Page 18 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

US journalism 7
(Golan and Wayne 2003). It should be no surprise that a major 2002 study of US
newspapers with circulations of over 100,000 found 80 per cent of editors had
negative views of the TV networks’ coverage of international stories (Pew
International Journalism Program 2002). Of course, rather than acknowledge that
this was driven by business priorities, US TV hacks turned to the putative power
of the audience. In CBS anchor Dan Rather’s 2002 words: ‘if you lead foreign you
die’, because ‘the public has lost interest in international reporting’ (quoted in
Schechter 2003b: xl). This is too easy and self-serving an explanation. A 2002
survey of 218 US-newspaper editors found two-thirds admitting that their cover-
age of foreign news was ‘fair to poor’. It disclosed no real engagement with the
multicultural and immigrant populations the papers were avowedly serving. This
was in stark contrast to the satisfaction expressed over their coverage of com-
merce. The reason for this neglect of international news was not demand but sup-
ply – their readers were interested, but their owners sought to keep costs down,
and their employees lacked the necessary skills (Pew Fellowships in International
Journalism 2002; Pew International Journalism Program 2002). As usual, demand
is a small part of the story – supply is the determining factor. But it would be
wrong to divorce that from occupational ideology.

Journalistic nationalism
Whilst comparative studies indicate a propensity for journalists all over the world
to reiterate foreign-policy nostra at times of national crisis, there are many
honourable exceptions. But the US media stand out for their nationalism (Höijer
et al. 2004: 14). A glance at the transcript of a discussion about US terrorism
coverage by the media, held in Ljubljana in November 2002, reveals a striking
contrast between hyper-parochial representatives from Fox, CNN, NBC, and CBS
and contributors from all other nations (Kroll and Champagne 2002). The prolif-
eration of US flag pins on reporters, and the repeated, embarrassingly crass use
of such othering Membership Categorization Devices as ‘we’, is simply not per-
mitted by major global news gatherers, whether they are regionally or nationally
based or funded. British viewers were so taken aback by the partisanship of Fox,
which was rebroadcast there via satellite, that they protested against it through the
local regulator, the Independent Television Commission. In India, where Star TV
has long been dominant in ratings, the invasion of Iraq brought viewers flooding
back to the hitherto moribund public broadcaster Doordarshan, while the Manila
Standard explained to its readers that Fox was the contemporary version of the
Bible for extremist Christians in the US, and Malaysia’s Berita Harian editorial-
ized that the threat of terrorism has been deployed ‘by Bush’s accomplices to
influence the [US] media not to question any government actions’ (Abaya 2004;
BBC Monitoring International Reports 2004a; Sehgal 2003; Wells 2003).
The distinguished journalist-publisher Victor Navasky (2002) has noted that
‘post-September 11 journalism’ took as a donnée that ‘this was a time for rally-
ing around the flag and that those who questioned national policy were giving aid
and comfort to the enemy’. When Tom Guiting, editor-in-chief of the Texas City