Scholars who examine international broadcasting suggest that sponsoring states finance networks to influence foreign publics by increasing the state’s soft power or providing strategic narratives and, thus, we should expect them to cover the sponsoring state (for example Price 2014; Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle 2012; Pamment 2012). Analyzing the geography variable, therefore, illustrates each channel’s geographic attention, and thus gives insight into potential areas of state interest. As such, we should see that each network covers their sponsoring state to a degree, and thus project the state sponsor, though how much is not known. The
prevalence of the state sponsor as the topic of a given news item also serves as an indication of the potential presence of state strategic narratives. In order to test this, I coded for a set of features in each news item including focus on domestic or foreign news, the name of the states discussed in the item, and if those states came from the Global North or South. In other words, these variables tell us where each programs’ editorial attention lay and give us the relative number of items that focused on domestic versus international news as well as more specific information about those states. Because CCTV, AJE, and RT claim to depict underrepresented issues and regions of the world, we may therefore expect some coverage of states in Asia, Africa, and South America. CCTV specifically claims to be a “link to Asia” and DW claims to cover Europe, so we may also expect a degree of regionalization based on editorial pressures. Examining the geographic focus of news coverage is also a way of testing the degree of news homogenization, a feature Thussu (2007c, 2007b) predicts will increase with media deregulation and which some networks claim to resist.
Table 4.2 shows the percentage of total news items that cover domestic, intersectional, or foreign news items aired by each broadcaster. Domestic items are about the state sponsor, intersectional items are about sponsor and at least one other state, and foreign items about non- sponsor states only where news items are discrete units of news characterized by individual ledes (see Appendices A and B). Given the claim that IBs can project state narratives and can serve as platforms for advocacy and cultural diplomacy (Cull 2009b), its surprising that only DW and CCTV spend any substantive amount of time discussing their state sponsor. While it is at this point well known that AJE does not cover Qatari affairs (Sakr 2007; Figenschou 2010), more surprising is that RT’s Boom Bust devotes little attention to Russian economic news. Russia Today content covered the foreign news in 96.1% of items with few explicit references to Russia.
Table 4.2 Geographic Frequency
Only 1.1% of items were domestic and 2.8% were intersectional i.e. about the sponsoring state in relation to another state. The USA received the most attention accounting for 31.9% of RT news items. Greece accounts for the next most being the subject or related to the main subject in 16.0% of stories and the EU appears in 13.2% of items. RT’s editorial attention, therefore, is focused on the developed world, particularly the USA and EU in general, and states
AJE CCTV DW RT
Domestic 0.0% 31.1% 51.7% 1.1%
Intersectional 1.8% 32.0% 31.7% 2.8%
Foreign 98.2% 36.9% 16.7% 96.1%
in the midst of financial crisis specifically. Western states featured in RT coverage are also the countries of origin for many of their reporters, including host Erin Ade and producer Edward Harrison (both Americans). These facts suggest that Boom Bust does not project narratives about Russia itself. In turn, RT’s public diplomacy strategy does not directly seek to improve Russia’s image but gives space to viewpoints that undermine its geopolitical rivals using reporters from those rivals, which I examine in the “opposing power narratives” sub-section below.
Nevertheless, the RT content analyzed here shows that the network remains focused on the Global North, covered in 69.3% of news items, and does not diversify global news output in the same ways as CCTV and AJE, with 44% and 56.1% of their items covering the South
respectively. As such, if we are to conclude that RT projects state narratives we must look to the specific discourses about its rivals present in its programming. Likewise, RT’s claim to provide an “alternative perspective on major global events, and acquaints international audience with a Russian viewpoint” and operate counter-hegemonically as operationalized by Figenschou (2010), Painter (2008), and Robertson (2015) must be found in content.
In contrast, CCTV and DW are on the other end of the spectrum, suggesting a bifurcation in the networks’ geographical focus. In turn, this suggests each networks applies different
approaches to PD and economic news. CCTV stories focused on Chinese domestic economic news (31.1%) and many others focused on Chinese relations with other states (32.0%). CCTV intersectional stories exemplified the Chinese PD policy of “to know us is to love us” (Rawnsley 2015b) and often covered Chinese economic relationships (e.g. when China and Argentina signed a series of trade deals). CCTV also depicted multilateral relationships and diplomacy such as when the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) met in Beijing in January 2015 and the Boao Forum of Asian States or China cosponsored the German CeBit
Technology show in March. In these stories China goes out into the world, the world goes to China, and these relationships support the view of China as a safe multilateral actor that the CPC wishes to project (Shambaugh 2013).
