising Age's web site and from McCann-Erickson's web site (www.mccann.com). The bulk of expenditure outside the US takes place in Europe and Japan, although Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Australia are also important advertising markets. Outside of these markets, China is the next largest advertising market and is also growing rapidly.
The concentration of spending in the US in part explains the dominance of US-based advertising agencies. Not only do they work for US-based clients that continue to expand outside the US, but also they accumulate knowledge and experience in the practice of advertising that can be applied elsewhere.
Once the advertising message has been created, a media plan must be developed and specific media vehicles purchased to deliver the message to the target audience. Media differ from country in their availability, effectiveness and efficiency in delivering a message, and, with relatively few exceptions, tend to be organized on a country-by-country basis. Notable exceptions include StarTV, MTV, CNN in television, Business Week International, the Asia Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune in print, and selected industry and medical publication that are read worldwide. There is also a trend toward consolidation of media in order to achieve greater economies of scale and leverage content developed in one market to others. This consolidation facilitates purchase of media on a regional and global basis. In addition, the Internet is emerging as a truly global medium that does not conform to country boundaries.
5. International Advertising as a Social Force
In the view of the advertiser the primary objective of advertising is to sell products or services. In achieving this primary goal, there are often profound secondary consequences. Advertising exerts a formative influence whose character is both persuasive and pervasive. Through the selective reinforcement of certain social roles, language and values, it acts as an important force fashioning the cognitions and attitudes that underlie behavior not only in the market place, but also in all aspects of life. In an international setting, advertising has an important social influence in a number of ways. First, much international advertising is designed to promote and introduce new products from one society into another. Often this results in radical change in life-styles, behavior patterns of a society, stimulating for example the adoption of fast food, casual attire or hygiene and beauty products. International advertising also encourages desire for products from other countries, it creates expectations about " the good life", and establishes new models of consumption. Advertising is thus a potent force for change, while selectively reinforcing certain values, life-styles and role models.
Often the symbols, ideals and mores that international advertising portrays and promotes are those of Western society and culture. Through the reach of advertising, brands such as Levi's, Nike, Marlboro and McDonalds are known by and have become objects of desire for teens and young adults throughout the world. Similarly, images and scenes depicted in much international advertising are either Western in origin or reflect Western consumption behavior and values. Even where adapted to local scenarios and role models, those shown often come from sectors of society, such as the upwardly mobile urban middle class, which embrace or are receptive to Western values and mores.
Consequently, a criticism frequently leveled at international advertising is that it promulgates Western values and mores, notably from the US, in other countries. This is viewed particularly negatively in societies with strong religious or moral values, which run counter to those of the West as, for example, Islamic societies in the Middle East. When Western advertising depicts sexually explicit situations or shows women in situations considered as inappropriate or immoral, it is likely to be considered a subversive force undermining established cultural mores and values. Equally, in some countries such as France, there is a strong negative reaction to the imposition of US culture, values and use of English in advertising. Promotion of tobacco products by US and UK companies in countries where there is no legislation regulating or banning cigarette advertising has also been criticized.
At the same time, international advertising also acts as an integrating force across national boundaries. It disseminates messages using universal symbols and slogans, and establishes a common mode of communication among target audiences in different parts of the world. At the same time, multicultural values are reinforced by advertisers, who adopt images incorporating peoples of different nations and diverse cultural backgrounds, as, for example, the Colors of Benneton campaign or the British Airways "Peoples of the World" campaign. The impact of such campaigns is further reinforced by the growth of global media such as Star TV, CNN, MTV or print media that target global audiences worldwide. Consequently, while, on the one hand, international advertising can be viewed as a colonizing force propagating Western values and mores throughout the world, it is also an important force integrating societies and establishing common bonds, universal symbols and models of communication among peoples in different parts of the globe.
REFERENCES
De Mooij, M. 1998, Global Marketing and Advertising: Understanding Cultural Paradoxes. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.Douglas, S.P. and Craig, C.S. 1995, Global Marketing Strategy. McGraw Hill, New York.Grein, A. and Ducoffe, R. 1998, Strategic Response to Market Globalization among Advertising Agencies. International Journal of Advertising, 17, 301-319.Hall, Edward T. 1976, Beyond Culture. Anchor Press, Garden City, NY.Peebles, D.M. and Ryans, J.K., Jr. 1984, Management of International Advertising: A Marketing Approach. Allyn and Bacon, Boston.Rijkens, R. 1992, European Advertising Strategies. Cassell, London.

PR and Comm Models

The Importance of the Four Models of Public Relations
The early days of public relations knew no theories knew, thus little to no thought was put into communication plans, tactics, strategies, or programs. With no theoretical foundation, public relations in many cases did more harm that good because legal ramifications, such as libel and fraud, were not considered. This oversight and bad judgment had dire consequences (i.e.profit loss and a tarnished organizational image) that had to be alleviated and avoided in order to insure public relations' survival.
Grunig's research has added many new theories to the body of knowledge that already exists. These theories have helped to improve the field of public relations in many ways. Public relations practitioners are better able to serve the organizational and public interest by using the best model or models listed below:
1. Press agentry/publicity model
One-way communication
Uses persuasion and manipulation to influence audience to behave as the organization desires
2. Public Information model
One-way communication
Uses press releases and other one-way communication techniques to distribute organizational information. Public relations practitioner is often referred to as the "journalist in residence".
3. One-way asymmetrical model
One-way communication
Uses persuasion and manipulation to influence audience to behave as the organization desires. Does not use research to find out how its public(s) feel about the organization.
4. Two-way symmetrical model
Two-way communication
Uses communication to negotiate with publics,resolve conflict, and promote mutual understanding and respect between the organization and its public(s).

Public Relations vs. Marketing Functions
The agendas of public relations and marketing are different. Marketing is interested in the market — consumers and demand. Public relations is interested in relationships — reducing conflict and improving cooperation.
Good public relations will create a healthy environment for marketing. But simply providing technical support for marketing is not the same as good public relations.
An important study* on excellence in communication management identified four major public relations models:
Promotion and publicity (one-way communication/hype)
Applied journalism (one-way communication/credible)
Research, persuasion (two-way communication, win/neutral)
Dialogue, mutual solutions (two-way communication, win/win)
(More than one model may be apparent in any public relations practice. Philosophy and vision will determine which one is dominant.)
The same study found that excellent organizations were associated with three factors:
Effective organizations treat PR as a management function.
The most effective model of PR involves dialogue and mutual solutions.
The commitment of key leaders and asking the right questions are critical.
The two critical questions were:
How do we manage our interdependence with the community?
How do we develop excellence within our organization?
The bottom line is a balance of receivables and payables. Marketing adds value by increasing income. Public relations adds value by decreasing the expenses that are necessary when issues are ignored.
Consider the alternatives to these situations:
Activist groups being satisfied with your performance
Customers comfortable that they can count on you
(or) Donors being loyal to you when money is tight
Employees respecting you as a good and fair employer
Fewer people feeling like suing you
Journalists knowing you to be responsive and credible
Legislators seeing you as ethical and having public support
Neighbors not minding your presence on their street
Shareholders regarding you as competent and competitive
Your industry considering you a leader
Faking it doesn't work. Not caring and then apologizing doesn't work. An old adage is that the "P" and the "R" in public relations stand for performance and recognition. Good relationships are genuine.
Marketing and public relations both work best when they're treated as distinct management functions. These two functions can pull together as equals on a team, and this works to integrate the business process.
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*These issues are thoroughly covered in the landmark IABC study, Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management, edited by James. E. Grunig.

In the world of integrated marketing, the lines between advertising, communications and public relations have become almost non-existent. Just what role does Public Relations play in today's mix?
By: Renée A. Prejean-Motanky
Reputation and Why it Matters
Reputation can account for a large portion of a company's market capitalization, and can be its most important long-term asset. It affects non-profit organizations in a myriad of ways, including donor support, and the ability to attract and retain clients and employees. Non-profit reputation is based on factors such as:
Quality of services
Fund Management
Stability
Level of integrity in business practices
Degree of honesty and openness
What it gives to the community
Today, with distrust of the corporate world at an all-time high, credibility is an over-riding factor in every arena including the non-profit "business" world. Today all companies are at the mercy of public constituencies. There is growing recognition of the need to foster a good reputation by developing positive relationships with various publics. How Companies Can Restore Trust
There is a formal definition of the term "public relations", yet its meaning is self-evident; it is the management of relationships between an organization and the constituencies upon which it depends.
