Page 209 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

198 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

Ruby 1974, Kressley 1978, Fisher 1980, Eugster 1983, Lanispuro
1987).
At least three ‘arms’ of that system need to be identified here:

1 The international television news agencies Visnews and WTN
(Worldwide Television News), outgrowths of the ‘traditional’ news
agencies Reuters and UPITN, distribute television news materials
around the clock to television news organizations around the world.
2 International satellite-delivered news services, such as the US-
based CNN and the British-based Super Channel and Sky News,
provide fully shaped television news programs via satellite to
clients in Europe and around the world.
3 Systems of television news exchanges have been set up under the
umbrellas of a number of regional broadcasting organizations, such
as the European Broadcasting Union, the Asian Broadcasting
Union, Arabsat and Intervision, based in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe. The news services of these organizations are linked
to each other as well as with the news organizations of the US
television networks. The following discussion applies primarily to
the news exchange system.

Collaboration between these organizations forms the basis of the global
news exchange system. Through a constant flow of telex messages and
daily telephone conferences between specially designated ‘news co-
ordinators’ and news liaison personnel based in the broadcasting
organizations in different countries, an ongoing exchange of
information is maintained about the availability of, and interest in, visual
materials of news events (Lantenac 1975, Lindmuller 1988). The news
exchange services and agencies also provide the technical support
arrangements for the electronic sharing of these news materials. The
relatively small group of ‘news co-ordinators’ and liaison personnel
perform a primarily ‘gatekeeping’ function, albeit on a global basis.
Hence the metaphor of ‘The Global Newsroom’.
These arrangements have important implications for the traditional
argument about ‘media imperialism’—i.e. the view, popularized in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, according to which western media
institutions and interests dominated the global media system, and served
as the back door for the reintroduction of western economic and cultural
influences into Third World countries (e.g. Tunstall 1977, UNESCO
1980).