DW news items focused on solely domestic stories 50.8% of the time and the relationship between Germany and some other nation 31.1% of the time. As seen in Chapter 3, Germany’s foreign policy involves promoting European integration and cooperation and promotes economic development and increased trade with Africa and China, while promoting Germany as a model of capitalism and the welfare state. However, Made in Germany rarely goes to these places to explore those relationships; instead we see foreign citizens come to Germany (such as in a feature on a Mexican family immigrating to Germany). In this sense, DW projects Germany as a model for other countries to follow. DW like CCTV exhibits a higher degree of parochialism in its broadcasts when compared with AJE or RT.
The parochialism of a given network suggests the degree to which it is ethnocentric in its coverage, a scrutinized feature of international news reporting (Sreberny and Paterson 2005). Ethnocentrism in news and the general pattern of North to South and West to East flows of media content (Thussu 2007a) means that journalists from the Global North report on the developing world more often than the reverse.47 Covering states in the Global South may serve
state interests, as in the case of Chinese coverage of domestic news, or editorials interests, as in CCTV coverage of their Asian neighbors. CCTV’s coverage may also reflect the interests of its Chinese journalistic staff who, while working for an arm of the Chinese government, are also seasoned financial journalists who may take this opportunity to explain their nation and region to Western audiences. As such, the degree to which an IB covers the developed versus the
47 It was this situation that made Al-Jazeera Arabic so interesting when it premiered as an Arab owned and operated channel speaking to and for Arabs.
developing world has potential to both distribute state narratives and diversify global news in accordance with specific editorial missions.
A central part of the mission statement of RT and AJE and CCTV are to privilege voices from the Global South and to diversify global news flows. In one sense, this goal is a clear response to the weaknesses of traditional global news outlets. In another sense, however, states can use speakers from the Global South, and counter-hegemonic coverage more generally, as a means to project their narratives or undermine rivals’. Ultimately, speakers from the Global South can diversify news, but also serve a state sponsor depending on their specific needs.
Accordingly, networks’ distribution of coverage of the Global North or South varies widely. AJE conforms to previous research (Figenschou 2010) that shows the network focuses on the Global South, in this sample accounting for 56.1% of all news items. DW focuses on the Global North in 85.0% of its items, largely because of its focus on German affairs. As such, DW functions as a tool of PD by broadcasting news about its sponsor state. This is also consistent with research that suggests most news providers focus on the Global North (Sreberny and Paterson 2005).
CCTV diversifies global news by virtue of fulfilling its function as a tool of state power projection and providing a “link to Asia,” where many states are classified as developing nations. Journalist’s focus on the Global South in 53.4% of the items in the sample, which can partially be accounted for by the relatively high number of domestic items (45.3%) coded. As noted above, topics cover a wide range including major holidays, government economic policy, and the lives of China’s nouveau riche, projecting an image of Chinese prosperity to global audiences. China’s relationships with South American, Asian, and Western states account for 32% of all CCTV items. This does not mean that CCTV’s content is necessarily “objective” or challenges the state. It must still fulfill its function as external propaganda in the CPC’s sense of the term,
but the data does show Global Business news items project Chinese state narratives about a wide swathe of the world, and that the network provides coverage of the developing world at a higher rate than other networks studied here.
Scholarship has, up to now, suggested that IBs are critical tools of state narrative projection and they might be expected to discuss the sponsoring state in some detail.
Nevertheless, the data here suggests varying strategies in terms of geographic focus. Omitting the sponsoring state, as AJE and RT do, means that we cannot necessarily expect either to directly project Qatar or Russia respectively. Meanwhile, DW and CCTV’s relatively high amount of domestic and intersectional coverage indicates that state sponsor narratives might be present in their content. Likewise, RT’s claim to cover news outside the mainstream does not extend to covering the Global South, while both AJE and CCTV appear to live up to their editorial mission to cover the Global South and Asia. Geographic data does not reveal anything about specific narratives, it does show DW and CCTV do present the sponsoring state. However, AJE and RT do not which suggests different potential approaches to serving state interests and projecting state narratives.