Quite literally, public relations is managing relations with various publics, a role that grows in importance as reputation becomes ever more critical to business success. Companies can restore trust in a number of ways, many involving traditional PR strategies, such as:
Using integrity and fairness as criteria for all business decisions
Maintaining an emphasis on quality of services
Openly sharing truthful information with all publics
Actively seeking input from publics and being responsive to concerns
Renewing a commitment to the community
Creating forums to encourage dialogue with constituencies.
An organization’s reputation, or the essence of how it is viewed by all of its publics, is the leading factor in its ability to achieve success. The battered image of an organization is no small matter. Restoring trust and helping an organization to earn a reputation for credibility will require sound public relations leadership. Indeed, with integrity central on the minds of average publics, the role of public relations today is more critical than ever before.
Research conducted by Jonathan Low and Pam Cohen Kalafut in their recently published book, "Invisible Advantage: How Intangibles are Driving Business Performance," overwhelmingly demonstrates that business institutional investors rely on much more than traditional economic indicators such as profit and loss. Interviews with buy-side investors, who control more than 80 percent of all stock that is purchased, pay significant attention to intangible assets such as culture, leadership, human capital, communications, brand and reputation. Public relations is uniquely equipped to manage these assets, setting the stage for an ever-increasing role in a variety of strategic areas beyond publicity.
PUBLIC RELATIONS FUNCTIONS:
PROGRAMMING
This involves analyzing problems and opportunities, defining goals, identifying the publics (or groups of people whose support or understanding is needed), and recommending and planning activities. It may include budgeting and assignment of responsibilities to the appropriate people, including non-public relations personnel. For example, an organization's president or CEO is often a key figure in public relations activities.
CULTIVATING RELATIONSHIPS
Successful public relations professionals develop skills in gathering information from management, colleagues in their organizations and external sources. Continually evaluating what they learn, practitioners formulate recommendations and gain approval for them from their managements. Many public relations activities require working with, and sometimes through, other organizational units such as personnel, legal and marketing staffs. The public relations professional who learns to be persuasive with others will be most effective.
WRITING AND EDITING
Since the public relations professional is often trying to reach large groups of people, an important tool is the printed word. Examples of its use are found in reports, news releases, brochures, speeches, video, scripts, trade magazine articles, product information and technical materials, employee publications, newsletters, shareholder reports, and other management communications directed to both organization personnel and external groups. A sound, clear style of writing is a must for public relations work.
INFORMATION
Establishing systems for the dissemination of material to appropriate newspaper, broadcast, general and trade publication editors, and communicating with them to enlist their interest in publishing an organization's news and features are regular public relations activities. This requires knowledge of how newspapers and other media operate, the areas of specialization publications, and the interest of individual editors. (Competition is keen for the attention of editors and broadcasters who have a limited amount of space and time at their disposal.) As a seasoned practitioner put it, "You have to get the right editor of the right publication with the right story at the right time." Although ideas are accepted on the basis of news and other readership values, an ability to develop relationships of mutual respect and cooperation with the news media can be useful to both the practitioners and the media.
PRODUCTION
Various publications, special reports, videos, and multimedia programs are important ways of communicating. The public relations professional need not be an expert in art, layout, typography, and photography, but background knowledge of the techniques of preparation is needed for intelligent planning and supervision of their use.
SPECIAL EVENTS
News conferences, convention exhibits, new facility and anniversary celebrations, contest and award programs, tours and special meetings are only a few of the special events used to gain attention and acceptance of groups of people. They involve careful planning and coordination, attention to detail, preparation of special booklets, publicity materials and reports.
SPEAKING
Public relations work often requires skill in face-to-face communication - finding appropriate platforms, the preparation of speeches for others and the delivery of speeches. The person who can effectively address individuals and groups will enjoy an advantage over those whose facility of expression is limited to writing.
RESEARCH AND EVALUATION
An important activity undertaken by public relations practitioners is fact-gathering. This can be highly personal, through interviews, review of library materials and informal conversations. It also can involve the use of survey techniques and firms specializing in designing and conducting opinion research.
After a program is completed, the public relations professional studies its results and evaluates the program's planning, implementation, and effectiveness. More and more, managements expect research and evaluation from their public relations advisers or staffs.
THE TYPICAL DAY AT WORK
Public relations offices are busy places; work schedules are irregular and frequently interrupted. The junior employee may answer calls for information from the press and public, work on invitation lists and details for a press conference, escort visitors and clients, help with research, write brochures, deliver releases to editorial offices, and compile media distribution lists.
Employees will brief their management on upcoming meetings, help write reports, speeches, presentations and letters, research case histories, help produce displays and other audiovisual materials, proofread copy, select photographs for publication, arrange for holiday and other remembrances, conduct surveys and tabulate questionnaires, and work with letter shops and printers.Public relations programs operate against deadlines. Under such high-pressure conditions, nine-to-five schedules go out the window. Public relations executives are not tied to their desks for long periods. Meetings, community functions, business lunches, travel assignments, special speaking and writing commitments, and unscheduled work on "crisis" situations often mean long hours.

Flow of TV News

THE FOREIGN NEWS FLOW IN THE INFORMATION AGE
by Claude Moisy
Discussion Paper D-23
October 1996
Harvard University
John F. Kennedy School of Government
The Joan Shorenstein Center
Excerpts:
While readers have tuned news out; the technologically adept citizen has at his disposal more theoretical sources of information than ever. The Internet can connect him to newspapers around the world, self-administered news groups, bulletin boards, chat rooms, government agencies, libraries and transcript services. Amateur eyewitnesses can post their own videos onto the Internet.
I would voice only two arguments that may preserve the traditional news-gathering businesses for the indefinite future. First, the news needs storytellers. This is not a universal skill. Even experienced newspeople can leave an event they all have witnessed, asking each other (or more likely asking a hard-nosed wire-service reporter like Moisy) “What’s the lead?” It is perfectly possible to see an event and not be able to describe it coherently or to pick out what in a speech or press conference is “news.” On the Internet and other interactive fora — radio talk shows,
for example — the news consumer often is at the mercy of whoever happens to have seized
the floor. The news source could be an experienced analyst or a fanciful fabricator. Even if
the source is honest and well-intentioned, he or she may be disorganized and inarticulate.
Among all the professionals in the news business, a reporter is still a premium product who
can do an off-the-cuff “stand-up” in front of a TV camera. Newspaper editors have a special
place in their hearts for the pencil reporter who can dictate a coherent story over a telephone on
deadline to his home office.
Second, the traditional news sources are not the only conduits of information, they are also filters. Any newspaper person who has logged onto an Internet news group will recognize many of the contributors at once: They are the same obsessives who write dense postcards in tiny script that covers all available space and then continues around the edge, often continuing with a PS on the address side. These are cards and letters the newspapers routinely do not print; the Internet, by contrast, is a vanity press for the demented, the conspiratorial or the merely self-important. Even the wonderfully named “killfile” feature — which allows one to bar any further messages from a bore — does not solve this problem. You often don’t know what you really want until you actually see it.
Except for specialist subjects, the news groups are a frustration and a bore.
The technological changes Moisy cites are truly breathtaking. But perhaps a little historical
perspective is warranted. Short-wave radio allowed Americans to hear Hitler’s speeches in
the 1930s. But short-wave did not replace news-gathering. Live TV coverage of the Army-
McCarthy hearings of 1953 allowed shut-ins as much access to a national event as the reporters
assigned to cover it. The shut-ins still read every word and watched every newscast. There
is still a market for professional newspeople, and the weakness of the Internet is that no one
has yet figured out how to take in enough revenue to pay professionals to contribute to it.
Moisy is undoubtedly correct in predicting 2 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
that news will increasingly be aimed at and consumed by an elite. This is a reflection of a
wider change in this once-egalitarian nation. It has become polarized into elites and non-elites,
a split that is not only skewing our income statistics but has even begun to replace the old
left-right division in our politics. Issues like the North American Free Trade Agreement split
the country into elites who welcomed free trade and non-elites who feared it. Thus, you saw
odd-couple coalitions, such as populists Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader on one side, and
internationalists like Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich on the other.
