Speaking actors on the news are eyewitnesses to events, or experts with the credibility to comment on them, and provide the viewer with the sense of being there (Zelizer 2007). As news organizations, international broadcasters need this credibility to avoid being perceived as
propaganda. Cull argues that the “most potent element of IB has been its use of news, especially when that news is objective” and the “entire practice of IB with the ethical culture of domestic broadcast journalism, and turned IB into a mechanism for diffusing this culture” (2009b, 21). However, Chapter 3 showed that the media systems of each state shape the journalism culture of their international broadcasters. Put another way, the news norms of each state influence the ultimate form of news content on a broadcaster.58 To examine the different news norms of each
network, I coded the reporting style of each news item: did the item use in studio or onsite reporting, interviews in studio or on site, or some mixture of these categories. Onsite items are physically close to the location of the news issues, while in studio reporting stays in the main studio. Interviews are similarly divided but focus exclusively on interviews with individuals (see Appendices A and B)). As with speaking actors and geographic focus, the networks’ show clear differences in their news norms. RT and AJE are almost polar opposites in their news norms. In contrast, DW and CCTV focus more on their domestic economies and utilize a wider variety of reporting styles.
58 The presumption here, based on Chouliaraki’s (2006b, 2010b) studies of mediated suffering, is that on site reporting and interviews with average people living through the news event invite greater viewer identification with those depicted. However, as Robertson (2010) notes, there are different levels of engagement that news reports can provide. Verifying that an onsite report, as opposed to a studio item with archival footage, increases the “moral imagination” of a viewer requires audience centered research methods and is thus beyond the scope of this dissertation.
Table 4.4 Newstype Frequencies
Studio Site Studio Interview Site Interview Roundtable Mixture N = AJE 0.0% 47.4% 24.6% 0.0% 15.8% 12.3% 57 CCTV 33.9% 23.7% 2.0% 2.0% .1% 32.0% 738 DW 5.0% 55.0% 1.7% 5.0% 0.0% 33.3% 61 RT 20.8% 1.0% 60.4% 3.9% 2.4% 11.6% 207
As seen in Table 4.4, AJE and RT reflect notably different news reporting styles. More than any other network, RT relied on studio-based interviews, in studio one on one interviews, (60.4%) followed by in studio news items, items which to not leave the television studio
(20.8%). In contrast, AJE reported on site 47.4% of the time. Because onsite reporting typically includes interviews, AJE’s reportage connects viewers with local political speakers, economic speakers, ordinary people, and workers. A report from Nigeria on energy, for example, featured a mother and son watching television and enduring a blackout bringing home the personal
struggles of individuals dealing with poor governance. In this case, credibility relies on literally being there. RT’s reliance on expert opinion and studio interviews means they derive their credibility via the studio and questioning of RT staff. In the process, Boom Bust offers a
constrained source of news, which limits the possibly of contention in their content, meaning that the program can project consistent strategic narratives of their geopolitical rivals.59 Though state
control is still a factor in editorial decisions, AJE, by contrast, adheres to British journalistic traditions, brought to the network by the many transplants from the BBC. It therefore depicts multiple sides of issues via onsite reporting, increasing the likelihood of contention in its content. Neither AJE nor RT features citizens of its sponsoring state, suggesting that the PD role of each network does not build their credibility depicting the sponsor or its representatives directly. This
59 Contrast this with CCTV’s addition of live studio interviews and on site coverage as a means of gaining credibility with Western audiences as seen in Chapter 2.
necessarily complicated our understanding of IBs as projectors of state narratives by calling into question their chosen credibility building techniques.
DW and CCTV both use onsite (stories from the location of the events depicted) and in studio reporting, frequently mixing them to cover domestic issues. Made in Germany features onsite reporting in 60% of its domestic news items. Since site reporting typically includes onsite interviews, often with economic experts, DW’s reporting style seems to invite viewers to engage directly with people, and particularly economic actors based on the numbers of business people interviewed. Reflecting Germany’s free press tradition, speakers also represent different
opinions. DW stories typically begin with individuals, visually focusing on them at work or home, the narrator mentioning them by name in the first sentence of the report and then
discursively linking them to the larger topic of the story. The tugboat captain in the introduction is one such example, as are a young Greek and an Italian woman starting new jobs at the ECB in Frankfurt. DW’s credibility building relies on a tightly focused onsite depiction of speakers, often Germans themselves. Stories then return to the studio for expert analysis. Often the
speakers are members of elite think tanks such as the German Institute for Economic Research or academics from Cologne or Hamburg University.
CCTV follows a similar pattern, combining mixed style and onsite reporting in the majority of new items in domestic and intersectional items. The key difference is that CCTV items typically begin with a focus on governmental policy or larger economic trends, like the CPC’s authorization of three free trade areas (FTA) or the growth of ecommerce and online payment methods in China. A typical story, for example, examined economic slowdown in Northeastern China, which was introduced in studio, and found Chinese economic actors, in this case a car wash owner and the co-founders of a magnesium foundry, to describe their recent
difficulties. The foundry owners blamed a lack of government oversight and regulation of State Owned Enterprises in the area (SOE) as well as a lack of market mechanisms to signal when decisions and plans should be changed to reflect new conditions. This kind of report exemplifies the Chinese model of journalistic criticism by censuring local or regional governments and subtly suggesting to the central government that it has a responsibility to correct the problem (Zhao 2012). While this story did not continue in studio, CCTV favors expert speakers to all other types and uses them both on site and in studio to provide context and analysis. In this way, CCTV combines elements of Chinese journalism, eschewing direct criticism of the CPC and state, with Western onsite reporting and interviews, sometimes with foreign experts. This
suggests that CCTV melds Western and Chinese news norms to build credibility via independent experts to project narratives and explain Chinese economic news.
The ways in which international broadcasters present the news, onsite or in studio, expert interviews or onsite interviews, shapes the ways that a network builds credibility as well as the way it projects state narratives. While DW and CCTV used mixtures of reporting styles to project their sponsors, AJE and RT occupy opposing ends of a spectrum of onsite reporting. Robertson (2010) and Zelizer (2007) demonstrate that onsite reporting is a key means of depicting news events and people who live through them, and thus building credibility with audiences. Boom Bust’s almost exclusive use of studio items and elite experts means their projection of state narratives occurs in a narrower range of possible journalism norms. News norms, geographical focus, and speaker selection form the basic contours of IB content and each IB demonstrated divergences from PD theory and from previous scholarship on counter-
hegemony. DW and CCTV projected their sponsors routinely, while AJE and RT did so indirectly. Some, like AJE and CCTV drew from a wide range of speakers and nationalities,
while RT demonstrates a myopic focus on Americans. It is within these contours that specific strategic narratives work and attempt to influence foreign publics.
4.1.4 Self-Presentation – I think what the Government Meant to Say Was…