The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media

By Peter Steven

A concise and balanced guide to the past, present and future of the media.

A highly relevant subject in today's changing landscape of information delivery

Tackles complex issues in an accessible and easy-to-read style.

Includes b&w maps charts and graphs to illustrate key points.

Fully referenced, and includes useful bibliography and contacts sections.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Internationalist
• Release date: Aug 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781906523565

Peter Steven

Peter Steven teaches film studies at the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Ontario. He is the editor of Freedom to Read magazine and an associate editor of Jump Cut magazine. He holds a PhD in Radio/TV/Film, Northwestern University, Chicago, and lives in Toronto.

Book preview

Introduction

As with the first edition of this guide, in 2004, I wanted to begin with a snapshot of how various people around the world engage with the media. So, a few months back, I sent out another small questionnaire. The diverse voices in Chapter One belong to those generous people who wrote back.

What emerges in these voices, from several vantage points, sets the stage for the main theme of the book. I hope to show the incredible power and reach of the dominant media – the homogenized, commercial, mono-media that most of us share. Yet at the same time I want to call up the diverse, alternative, sometimes local, sometimes global forms of media in opposition struggling for space. As a student of international media, I am not prepared to give up on either side of the equation. It is politically dangerous and élitist to dismiss all forms of dominant media and their audiences as hopelessly retrograde. At the same time we should offer all the support and encouragement possible to those producers and audiences striving to create other forms.

Big changes in the media world

In the years following the first edition of this book the global news media have faced significant new challenges. All those news outlets, particularly in the US, that have relied almost solely on advertising as the base for their business model have seen their revenues slide drastically. One reason is the move to internet advertising, which, though growing steadily, provides much less income. Then, in the economic crisis beginning in 2008, many companies, large and small, that purchased newspaper ads disappeared or slashed their ad spending. Thus newspapers and to some degree TV stations that had relied on these firms quickly lost customers. In the old days, before 2008, profits of 20 per cent and much higher were expected by investors and considered normal. Now media companies report profits of less than 10 per cent and some have slipped into bankruptcy.

At the moment pessimists control the public discourse, proclaiming that this new crisis spells certain death for all newspapers – a ‘dead-tree medium’ to its online critics. Those most worried fret understandably about the loss to democracy. Where in the future will reliable news come from? they ask. Who will pay to cover City Hall and international events? Who will have the time, independence and expertise to undertake investigative journalism?

But this is no simple situation. The crisis applies primarily to the US – many other parts of the world show stable newspaper profits and expanding readership. Moreover, it’s not at all clear, even in the US, that the news business in itself is no longer profitable. That’s because most newspapers and TV outlets have been swallowed up by mega-corporations that operate several types of business under a single conglomerate umbrella. Nevertheless, loss of advertising revenues has cut profits and many news groups have reacted by cutting jobs for journalists and editors. The result of that is a poorer news vehicle that attracts fewer buyers: clearly, a downward spiral.

A second challenge to big media stems from the rapid spread of social media, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, plus the rise of citizen reporting, hailed by many as the savior of journalism. People across the political spectrum see this as a healthy phenomenon which will take control of the news away from a small élite. These developments have undercut some of the legitimacy of media organizations everywhere. Social media and citizen reporting have also contributed to an even faster and more frenzied news cycle. In many ways, this changes our definitions and expectations of news itself and downgrades more careful and long-term news stories. So, on the one hand, we have a much more democratic situation for observing and communicating the news. On the other, the race to be first and on the spot pushes other important aspects of journalism to the sidelines.

A final challenge to the dominant Western media comes from the growing influence and power of Asia – from China and Malaysia in the east to the Gulf states in the west. The most controversial and obvious of these challenges has been the success of Al-Jazeera, the 24-hour news organization based in the tiny state of Qatar. Its prestige and influence, not only in the Arab world, has been especially notable since the launch of its English service in 2006. Its Washington bureau houses 300 staff. Elsewhere, statistics show that, for the first time, China has more people online than anywhere else. Although English still rules on the global internet, that too could be changing. Meanwhile, in Africa, the raucous video-film business in Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country, has become so successful it has been crowned Nollywood.

Since 2004, the stream of new communication devices for news and entertainment has flowed relentlessly. And, as in the past, we find no shortage of media pundits and commercial boosters to proclaim that the latest gadgets will be revolutionary. The general trend experienced by those citizens who can afford to keep up is toward mobile computing. Thus the handheld, portable device such as the Blackberry, iPhone, or ‘tablet’ rather than the desk computer seems destined for center stage. Perhaps in the poorest parts of the world these devices, especially the phone, carry the seeds of revolutionary change through shrinking distances and carving new social and political networks to challenge the élites. However, no-one should imagine that the digital divide between rich and poor is shrinking as a result. In fact, some calculations by the UN show the poor, in all regions of the world, slipping even further behind in their ability to acquire information and engage in democratic communication. Fully 75 per cent of the world has no access to a computer and the figures for broadband access are even more dismal.