One fascinating thread that runs through Moisy’s analysis is the success of Reuters, the
British-based news agency (known to Moisy and his fellows at Agence France Presse by the
internal code-name “Rosalie”), for which I once worked. Its prosperity, even today, is based on
an inspired philosophy propounded by its
founder, Baron Julius Reuter, more than 150
years ago. “Follow the cable.” Reuter started
with carrier pigeons, but quickly realized that
he could make his fortune by keeping up with
the latest technology, at that time, the telegraph
wire. Wherever the cable went, Reuters
would go too. The “cable” has now become
digital computing, interactive networks, homeshopping,
real-time video and the like. Reuters
is still there, gathering, distributing and filtering
the news. By the way, the best and most
satisfying way to read it is in black and white,
on newsprint.
Lars-Erik Nelson
Columnist
New York Daily News
Claude Moisy 3
I. INTRODUCTION
The amazing technological innovations that
are revolutionizing the field of communication at
the end of the 20th century are generally regarded
as beneficial to our ability to acquire knowledge
and to understand and solve problems.
The optimistic proponents of the “global
village” theory seem confident that instantaneous
access by the individual citizen to an unlimited
number of sources of information will shrink our
unruly planet. They see in the new interactive
multimedia the promise of a “boundaryless”
world. The purpose of this paper is to try and find
out whether the global electronic interconnection
— the much heralded information superhighway
— is likely to improve the flow of international
news, make the public more aware of world
problems and, consequently, contribute to their
solution.
To address these questions we must look at
the changes that the unfolding “information
revolution” has already brought and will continue
to bring to the international news market. The
global newswire services remain the principal
suppliers of international news to the media. But
since the comprehensive study made ten years
ago by Jonathan Fenby,1 the conditions in which
these wire services collect, produce and distribute
news around the world have been affected by new
economic, political and, above all, technological
changes. Some of these changes are positive,
some are negative. Their evolution determines to
a large extent the quality of the international
news flow that, hopefully, contributes to international
understanding.
The shaping of public opinion, however, is
increasingly affected by the development of two
phenomena: the ascendancy of television over the
newspaper as a source of news, and the emergence
of interactivity as a way of acquiring information.
To what extent will the newswire services have
to substitute image for word in order to keep their
role as international news providers? To what
extent will newspapers, and even television, have
to change their approach to providing news in
order to remain relevant in a system dominated
by the choice of the consumer?
It may very well be that the prospects for a
real globalization of information through instant
communications are overestimated. Will computer
interactivity remain the privilege of a small
minority in affluent societies for a long time to
come, or will it quickly become accessible
throughout the globe? Will the information
superhighway generate greater curiosity about
distant societies and their problems, or will it
only appeal to natural human tendencies for greed
and indifference to others?
The Nature of News
Any discussion of the news business today
needs to be preceded by an attempt at clarifying
the semantic confusion that surrounds the world
of communication. Words such as “information,”
“media” and “news” have acquired a much wider
scope of meaning than they had 30 years ago.
Information is no longer synonymous with
news. The term now covers all sorts of data that
can be reduced to “bytes” to be transmitted
electronically. Media is no longer synonymous
with the press. It is now applied to all enterprises
that disseminate any kind of “information” in the
widest possible sense of the word (news, stock
quotes, advertising, entertainment, etc.). We have
even reached a point where the term news itself is
no longer restricted to what it used to mean: the
coverage of events by journalists. The parent
company of Fox Television, an entertainment
network, is called “News Corp.” Users of the
Internet form “news groups” when they get
together in cyberspace to exchange ideas, opinions
and mere trivialities. Some “news and information”
channels on cable television can program
anything but the coverage of events.
This study only deals with news in its
narrow traditional sense of coverage of events,
and more specifically with news from the outside
world available to the American public. It will
examine first the primary production of such
news, in the form of text or image, and then its
consumption by the media and the public. It
reaches the conclusion that a potentially greater
supply of international news is being met in the
United States by a reduced demand.
THE FOREIGN NEWS FLOW IN THE INFORMATION AGE
Will the Americans still see the world when they travel on the Infobahn?
by Claude Moisy
Claude Moisy, former chairman and general manager of
Agence France-Presse, the French international news
agency, has been a journalist and an executive in the news
business for more than forty years in many parts of the
world, including twenty years in Washington, D.C. He was
a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center in the Spring of 1995.
4 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
II. THE SUPPLY OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The Not So Global Television
It is widely assumed by the general public as
well as by media professionals that, in the United
States, television has long been the main source
of news. It is also increasingly believed that
television has become “global” in the sense that
it has acquired the capacity to cover events
everywhere and bring that coverage everywhere.
Historians of the communication industry
may someday reconstruct with disbelief the
genesis of the CNN phenomenon in the wake of
the Gulf War of 1990-91. For the first time in
history, thanks to the shrewdness of Saddam
Hussein, a television network became an active
participant in the development of a major international
crisis. It became the channel of communication
between the warring parties and the
instant chronicler of the conflict. The impact on
the international community was such that the
expression “global live coverage” was widely
accepted as the description of what had happened
and as the definitive hallmark of CNN. But the
feat could in no way become a permanent fixture,
and the very high ratings reached in the United
States in the first quarter of 1991 during the
fighting phase of the crisis plummeted almost as
soon as it was over.
CNN currently has a news gathering network
of 20 bureaus with 35 correspondents
outside the United States. That is more than
other aspiring global television networks such as
Fox. But it is only half of what the BBC has had
for a long time to cover world events on radio and
television. It is hardly more than what comprises
the foreign network of any of the three or four
major American newspapers and news magazines
which were never regarded as global print media.
And, above all, it is only a fraction of what the
three largest international newswire services
maintain on a permanent basis. It may be adequate
for occasional spectacular operations in a
few long-brewing world crises, but it certainly
does not allow an immediate and sustained
coverage of all events breaking out in unexpected
places on the planet.
On the distribution side, a distinction must
be made between the “potential reach” of a
television network and its actual audience.
Richard Parker recently estimated CNN International
viewership at much less than one percent
of the world population.2 Even in the industrial
democracies of Europe and in Japan, where the
CNN International signal is widely available on
cable, it is only watched by an insignificant
fraction of the potential audiences that naturally
prefer to receive the news in their own language
from their national television channels.
We cannot discount the possibility that if a
real global television news network ever exists, it
will come out of one of the global newswire
services that have already started producing video
news, Reuters being the prime candidate.
Whether news organizations that have for so long
concentrated on written news will be able to
master an entirely different medium remains in
question.
The Global Newswire Services
The only news organizations approaching a
global dimension are still the largest of the
traditional international news agencies. Little
known to the general public, they have been the
main purveyors of foreign news to the world
media since their creation in the mid-nineteenth
century. In recent times, the international news
market has, in fact, been dominated by “the big
four” Western news agencies: AFP, AP, Reuters
and UPI (in alphabetical order).
During the Cold War and its “neutralist” byproduct,
this exclusively Western control of the
international news flow led to a UNESCO sponsored
call for a “new world information order”
that fizzled out long before the end of the East-
West rivalry. The only real changes in the last
fifteen years were the disappearance of UPI and
the expansion of Reuters.
The Fall of United Press International
The decline of UPI in the 1980s was a
significant event for the world news business, and
particularly for the supply of international news
to the U.S. media. It is beyond the scope of this
paper to describe and analyze the downfall of the
second American wire service. Suffice to say that
it was one of the first signs of the reduced demand
for news on the part of the newspaper industry.
A painful series of financial crises and
unfortunate changes of ownership progressively
reduced the news-gathering network and the
scope of coverage, both national and international,
of UPI. A vicious circle of mounting
deficits and staff reductions hurt the credibility of
the wire. In the 10-year period from 1982 to 1992,
it changed hands five times to end up as a subsidiary
of a relatively new and little known communication
company owned by the Saudi royal
family. Its annual revenue had plummeted to less
than $30M from more than $100M while its staff
had been cut to less than 300 from over 1,800. By
then, UPI had renounced competing with AP and
Claude Moisy 5
started experimenting with new products for new
markets. Since 1992, the new owners have
worked at reviving the network of foreign bureaus
which had been reduced to almost nothing,
except in Latin America. But the U.S. newspaper
industry remained uninterested.
