December 13, 2001
Home Front: International news agencies see conflict differently
Since Sept. 11, Americans and people living throughout the world have been adjusting to new realities and new questions. Through fall quarter, University Week has explored some of the issues of this new reality in a weekly question-and-answer column with faculty and staff in such fields as law, architecture, communications, information sciences and international studies. Our final week’s expert is C. Anthony Giffard, director of the School of Communications and a professor whose fields include international media systems, African and European media, editing and reporting, and content analysis. His books include “Unesco and the Media” and “Las Agencias de Prensa en la Communication Global.”
University Week: You study news services around the world. Since Sept. 11, have they been telling a different story from what Americans hear?
C. Anthony Giffard: Very much so. As one might expect, news agencies in every nation have their own take on the events. I was at a Unesco-sponsored conference of Middle Eastern news agency editors in Jordan earlier this year. Their view of the situation in the region clearly is very different than what you’ll find on The Associated Press. In times of strife, this complicates matters for agencies that serve several regions. I do consulting work for a news agency called Inter Press Service that operates throughout much of the developing world. The IPS board of directors met in Lisbon recently where we talked about what space there is for an independent news agency at a time when President Bush is saying, “You’re either for us or for the terrorists.”
UWeek: How does IPS coverage of the crisis compare with that of, say, CNN or AP?
Giffard: IPS reports show a lot more concern with the perspectives of developing countries. Typically, there’s more emphasis on Third World sources. Rather than quoting Bush or Britain’s Tony Blair, they’re talking to people in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. IPS also is more interested in the underlying causes than what targets were bombed today. There is an emphasis on the “whys” of the conflict – such issues as the extent to which American foreign policy was a factor. So while Bush was saying terrorists were attacking our democratic values, our freedoms, our way of life, much of the Third World press focused on American policy in the Middle East.
UWeek: That sounds like it could be a useful perspective.
Giffard: The alternative agencies certainly provide a forum for diverse voices. It’s important to know how the U.S. is viewed by its critics. But a narrow emphasis on local perspectives also has its drawbacks. While I was in Cape Town in September, for example, the front-page story in a local paper was about President Thabo Mbeki calling Bush to offer humanitarian aid to New York and counseling the U.S. to exercise restraint. This probably wasn’t very significant in the larger scheme of things.
UWeek: How much do people in the developing world get their news from IPS and its ilk, and how much from CNN or AP or Reuters?
Giffard: Certainly what many people read and see comes primarily from Western agencies. For days after Sept. 11, television channels in many countries around the world abandoned local programming to carry CNN or the BBC World Service live. Alternative news agencies like IPS have minuscule budgets compared to the major players. And they have far fewer media clients. Reuters is widely used in Europe and the former British colonies. The AP is particularly strong in the Americas. Germany’s Deutsche Presse Agentur, France’s Agence France Presse and Spain’s EFE are popular in some regions.
UWeek: And do perspectives differ even among these Western-based agencies?
Giffard: In numerous respects. Reuters, for example, does not use the word “terrorists ” to describe the attackers, as part of a policy to avoid the use of “emotive words” unless they are in a direct quote. CNN’s Web site, on the other hand, says the network has “consistently and repeatedly referred to the attackers and hijackers as terrorists, and it will continue to do so.” Meanwhile, news anchors on the Fox network have called Osama bin Laden a “dirtbag” and a “monster.” There are other differences, too. While CNN was focusing on the bombing campaign, the BBC seemed more concerned about the plight of Afghan refugees.
UWeek: So the news consumer must sort through those different perspectives?
Giffard: One thing that has changed is that readers or viewers seeking alternative perspectives are no longer limited to their local newspapers or broadcast outlets. Virtually every news agency, national, regional or international, is available on the Internet – at least to those who have access to it.
UWeek: To switch gears to the American media, did it raise some eyebrows in the School of Communications when the networks agreed to President Bush’s request to refuse to broadcast speeches by Osama bin Laden?
Giffard: It’s said that in time of war, truth is the first casualty. We constantly wave the First Amendment flag, but when we seem to be losing the propaganda war, we quite happily abandon the concept of a completely free flow of information. Sometimes it’s just a matter of emphasis. CNN ordered its staff to exercise caution in showing images of civilian suffering in Afghanistan. And they told correspondents to mention the Sept. 11 attacks during any showing of casualties.
UWeek: Weren’t similar questions also raised about the reporting of the Gulf War?
Giffard: Certainly. Coverage was controlled and orchestrated by the U.S. military. Some stories were suppressed. This so incensed the Europeans that they set up their own equivalents of CNN to provide an independent European perspective. It was the European press that first reported that U.S. bulldozers had buried Iraqi soldiers alive in trenches in the desert.
UWeek: And yet, on the other hand, we also hear about some of the Third World press irresponsibly reporting wild, unsupported rumors – for example, that the Jews bombed the World Trade Center. Is anything being done to counter this?
Giffard: The U.S. is trying vigorously to counter it. We are beaming radio propaganda into Afghanistan and through the Voice of America to the rest of the world. According to the Pentagon, U.S. propaganda broadcasts originate from a flying radio station known as “Commando Solo.” On the other hand, the U.S. has asked the Qatari government to muzzle Al-Jazeera, a TV channel that uses satellite transmission to reach some 350 million Arabs around the world. Sometimes the action is more direct: U.S. bombs destroyed the Al-Jazeera office in Kabul.
UWeek: What is so threatening about Al-Jazeera?
Giffard: Viewers to that channel have seen images of Israelis in American-supplied helicopter gunships firing on Palestinians. They saw bloodied babies in Afghan hospitals, allegedly injured by American bombs. They saw emaciated Iraqi children said to be starving as a result of U.S. embargoes. But Al-Jazeera also carries statements by American and other Western leaders, and some people would argue that it provides valuable information, since it has access to both sides.
UWeek: Is there any research under way in the School of Communications that is specifically related to the current crisis?
Giffard: An interesting example is the work of a new faculty member, Kirsten Foot, who is cataloging a giant, nonprofit archive of Web materials for the Library of Congress (http://september11 .archive.org). She and her colleagues have developed a tagging system that essentially annotates Web sites – for example, whether it is a commercial site or a nonprofit site, or whether the message is political, whether it offers a call to action, and so forth. This will allow researchers to much better understand how people are getting information and how they are responding to it.