While the new media may not be revolutionary, they do make possible a wealth of citizen initiatives that can be creative and oppositional in nature. Although the technology is not neutral – by and large it was designed for commercial or military purposes – it can also be adapted, or jammed if you will, to other goals. Commercial and military designers can never foresee or totally control other uses for their networks and the devices they release into the world. Media people around the world have watched with some hope the growth of a dynamic and coherent media reform movement in the US. This holds promise because all of us would benefit from a US news system that presents a true diversity of views, a political challenge to the monolithic US commercial media, and a return to some of the nobler traditions of responsible journalism in that country.

The book starts out with the big, ominous forces of global media now facing us. We cannot underestimate the power and brute force behind the barons of global media, the Rupert Murdochs and Silvio Berlusconis of the world, who wield political and economic power as well as the ability to shape dreams through our entertainment. An understanding of this media power in the worlds of news and entertainment is vital politically and culturally if we hope to achieve democratic change.

At the same time, the wide range of specific media forms are not simple types of communication or propaganda. They are symbolic representations of people, ideas and realities, with multiple meanings. And these meanings take final shape only through contact with specific audiences. They become meanings that can’t be totally controlled. The media may be cultural industries but they also operate in the realm of media art.

The book ends with a chapter of ideas for moving forward. Above all, I hope readers will agree with this statement: although the media may be dominant they are not omnipotent. Consequently, in the words of the social activist and teacher Ben Carniol: ‘Don’t accept the TINA situation that we’re always fed: you know TINA, There Is No Alternative.’ Think forward to a better media world.

Peter Steven

Toronto, March 2010

Chapter 1

Living with the media – voices across the world

People from around the world describe their personal experiences of diverse media, both local and global.

When I started writing this book, I knew it would be important to discover what people in different parts of the world were watching, hearing and reading. Some of the media they access are homogenized by the dominant monoculture, while others are locally produced and incredibly diverse. Here are just a few examples.

Celina Del Felice,  Germany/Argentina

My family and I read the news on the internet, especially La Capital, from my hometown Rosario in Argentina, and we buy El Pais, from Madrid, at least once a week. I combine media from different editorial lines. I read The Economist and Le Monde Diplomatique when the topics interest me. I also receive lots of information via e-groups and newsletters that I subscribe to, such as WTO NEWS, ITUC Press, Eurostep Weekly, La Via Campesina updates, ACP-EU trade.org Newsletter and the Transnational Institute Newsletters.

Radio France Internationale is good for entertainment and music, rather than news. For news, when I am at home in Argentina I listen to Radio 2. Here in Europe I listen to Radio Cadena Dial from Madrid and Radio Faycan from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

In my opinion, access to news has improved due to the internet. I can read the same story from different points of view, and then make my own judgment. For example, I was following the coup d’état in Honduras, and I could read how different media for or against Zelaya were representing the story.

A few months ago, I watched on YouTube a soap opera from Colombia that I used to love when I was a teenager. Cafe con Aroma de Mujer tells the story of a girl who collected coffee and, through her life, the entire coffee value-chain can be observed. It’s my favorite soap opera – educational and fun.  

Christine Black, Brisbane, Australia

I feel I do have choice about news sources, but there is a lot of unnecessary, superficial information and misinformation, which makes it hard to find real news – and especially positive news. This is most evident for news relating to indigenous peoples. Not only is it biased but it tends to bring only negative stereotypes to the fore, even though for over 20 years people, both indigenous and non-indigenous, have been trying to rectify that bias.

As for radio, only a few select stations are reliable, such as Radio National, which is an investigative station. However, the radio stations still highlight news which looks to create fear and dissatisfaction, especially with cultures other than the dominant one.  

Indigenous media is still hampered by the cost and level of broadband offered in remote areas; particularly the maintenance of such services.  

Ian Rashid, London, England

For American news I look to Salon, Alternet and Slate; for UK news, Indymedia UK, Guardian Unlimited and The Independent online. For international news I rely on Globalvision, Global Echo and Al-Jazeera.

Increasingly my partner and I watch television and DVDs independently on our computers. When we watch together – Torchwood, Being Human, Misfits, The Street – it’s almost like a ‘date’.

I like the pleasure of physically holding a newspaper and meandering through it, but I only buy the weekend edition these days. While I look at a wider range of news sources online, it’s on a narrow range of subjects. In browsing through a newspaper, I stumble upon an article of interest which snags my attention. With online sources, I’m often mailed or tweeted links to articles to which I’ve subscribed. My interest and knowledge is deepening as a result but not widening.

Urvashi Butalia, New Delhi, India

We still get reliable news mainly from newspapers, and a little from television, although it is questionable how ‘reliable’ either of these now is. In their race to get ahead and ‘break’ news, TV channels are unscrupulous and often unethical (for example, interviewing people who should actually be tried in a court). A year ago, when terrorist attacks took place in Mumbai, all the TV channels were there, no doubt in difficult conditions, but despite pleas by the security agencies to be careful, they openly announced that commandos were landing on roofs, and revealed that hotel guests were on this or that floor, thereby endangering the rescue operation and also the lives of those caught inside.

Equally, the newspapers are now so openly partisan that it is difficult to know what to believe and whom to trust. For years we have read a paper called The Hindu, well known for impartial reporting and ethical stands. But recently, it was taken over by an editor sympathetic to the Communist Party (Marxist), and became totally partisan. So once again, reliable? Bah.

The news media has increased vastly, and