For the quality of the international news
flow to the United States, the collapse of UPI has
certainly been a loss. There was obviously a large
amount of duplication in the foreign coverage of
the two American newswires. But there was also
a complementary element in their competition,
each one having its strong and weak points in
international reporting. The sad and relevant fact
is that in the 1980s the U.S. newspaper industry
had already given up on its previous interest in
maintaining two independent American sources
of general news.
The Transformation of Reuters
At exactly the same time that UPI was
reeling under financial difficulties, the British
news agency Reuters, which was not in much
better shape in the ’60s, underwent the opposite
evolution. Its managers responded boldly to the
challenge of new technologies and of a changing
international information market. Taking
advantage of Reuters’s long tradition as a source
of financial news and of its location in the top
international financial center, they decided to put
all their available resources into developing the
electronic processing of business information for
the world’s business community. The gamble
was a success, and Reuters financial services —
including interactive services — became an
indispensable tool of the global marketplace. Its
revenues increased ninefold in the ’70s and
fifteenfold in the ’80s. The former cooperative of
British newspapers was very successfully floated
as a public company in 1984. And in the mid-
’90s, through a wide-ranging wave of acquisitions
in the communication industry, it was well on its
way to becoming one of the largest global multimedia
companies. The general news services for
the media now represent less than seven percent
of its revenue. But the huge profits ($650M before
tax in 1994) generated by the numerous business
information services, enabled Reuters to invest
heavily in new types of news services for the
media, such as photo and video news.
This expansion contrasted with the relative
stagnation of the two other global newswires.
The development of Associated Press has always
been influenced by its legal status as a non-profit
cooperative of U.S. daily newspapers in which the
electronic media have been belatedly granted only
token representation. It kept concentrating on
the production of text and photo for its domestic
newspaper members. It never really tried to
compete with Reuters for the expanding business
information market and started late and modestly
in video news production.
Agence France-Presse for its part has always
been hampered in its expansion by a hybrid legal
status of “autonomous body operating under
commercial law” but deprived of capital or
Relative Dimension of the Three GNWs (1993)
AP Reuters AFP
Revenue ($M) 355 2,810 204
Expenses 353 2,240 207
Income 2 570 (3)
Employees c.3,000 11,300 c.2,000
Total bureaus 226 126 130
Foreign bureaus 91 c.100 105
Total journalists 1,400 1,350 1,160
Journalists abroad 310 615 560
Source: Annual reports and other company documents
6 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
shareholders. It is supposed to finance its operations
solely by the sale of its services, but depends
on “subscriptions” of French state administrations
that still amounted to 48% of its revenue in
1993. Whenever it needs to invest in new technologies
or new services it must negotiate with
the state for preferential loans from the public
banking sector.
The Real Wholesalers in Foreign News
As different as they are in their structure
and activities, the three global newswires are the
only organizations that really collect general
news all around the world and distribute it all
around the world to a wide variety of media and
non-media clients. To conduct this double
activity they rely on networks of news producing
bureaus that no other type of news organizations
maintain, and on world-wide autonomous
telecommunication systems to distribute their
services.
They all have between 90 and 100 fullfledged
bureaus (an office with at least one
permanent staff journalist) outside their home
base. And the number of professional journalists
(news writers and photographers) assigned to
these foreign bureaus varies between 300 and 600
depending on the administrative status granted to
their local personnel.
All three global newswires produce between
400 and 500 news items every day (not counting
multiple versions in different languages) on all
aspects of world activities: political, social,
economic, cultural, sport, etc. Even the most
“domestic” service of AFP, for instance, the
French language general wire distributed to the
French media (around 150,000 words daily),
contains on the average 35% foreign news. The
English language wire for Europe (120,000 words),
contains more than 50% non-European news.
The Associated Press, a wire in the United States,
dominated as it is by the heavy demand of its
members for national and regional news, can
carry up to a hundred foreign stories a day. By
comparison, CNN (including CNN International)
never brings more than twenty foreign stories a
day to its viewers, if for no other reason than the
much higher cost of producing and transmitting
video news.
The Effect of New Technologies on News
Production
The international news business enjoyed a
relative technological stability for almost a
century when the news was produced on typewriters,
transmitted by telegraph wires or radio
waves, and received on teleprinter tapes. Things
started to change in the early 1970s with the
introduction of computer terminals for news
writing and editing. The change was even more
radical in the 1980s with the progressive adoption
of satellite transmission by the global
newswires.
These two technological developments,
computers and satellites, clearly worked in favor
of the news producers and fostered a more
intensive flow of their international services.
Although it was not intended, the computerization
of word treatment immediately increased
the volume of news produced and transmitted
over the wires. In some news agencies the
management strove to convince the journalists to
reduce their output in order to counter the
unions’ claim that the computer was a tool for
the exploitation of the worker. But by all accounts,
the introduction of video display terminals
in the newsrooms invariably resulted in
gains of productivity. At AFP, for instance, no
foreign language service had less than a 40%
wordage increase in five or six years with a
smaller number of journalists.
By the mid-’80s, with the standardization
of the PC as a receiving and editing device, more
and more subscribers were able to do away with
messy reams of carbon paper and skim over the
lengthening news menu on their screen and
print out only what they were interested in.
This, in turn, enabled the global newswires to
widen and diversify the content of their services
which became more indispensable than ever to
their users.
Satellite transmission turned out to be even
more beneficial to the global wires. It freed them
from the costly and inefficient monopolies that
public telecommunication companies enjoyed in
most parts of the world, particularly in autocratic
or developing countries. Around 1980 they could
begin building their own satellite distribution
networks with small reception dishes installed at
the subscribers’ premises. It was a slow process
because of the political reluctance of many
governments to allow direct reception of news
services, or any other data, from abroad by their
nationals. But the global newswires were helped
by a general climate of deregulation of telecommunications
and by the advent of satellite
distribution of television, which proved irresistible
and generated a sprouting of parabolic
antennas in the most unlikely parts of the globe.
By the end of the decade, Reuters, AP and AFP
had practically completed their respective global
networks of satellite distribution.
Claude Moisy 7
In the meantime, the progress made in
digitalization and compression of data was
another boon for the international flow of information.
Along with the development of multiplexing
techniques, it meant that many different
news products, text, pictures or graphics, could
now be transmitted more securely and economically
on the same channel in much less time
than it took before to transmit only one.
Last, but not least, new technologies have
also enabled the wire services to manufacture the
news in a much more efficient way. Computer
interconnection between the central newsrooms
and the outside bureaus, and between the bureaus
themselves, made the editing of news much
easier. A journalist sitting in Brussels now can
cooperate with a colleague in Washington to write
a story on a trade dispute between the United
States and the European Union with an editor in
London or Paris looking over their shoulder. With
a satellite broadcasting station no bigger than an
attaché case, a reporter can file the account of a
Russian air raid on a Chechen town deprived of all
means of communications, and a photographer in
the mountains of Afghanistan can immediately
transmit to end users a digitalized picture that no
longer needs to be developed.
The State of Press Freedom in the World
The freedom to collect and distribute news
around the world has slightly improved in the
last ten years. The fall of communism in Eastern
Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union, the
advent of some form of political pluralism in
parts of Africa, and the disappearance of many
military regimes in Latin America, have all
contributed to alleviate the totalitarian control of
the media in large parts of the world. A measure
of independence was introduced in the press in
many of these countries. It became somewhat
easier for foreign news organizations to gather
information, especially with the contribution of
local reporters who had previously been prevented
from dealing with foreign journalists,
except to spy on them.
But this liberalization had its limits. Most
of the nominally democratic new regimes,
particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe, still
strive to retain as much control as they can over
the information process, even when they cannot
prevent a dose of privatization of the media. It
would be difficult to contend that the impediments
to the collection and distribution of news
in many authoritarian countries of Asia, Africa
and the Middle East have yet been significantly
alleviated. The record of political intimidation
and outright repression of journalists is still too
blatant in too many countries.
This situation also weighs on the business
prospects of international news providers.
Persistent obstacles of all kinds discourage the
development of independent, economically
stable news media in large parts of the world.
This deprives the global newswires of the
opportunity to gain new markets. Obviously,
the world is still far from being an open global
village.
* * *
To sum up the supply side of the international
news equation at the end of the century,
the global wire services are, from a technological
standpoint, in a position to cover more of the
world events than ever, and to do so faster than
ever and in more forms than ever. In particular,
the Associated Press, even if it has been so clearly
outpaced by Reuters in many other respects,
remains the privileged and abundant source of
foreign news for the American media and American
officials dealing with international affairs.
It is difficult to agree with Mort
Rosenblum’s contention that today’s international
news distribution “amounts to a theft of
information that everyone badly needs,” or that
“few Americans are able to follow distant events
which shape their lives.”3 It is rather a situation
where there is much more than they care to
follow.
* * * *
III. THE DEMAND FOR INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The demand for international news has
already been, and will continue to be, affected by
a series of economic, political, societal and
technological changes. Some are permanent,
some are ephemeral, and some are too new to be
seriously assessed. Here are the most obvious of
them:
• the slow but continuing decline of the
newspaper industry;
• the end of the Cold War and the changing
frame of reference for international relations;
• the ensuing loss of attentiveness of the
American people to foreign affairs;
• the ascendency of television as the medium
of information for the masses and its effect
on the news content; and
• the rapidly spreading interactive means of
communication that enable people to select
their information themselves.
8 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
The Decline of the Print Media...
The most important market for the international
news produced by the global newswires has
traditionally been the print media, and particularly
newspapers. Radio and television later
developed as their second major market. With the
exception of Reuters, the newswires, global as
well as national, remain largely newspaper oriented
and still depend on the survival of that form
of media for their economic equilibrium.
In the early ’80s, as Ted Turner was struggling
to establish his newly created Cable News
Network, he brazenly announced at an annual
meeting of the then American Newspaper Publishers
Association in Las Vegas that their time
was up and that they were on the endangered
species list. It was only a slight exaggeration. In
1995, the total circulation of American dailies,
which had peaked at 63 million copies in 1984, is
back at its 1960 level of 59 million. But because
of the population growth in these 35 years (from
180 M to 260 M), it means that the per capita
circulation of newspapers in the country has
declined from 1 per 3 inhabitants to 1 per 4.4
inhabitants, a drop of almost 50%. The number
of daily newspapers has gone down by almost 200
in the last fifteen years, from 1700 to a little over
1500. The current rate of attrition is around
fifteen titles a year. Even more ominously, the
rate of newspaper readership today is twice as
weak among those under 30 than among those
over 65.
The developments in other types of print
media are of little comfort to the global news
wires and to the prospects for the flow of international
news to the public. The small market of
general news magazines is also suffering a decline
in total circulation. The simultaneous burgeoning
of all sorts of money-making periodicals is of
no help. Their increasingly narrow specialization
(from computers to cosmetics, biking or rock
music) makes a general newswire largely irrelevant
to their editors.
... And the Worst is Yet to Come
The prospects for daily newspapers and their
international news content appear increasingly
dim as there seems to be no end to their economic
problems. A weak advertising market in
the late 1980s was followed by a string of sharp
hikes in the price of newsprint in the early 1990s.
In an “Industry Focus” on the subject of newsprint
prices, The Wall Street Journal reported in
February 1995 that, in order to control production
costs, “several papers have trimmed news space,
with international news apparently first to go.” In
a typical case, the executive editor of the Green
Bay (Wis.) Press Gazette explained that “not to
affect our local news reporting” the paper had to
carry less international wire-service stories.4
According to a survey of affected newspapers by
The American Journalism Review, complaints
from readers only came when the space squeeze
hit the horoscope column or the puzzle page, not
the foreign news.5 Widespread reductions in
staff forced by the mounting cost of newsprint is
bound to further weaken the ability of middlesize
newspapers to handle unfamiliar international
affairs.
Generally speaking, the print media have
certainly been hurt by the popularization of
television. But their greatest challenge may be
yet to come in the form of the interactive computer
and the increasing use that ordinary people
are making of it. The information superhighway
could make newspapers, and the sort of journalism
they have practiced, obsolete. Some newspaper
companies are aware of the threat and are
already working to adapt themselves to the
future and to still uncertain ways in which
people will want to be informed of world events.
The New York Times showed the way in 1995 by
buying Video News International (VNI), which
produces news programs for television. At that
time, 60 daily newspapers had online electronic
versions. Eight major newspaper companies
owning 123 dailies joined in a technical alliance,
the New Century Network, to publish electronically
on the Internet.
But whatever the changes in mass news
consumption, it is quite possible that quality
print journalism will keep a niche as a channel
of information for a minority of attentive consumers,
those most likely to keep up the demand
for a sustained thoughtful coverage of the outside
world.
International News after the Cold War
The end of the Cold War was a turning point
in the on-again off-again interest of the American
people in the outside world. Its effects on the
coverage of foreign news by the American media
has already been widely researched and commented
upon. In a recent study, Dr. Pippa Norris
reminded us that the end of the Cold War brought
a sharp increase in the number of foreign news
items on American television (CBS and ABC) for a
brief transition period (1990-91), followed by a
“dramatic fall” starting in 1992. From an all-time
high of 41% of all news stories on network
Claude Moisy 9
television in 1991, it went down to 29% in 1992
and 24% in 1993. The drop was even worse in
the length of time devoted to foreign news, which
fell to an average 20% in 1993.6
A personal survey conducted in March 1995
shows that since then, the situation has been
getting worse. From a sampling of twenty random
days of evening news during that month, the
percentage of foreign news (per number of news
items) was 24% on ABC and 22% on CBS. That
is not too bad, even if we consider that about half
of these “foreign” items were in fact concerned
with Americans abroad rather than with the
situation in foreign countries (U.S. veterans
returning to Remagen or Iwo Jima for the 50th
anniversary of the War, American victims of
terrorism in Pakistan, a fugitive American arsonist
arrested in Brazil, etc.). But the time devoted
to foreign news had fallen to 12% on ABC (3.4
minutes) and 15% (4.1 minutes) on CBS during
the 27-minute news show. That is about half the
immutable 26% (7 minutes) occupied by commercial
“messages” intertwined with the news.
By all measures, the status of foreign news
on network television has not only declined from
its peak in the watershed years of 1990/91, but
from the levels of the Cold War years.
Not surprisingly, an even smaller proportion
of the television news magazine stories concerns
foreign topics. In a 24-week period from October
1994 to March 1995, the most durable and most
prestigious of these shows, “60 Minutes” on CBS,
treated only twelve foreign subjects out of 72
(with the exception of pure entertainment topics
such as Britain’s Mick Jagger or Italian soprano
Cecilia Bartoli). It amounted to about one-sixth
of its programming. But it was still more than on
similar shows on other networks that do not even
attempt to resist the “tabloidization” of television
news. “Nightline” on ABC, which prides itself as
a “serious show”, used the OJ Simpson trial in
early 1995 to improve its ratings.
As to the hundreds of local television
stations that program their own one-hour news
show before switching to network evening news,
it is documented that they very rarely venture
into foreign topics; and when they do it, it is to
enter into the “mayhem” categories of crime,
disaster, terrorism and war. 7
The wider choice of programs offered by
satellite TV is clearly of no help since it mostly
caters to the entertainment function of the
medium. In the Boston area, out of 166 channels
available via satellite in the spring of 1995, only 3
are news programs, including one (NENC) that
covers only regional and local news. That
compares with 91 movie channels, 24 sports
channels and 33 pop music channels.
The Changing Frame of Reference
To make things worse, the globalization of
the world economy has contributed to the recent
reduction of foreign news presented by the media
and particularly the video media. International
trade and finance tend to supplant security at the
top of the world agenda. Relations among the
United States, Western Europe and Japan are no
longer dominated by their common opposition to
international communism but by their economic
interdependence. Economic tensions between
the haves and the have-nots are now a more real
threat than nuclear war. Great strides have been
made by the global newswires and the major
print media to equip themselves with reporters
and editors able to handle international economic
issues. But these stories do not play well on the
television screen. “It’s too complicated to
Continuing Decline of Foreign News on Network Television
1970s 1990/91 1993 1995
Percent of foreign stories 35% 41% 24% 23%
Percent of time 45% NA 20% 13.5%
Avg. length of foreign story 1.7 2.2 1.6 1.2
(in minutes)
Sources: Norris, Television News Index from the Vanderbilt Archive, and the author.
10 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
explain, but too important to ignore,” said an
embarrassed “60 Minutes” reporter, who had to
recount in March 1995 how a young trader in
Singapore could sink a major bank in London by
playing with “derivatives” on the Tokyo market.
He eventually gave up explaining what derivatives
were.
The post Cold War relaxation of tension
combined with the changing economic conditions
of network television to weaken their
former dedication to news, and particularly to
foreign news. Gone is the “golden age” of television
journalism when the news divisions were the
“jewel in the crown” of the networks and were
not required to make a profit. The likes of Walter
Cronkite and John Chancellor and other first class
foreign correspondents could roam the world
without worrying too much about the bottom
line. The sit-coms, the games and other entertainment
programs drew enough advertising
money to make up for what the evening news
would cost. Now the news division is expected to
make money too. And if it does not, it must trim
its costs. All three networks started to substantially
reduce their permanent overseas staff before
the end of the Cold War for financial reasons, and
continued afterwards.
Even the most internationally oriented of the
media, a handful of big metropolitan dailies, felt
the cooling effect of the end of the Cold War. In a
memo to his staff in December 1992, Bernard
Gwertzman, foreign editor of The New York
Times, went as far as asking: “Is foreign coverage
still important to the Times? ... Do we care what
happens to Serbs, Croats and Bosnians?” Even if
he answered his own questions with an “unambiguous
yes,” he admitted that “the proportion of
front page, hard news stories from overseas may
have dropped in the past year.”8 In 1993, Louis
Boccardi, president of Associated Press, underlined
the increasing difficulty “to bring some stories
home to Main Street into a newshole where
international news has to fight for every inch.”9
The Public is Less Interested
The newspaper industry and the television
networks are naturally basing their “cost effective”
strategy of international news curtailment
on the wide-spread assumption that the consumer
of their product does not really care that
much. The end of the confrontation of the two
nuclear superpowers was only to reinforce this
assumption.
As measured by the Times-Mirror Center for
the People and the Press,10 only four international
events have been followed “very closely” by at
least 50% of the American public in the last six
years. They were:
• the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (50%);
• the invasion of Panama by U.S. forces in 1990
(60%);
• the Gulf War in 1990-91 (with peaks of 66%
for the deployment of U.S. troops and 67% for
their return after achieving victory); and
• the landing of U.S. forces in Somalia in 1993
(52%).
It must be noted that only one of these
events, the fall of the Berlin Wall, did not involve
the United States directly and did not entail the
deployment of American armed forces abroad. It
had the lowest rating of the four. The momentous
upheavals in China and the drama on Tiananmen
Square in June and July 1989, or the break-up of
the Soviet Union after the attempted coup to
depose Gorbachev in 1991 never rated more than
47%. Attentiveness to major international
economic issues is naturally lower, even when
they are directly connected to American jobs and
trade. The adoption of NAFTA by Congress in
1993 scored 39%, and the tense GATT negotiations
in 1993 and 1994 never exceeded 16%.
In February 1995, the foreign news item that
was the most closely followed by the American
public was the earthquake in Kobe, Japan, a nonpolitical
human interest story, with a rating of
25%. The peak of “very close attention” given to
the Mexican peso crisis and its handling by the
Clinton administration that month, which was to
have such a negative effect on the value of the
U.S. dollar, was only 14%. Bosnia, which had
reached a high of 26% in 1993, had dropped to
8%, while Chechnya never passed the 10% mark.
At that time (February 1995) more Americans
described their level of attentiveness to foreign
news as “low” (31%) than as “high” (27%), the
largest proportion (42%) using the neutral term of
“medium.”
A survey conducted in 1994 by the Chicago
Council on Foreign Relations and released in
February 1995 challenged the widely held notion
that the declining level of interest for international
news reflected an increasing tendency
towards isolationism on the part of the American
people. In a somewhat contorted reading of its
own measures of public attitudes on various
international issues, the Council stated: “Despite
the decline over the past four years, a review of
changes in attentiveness to news over the past 20
years suggests that while interest in foreign news
Claude Moisy 11
is not a growth entity, outright lack of interest in
foreign news has diminished.” And it concluded:
“The end of the Cold War has not shaken
America’s fundamental commitment to maintaining
an active role in world affairs.”11
The 1995 edition of the Chicago Council
survey, conducted every four years, is in fact
replete with illustrations of the declining interest
of the American public in foreign affairs and the
inward-looking approach to foreign relations. As
a percentage of the total problems facing the
country, foreign policy problems are rated today
at 11.5% from 25.9% in 1986 and 16.8% in 1990.
As for the “very important” foreign policy goals of
the United States, the protection of weaker
nations against foreign aggression went down to
24% in 1994 from 57% in 1990. The promotion
and defense of human rights and democracy in
other countries similarly declined to 34% from
58%. Conversely, protecting the jobs of American
workers shot up from 65 to 83% as a preferred
goal of foreign policy.
The place of foreign affairs among “the most
important issues facing this country today” is
even smaller in more traditional and more frequent
polls such as Gallup, where it never exceeded
the 5% mark in the twelve-month period
from September 1993 to August 1994. That
compared with averages of 43% for the state of
the economy, 36% for crime and violence, and
26% for health insurance. Significantly, the “fear
of war,” which was high during the Reagan years,
has practically disappeared from these polls where
it hardly registered one percentage point at any
time during the 1993-94 period.
Media pundits frequently engage in a sort of
chicken-and-egg argument over the responsibility
for the lack of interest of the American people in
international affairs. Robert Hughes, art critic for
Time and self-appointed prosecutor of television,
strongly contends that “if so many Americans are
provincial, if…they have the utmost trouble even
imagining that the rest of the world is quite real,
much of the blame lies with the TV which
supplies their pathetically attenuated picture of
the world.”12 But at about the same time Tom
Brokaw, the NBC news anchorman, argued that
television and journalism are not so much the
causes of a new American isolationism as its
victims. And Max Frankel, a columnist for The
New York Times Magazine, recently quoted the
former publisher of his paper, Arthur Hays
Sulzberger, as saying: “Along with responsible
newspapers we must have responsible readers,
because the fountain serves no useful purpose if
the horse refuses to drink.”13
The Effect of Television News
Regardless of the diminishing status of news
in television programming, the fact remains that,
in the United States as elsewhere, the visual
medium has replaced the printed press as the
favored vehicle for news, domestic as well as
international. According to a 1994 survey by the
Times-Mirror Center, television was the preferred
news source of the American people by 65%
against 42% for newspapers and 14% for radio.
The impact of this increasing domination of
television as a medium of information has been
debated, studied and documented for too long to be
further discussed here. It is generally agreed that
television, by its very nature, has had a detrimental
effect on the nature of news, the consumption
of news by the public and, consequently, on the
production of news by the other media. Yoshio
Murakami, chief editor of the Asahi Shimbun,
Tokyo’s most prestigious newspaper, puts it quite
succinctly: “The gravest menace (to quality
reporting) is the growing place that the image is
taking in the media…. No picture, no news.14
Good picture, big news.” Stanley Hoffmann of
Harvard University gives a socio-political echo to
Murakami’s complaint by decrying “the democracy
of the television show that substitutes
hyperbole and sensation for reflection.”15
Similar judgements have given birth and
credit to a series of derisive catchwords such as
infotainment, soundbites and tabloidization, even
though they could have long been applied to
popular print media. There is little doubt that
television, and the habits it gives to its consumers,
have favored the development of “capsule
journalism,” as practiced by USA Today and its
imitators. It emphasizes the visual (fancy graphics
and striking color pictures) to the detriment of
substance, and reduces even further the coverage
of distant events.
A More Emotional Medium
Whatever its shortcomings, television
cannot be denied a dominant role in the dissemination
of knowledge and the fashioning of public
opinion. Elaborate research done by Neuman,
Just and Crigler, on the basis of people’s reactions
to specific news stories presented by various types
of media, show the strong impact of the “densely
packed and highly visual” television news stories.
16 According to their study, people tend to
view television news as “more personally relevant
and more emotionally involving” than newspaper
accounts, and as giving them “a greater sense of
attachment to the issues.”
12 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
The more emotional reaction to events
fostered by television has already had well-known
consequences for the conduct of foreign policy in
the United States. After Vietnam, foreign interventions
became highly vulnerable to the low
degree of public tolerance for casualties abroad.
Lebanon proved it in 1983, and it can be argued
that President Bush stopped short of total victory
in Iraq in 1991 because he felt that the public was
about to tire of the Gulf War if it dragged on.
Somalia was another clear case in point in 1993.
The unbearable spectacle of starving infants
sucking at the empty breasts of their dying
mothers in the squalor of refugee camps, repeated
for days on the television screens of millions of
American homes, quickly built a popular consensus
for the prompt dispatch of U.S. Marines to
“restore hope” to Somalians. But a few months
later the equally unbearable spectacle of the
twisted and bloodied body of a dead Marine
dragged in the dust of a Mogadishu street by a
frenzied mob precipitated the end of the American
rescue mission. In both instances, popular
emotions whipped up by television pictures had
pressured the Administration to make contradictory
decisions that were not necessarily the best
responses to the problem at hand, or in the long
term best interest of the country.
The current attempts at developing global
television companies, and the fact that the two
most important global news organizations (Reuters
and Associated Press) are now devoting important
resources to video news production, increase the
dangers of the flow of international news taking
the visual rather than the written form.
Complementarity and Multimedia
However, the progress of the picture media
does not exonerate the print media, and particularly
the high circulation daily newspapers of
large metropolitan areas, of their responsibility in
providing more substance to the public perception
of foreign issues. Neuman, Just and Crigler
rightly insist on the complementarity of various
media in the formation of public opinion. They
point out that in the 1980s only 10% of the
population depended exclusively on TV news and
half regularly followed both television and
newspaper news.17 In 1995 the Times-Mirror
Center put the proportion of those who get their
news only from television at 21%.18
Whatever the real figure, the complementarity
of the media is real, particularly for the
attentive portion of the public. It is the very basis
for the development of the multimedia products
which have so far primarily concerned the fields
of entertainment and education. But it is probable
that the future of the news business, including
foreign news, also lies in the multimedia form
combining text, image and sound in the coverage
of events.
Foreign News and Interactivity
Because of their relative novelty, the examination
of the various aspects of interactivity
remains largely of a conjectural and non-empirical
nature. It is still too early, in particular, to
seriously assess their impact on the consumption
of international news. But if their development
comes anywhere near the prospects heralded by
the apostles of cyberspace, they could have
devastating effects on the flow of information as
we know it. It is worth exploring them.
The Many Forms of Interactivity
Interactivity is a generic term for all electronic
systems that enable the individual,
through a computer, to browse in and seize only
what one desires from the gigantic mass of
material available in the wide wired world, and
to interject one’s own contribution to that mass.
It spells the end of the relative passivity of the
television watcher, the radio listener and the
newspaper reader.
Several forms of interactive access to information
have already been tested and developed in
recent years with varying degrees of success.
Radio talk shows, computer access to database
services such as Nexis-Lexis in the U.S., the
Minitel experiment in France, financial transaction
services provided by Reuters, television
programming on demand, newspapers on-line and
the recent opening of the Internet to the general
public are all variations on the principle of
interactivity. They are just a few of the many
steps that lead us to the interactive information
superhighway. The current scrambling of major
telephone companies and global information
providers to seize upon the burgeoning interactive
market is bound to give it new dimensions.
But in the numbing hype that surrounds this
communication revolution today, the emphasis is
still centered on technology and means of access
rather that on the content and the use made of
that content which, as George Gerbner argues, are
much more important issues.19 All the known
projects of the giants in the communication
industry essentially turn around three types of
interactive products: movies on demand, home
shopping and video games. An April 1995 press
Claude Moisy 13
release for Nethold, a newly created interactive
television service developed by two major communication
companies in California, listed as its
main products “home shopping, ticket ordering,
interactive commercials, interactive game shows
and improved electronic program guides.”20
On the consumer side, the principal motivations
of those who seem most attracted to interactive
devices are always the same: get richer, be
entertained, vent sexual fantasy, and find an
audience. The down-loading from academic
reference libraries and the search for background
information on a breaking foreign crisis are likely
to occupy at best a very small side-lane on
tomorrow’s superhighway. More hopeful than
Gerbner, Harvard’s Brian Kahin sees the Internet
as a “useful … convergence of conduit, content
and computing … that allows for many forms of
self-publishing as well as user directed browsing
and information retrieval.”21
The World as a Chat-Room
The public forum function of the interactive
media deserves to be looked into. Internet surfers
have already formed improperly called “news
groups” and “chat rooms” where they exchange
ideas, opinions and, more often than not, trivialities
among themselves. This primal yearning to
be heard by others and to share experiences with
like-minded folks was already at the root of the
popular success of Citizen Band radio and opinion
radio talk shows. Such phenomenons are rarely
credited with opening the minds or widening the
horizons of their adherents. They generally
promote simplistic answers to complex issues. At
this early stage, the optimistic notion that global
electronic interactivity will bring people together
and promote general understanding is hardly
vindicated. As Frank Rich once put it in The
New York Times: “Since interactivity is achieved
with a click, those who live in cyberspace ... may
develop the self-ostracizing habit of turning
people on and off as if they were any other appliance
that can be commanded with a remote
control.”22 There is obviously a risk that frequent
travel in the “virtual world” opened by the net
will divert one’s attention from the only too real
world around us.
Effects of the Custom-Made Newspaper
It is too early to tell whether the customized
on-line papers now offered by most major dailies
in the United States will meet with a substantial
market. In addition to receiving on a computer
screen a brief summary of the day’s top news, the
subscriber can program in advance the topics
(baseball, car manufacturing, weather forecast,
fashion shows or whatever is on one’s mind) on
which he will get whatever stories the paper runs
on that day. As in all other interactive forms of
information acquisition the final judgement on
the news value of events will no longer be made
by editors or journalists but by the individual
consumer. While it was formerly relatively
difficult to determine what stories people were
actually reading most in their newspapers, it will
now become a matter of clear record. In the long
run, such evidence cannot fail to influence the
editorial choices and the allotment of resources
that the newspaper people will make in the
coverage of world activities. “There is the danger
that executives in the business of providing news
on demand will think too much of cost and too
little of journalism,” warns Ken Auletta.23 Once
again, the new technologies that were supposed to
open up unlimited perspectives to our acquisition
of knowledge may in fact end up restricting our
horizon to the immediately useful or the most
enjoyable. Walter Bender, head of the News in
the Future program at MIT, emphasizes the
individualistic nature of the tailored newspaper of
tomorrow by calling it the “Daily Me.”24 The
consumption, and eventually the production, of
foreign news may very well lose in this process.
Information is Free
Another aspect of the new wired world is
unsettling for the global news producers. The
information superhighway is anarchic. It has
been opened to general traffic without being
regulated and, for the time being, most of the
information that flows over it is free. It is uncertain
whether any government or international
body will ever be able to put the genie back into
the bottle. The whole framework of copyright
laws that has managed to more or less rule over
the communication world is now in jeopardy. It
had long been anticipated that, as the technological
evolution went on, the real value of information
would increasingly shift from the content to
the conduit, or from the message to the medium.
That is why Reuters, for instance, made a point of
developing and merchandising themselves the
hardware and software that enable traders to use
their business services. But general news distribution
is still done in more traditional ways. The
wire services increasingly lose control over their
material once it is sold to primary customers that
feed database services that feed the Internet where
it can be seized for free. Unless some ways are
14 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
found to regulate the system, as advocated by
Anne Wells Branscomb among others,25 the wire
services will be unable to balance the increasing
costs of collecting news around the world with
increasing revenues from new types of consumers.
But any mention of any form of control over
the Internet traffic immediately brings out the
outraged legions of defenders of the First Amendment.
The Planet is Not Yet Wired
It is impossible to conclude this summary
exploration of the potential impact of
interactivity on the global news business without
raising the question of its real extent. We have
already seen that, in spite of claims to the contrary,
there is still no such thing as global television
that could feed the same images from everywhere
to everywhere. Will the multimedia
superhighway bring us closer to such a universal
medium? Nicholas Negroponte, of MIT’s Media
Lab, thinks so.26 He is not the only one to profess
that “being digital” will radically change our lives
and our societies. International relations will
have to be run in an entirely novel manner in a
boundaryless planet, he claims.
Other prophets of the coming wired world
reason as if most people were ineluctably going to
spend most of their time on the Internet to
conduct their public and private activities free of
national controls. It is far from being inevitable.
There may still be a future for life outside the net.
And, in any case, it is even less proven that
changing technologies will profoundly change
people’s mentality. The traveler on tomorrow’s
information superhighway will not be substantially
different from the traveler on yesterday’s
country road. He is likely to have the same basic
human motivations and impulses — and the same
uncertain attentiveness to foreign news.
Above all, it will be a long, long time before
the whole planet enters the “third age” of its
evolution, the age of information, if it ever does.
Most of it has yet to reach the industrial age. The
Harvard Computer Society estimates that in 1995
the number of computers with access to the
Internet was about 20 million in 150 countries
and growing fast. Industry sources put the
number of people already cruising in cyberspace
at 30 million. That looks impressive. But it is
still less than 0.5% of the world population, and
largely concentrated in the United States and a
few other advanced countries. It is to be feared
that the superhighway will lead to a deepening
gap between the informed few and the uninformed
many, with all the attendant dangers.
It is therefore safe to assume that the new
technologies of communication will affect,
among other human activities, the flow of international
news. But the impact will not necessarily
be as radical as anticipated by the most
sanguine futurists, and it will not necessarily
make for a better international understanding.
IV. CONCLUSION: DOES IT REALLY MATTER ?
Does it matter for the foreign relations of the
United States if the mass media and the general
public really become less interested in international
affairs?
The two premises of my investigation have
been that, in a democracy, the people have a say
in the handling of their country’s relations with
the rest of the world, and that the media contribute
to the good exercise of that right by making
the proper flow of information available to the
public. In such a perspective the declining
demand for international news in the United
States, the most influential country in the world,
would certainly be a cause for concern. An
uninformed public would be more likely to
pressure the leaders into making inappropriate
decisions.
But the larger view of the triangular equation
among the media, public opinion and foreign
policy making is not shared by all students of the
field nor always supported by practice. There still
exists an “establishment” approach which sees
only a small group of journalists and educated
readers taking part in the foreign policy debate
with public officials. “The elite papers recognize
that they will not reach many people, but they
seek to have an impact that no other medium
does on the serious, intellectual, opinion-leading
segment of the world community,” writes professor
John C. Merrill. He otherwise dismisses “the
vast global wasteland of crass and mass journalistic
mediocrity” in which the media “cater in
varying degrees to the superficial whims of the
lazy or attitudinal-illiterate crass audience.”27
More soberly, James Hoge, editor of Foreign
Affairs, evaluates the “attentive public” for
international issues at four or five million people
in the United States, out of an adult population of
190 million.28 It turns out that this rough figure
coincides with the circulation of the four or five
most internationally oriented American newspapers
and with the maximum audience of the
NewsHour on PBS. It might not be improper to
see it as a reasonable measure of the regular
constituency for foreign affairs in this country.
Other scholars strongly disagree and still
adhere to de Tocqueville’s perception of public
Claude Moisy 15
opinion as “mistress of the world.” To the “topdown”
or elitist perspective, Herbert J. Gans
opposes a “bottoms-up” process in which the
bystanders or general public play an important
role.29 We have, indeed, seen earlier that wide
swings in public opinion have occasionally led the
government into momentous foreign policy
decisions.
The elitist and the populist views of the
foreign policy process are not necessarily contradictory.
A strong case can be made that they are
both concurrently valid, but at different levels and
in different circumstances. It is to be expected
that the close and continuous attention to international
issues needed for a sustained participation
in the foreign policy debate would remain
limited to a relatively small portion of the citizenry.
Whether one likes it or not, there is a
leadership class of politicians, high officials,
educators, writers and journalists influencing the
people on the issues and eventually leading, or
misleading them, in supporting its decisions.
Even in our mass communication age, the day-today
conduct of most of the country’s international
relations remains the preserve of a small informed
establishment with the tacit consent of a relatively
indifferent public.
But there will always be circumstances in
which the public at large will be stirred to make
itself heard on an international issue out of a
perception, right or wrong, that the very “raison
d’être” of the nation is at stake. In these cases the
public will not necessarily react on the basis of
knowledge, but more likely on the basis of
emotions aroused by mass media. But because of
the exceptional extent of public involvement,
these rare cases have the potential of becoming
turning points in the life of the country. That is
why the amount and quality of international
news carried by these changing mass media, or
the lack thereof, remain relevant to the conduct
of the foreign policy of the United States.
16 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
1. Jonathan Fenby, The International News Services
(New York: Schocken Books, 1986). In this
paper the term “global” is used instead of “international”
because there is a category of news agencies
(the german DPA, the Spanish EFE, the Egyptian
MENA and others) that operate largely beyond
their national borders but not in the entire world.
2. Richard Parker, Mixed Signals: The Prospects
for Global Television News (New York: The Twentieth
Century Fund, 1995).
3. Mort Rosenblum, Who Stole the News? (New
York: John Wiley, 1993).
4. Patrick Reilly, “Soaring Newsprint Prices Sting
Readers,” The Wall Street Journal, 15 February
1995, B1.
5. American Journalism Review (University of
Maryland), April 1995.
6. Pippa Norris, “The Restless Searchlight: Network
News Framing of the Post Cold War World.”
Paper presented at the annual convention of the
International Studies Association, Chicago, IL, February
1995.
7. “Report of Findings,” Rocky Mountain Media
Watch, Denver, January 1995.
8. Bernard Gwertzman, “Memo to the Times Foreign
Staff,” Media Studies Journal, Fall 1993.
9. Louis Boccardi, “Redeploying a Global Journalistic
Army,” Media Studies Journal, Fall 1993.
10. “Public Interest and Awareness of the News,”
Times Mirror Center, February 1995.
11. The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations,
American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy
1995. Chicago, IL 1995.
12. Robert Hughes, “Why Watch It, Anyway?”
The New York Review of Books, 16 February 1995.
13. Max Frankel, “Beyond the Shroud,” The New
York Times Magazine, 19 March 1995.
14. Anick Cojean, “Qui Menace la Liberte
d’Ecrire?” Interview with Yoshio Murakami. Le
Monde, Paris, 11 December 1994.
ENDNOTES
15. “Un Entretien avec Stanley Hoffmann,” Le
Monde, Paris, 6 December 1994.
16. W. Russell Neuman, Marion Just, and Ann
Crigler, Common Knowledge, News and the Construction
of Political Meaning (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1992).
17. op. cit.
18. “News Consumer Survey Questions,” The
Times-Mirror Center, 5 April 1995.
19. George Gerbner, lecture, “Global Communications
and International Relations,” Center for
International Affairs, Harvard University, 3 April
1995.
20. The Wall Street Journal, 5 April 1995, B5
21. Brian Kahin, National and International Initiatives
for Information Infrastructure (JFK School
of Government, Harvard University, March 1995).
22. Frank Rich, “Bit by Bit,” The New York Times,
5 March 1995.
23. Ken Auletta, “The Magic Box,” The New
Yorker, 11 April 1994: 40-45.
24. Walter Bender, “Riding the Digital Highway,”
Presstime, May 1993.
25. Anne Wells Branscomb, Who Owns Information?
(New York: Harper, 1994).
26. Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New
York: Alfred Knopf, 1995).
27. John Merrill, “Global Elite: A Newspaper Community
of Reason.” Gannett Center Journal (Fall
1990): 93-101.
28. James Hoge, lecture, “Foreign Policy and the
New Communications in the Post Cold War Period,”
Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, 14
March 1995.
29. Herbert J. Gans, “Bystanders as Opinion Makers.”
Media Studies Journal (Winter 1995): 93-100.
18 The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age
Copyright © 1996, President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved.
Readings:
Who Gets the News? Alternative Measures of News Reception and Their Implications for Research
by Vincent Price and John Zaller, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Summer, 1993) , pp. 133-164
Between Credibility and Commodification: Nonfiction Entertainment as a Global Media Genre by E. Fursich in International Journal of Cultural Studies, June 1, 2003; 6(2): 131 - 153. [Abstract] [PDF]
Hybridity and the rise of Korean popular culture
by D Shim in AsiaMedia Culture Society, January 1, 2006; 28(1): 25 - 44. [Abstract] [PDF]
S. Platon and M. Deuze
Indymedia Journalism: A Radical Way of Making, Selecting and Sharing News?
by S. Platon and M. Deuze in Journalism, August 1, 2003; 4(3): 336 - 355. [Abstract] [PDF]
Global Media, Neoliberalism,and Imperialism, The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century, and Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution
by Robert W. McChesney, Ellen Meiksins Wood, and John Bellamy Foster, eds.