Which is more powerful the Al Jazeera or CNN effect?
Verónica Cortez
Global Media
Thematic Essay
April 22nd, 2008
…there is a shame as well as a shock in looking at the close-up of real horror. Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it – say, the surgeons at the military hospital where the photograph was taken – or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be (Sontag, 42).
CNN and Al Jazeera are understood as peculiar developments, news networks that operate 24-hours a day 7 days a week and continually provide their audiences with breaking news. News networks like these have gained quite a following amongst audiences that want to know what is happening around the world in real time. Cable News Network was started in the 1980s while the Al Jazeera network much more recently, in the late 1990s. Both of these networks have different methodologies in presenting the news while also giving importance to different events throughout the world based on their location and core audience. The two networks’ differences ultimately define the audiences they gain favor with and those with whom they do not, but are they truly that different?
To understand what is happening today in Iraq many Americans rely on CNN to give them the facts on the goings on both in the United States and the rest of the world. The CNN effect is the idea that with images the media is controlling the responses of the government and citizens of the U.S. Susan Sontag in her book Regarding the Pain of Others argues that images is one of the only ways we learn and experience war. “The understanding of war among people who have not experienced war is now chiefly a product of the impact of these images” (21). Americans in essence are using the pictures and images that are displayed 24-hours a day via these types of news networks to understand and sympathize, or not, with the soldiers that are fighting the war or another such story.
Al Jazeera has had its own effect with its development. This particular news network was originally understood to change news because of its willingness to show images and videos that other stations would not. One of the network’s most striking and/or controversial moments, the Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda videos during the aftermath of September 11. “Conscripted as part of journalism, images were expected to arrest attention, startle, surprise” (Sontag, 22-23). These videos, images, etc are what Sontag is talking about, they startle and surprise, but most importantly they achieve the goal of getting people’s attention. The Al Jazeera network is accused of promoting anti-American sentiment; it also garnered the U.S. government’s notice in an episode where President Bush reportedly considered bombing one of their stations. It is arguable whether attention like this is good or bad, but stations that are critical of governments expectedly create animosities between themselves and those that they are criticizing.
Which is more powerful the Al Jazeera effect or the CNN effect? Professor Yaron Ezrahi, during the April 16th lecture spoke about the role of the media and how it controls and shapes our reality, both of these networks shape the realities of those that use it for information. Sometimes images presented by television news networks create a different message than the one that governments and important players are trying to present. No other news format can compete with television and the images it has the ability to show. Al Jazeera is an autonomous network, politically and economically, and therefore has no reason to abide by government rules, although, recently, under pressure from many different countries and their governments has “become civilized.” Does this mean that its power will diminish? The pressures that these other governments are putting on this news network revolve around the images they show, and if that is where real power lays will the agree?
Sebastian Kampf also made some interesting points during this same lecture. Those that want to win today’s media wars must use the media as a part of the military. By controlling the media, governments can make it appear that it is a “costless war” and through this continue receiving support. Invariably, other networks are able to present a different side of the story and through this create support on that side of the war. The visual framing of wars is no longer only granted to one side of the conflict, but has become more accessible and more prominent on all sides. The CNN effect is that which is used as a part of the military that which causes governmental responses that the general population can agree with because of the images they see. The Al Jazeera effect does not necessarily create governmental responses but creates a response amongst its audience nonetheless that can then be harmful to the U.S. or to another governmental body.
Images are the ones that create these responses. Susan Sontag gives a sort of explanation:
It seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked…No moral charge attaches to the representation of these cruelties…There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. There is the pleasure of flinching (41).
The audiences cannot turn away from images like these; they cannot turn off the television when a news reporter is presenting the exact same gruesome footage over and over again. People have even come to seek out these types of images in movies like SAW which desensitize them to the brutality of certain images. Human beings want to be able to look at these pictures and videos and be able to flinch or not do so presenting their own humanity. The melodrama of movies like this with victim, villain and hero exist only to later be passed on to the real world. During the coverage of September 11th there was not just news reporting, but a story itself unfolding about the evil villains, the fallen victims and the incredible heroes that would come to the rescue. The coverage was no longer just unbiased coverage, but came with adjectives and descriptions of people that elicit certain responses from those that hear them.
Which is most powerful the Al Jazeera or CNN effect? There is no real answer for that, but there is something else, the media is the most influential and most powerful in the end. No one network or one type of news reporting wins, they all do because of the impact they have on their audiences. When there are thousands or millions of people recurring only to the media for their news and information whatever comes out on that news network, with whatever spin they put on it, has an effect. Media in general has the most powerful effect.
Comments
A frenetic 24/7 news cycle with a penchant for immediate, adversarial programming on media outlets such as cable news hooked to a virtuoso display of stand-off weapons contributes to a “new aesthetic of war” where for one set of viewers it is evening news consisting Nintendo style graphics of surgical strikes served at dinner time. It is noted that different media, genres, and formats enact the public display and deliberation of divergent if not opposing interests. For many months Peter Arnett’s 1991 despatch declaring “the sky over Baghdad has been illuminated” was heralded as a proud display of the CNN’s scoop as indifferently as it referred to fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Elsewhere many others who felt the impact, heard the bombs, felt the shock waves, saw bright lights in the sky felt helpless and voiceless. According to public diplomacy researcher, Dr. Nancy Snow, in the first Gulf War, “CNN dominated the narrative and General Schwarzkopf was our video game commander.” Thus events coexist within a human framework – that of our bodies, our local communities, our families.
Even though we are experiencing the world through a confluence of both old and new technologies, Michel de Certeau reminds us that the events themselves are still being translated through the practices of, and in everyday lives; through our routines, our senses, our familiar landscapes and our narratives. All these still remain powerful potential points for creative expression, in and by which we experience and convey what we know.Thus when discussing what was the viewers' perception of breaching the wall on Gaza-Egypt border, we first need to qualify how a somewhat similar event - the fall of the Berlin Wall - was reported by the majority of the media. We also need to be mindful of the dichotomy if one event is celebrated and condoned as "liberation" while the other condemned as a "violation."
Gauging viewers’ perceptions and their ranking requires the research to look through the glass of how perceptions form and order themselves. This does not happen in isolation as the viewers also act as a mirror reflecting and reacting to the exogenous realties surrounding them. A host of factors continue to influence the parameters that are being measured or what Paula Levine calls the transcending shadows from other places. No doubt the media forms ‘mediatise’ or ‘shape, facilitate, and condition the communication of conflicts’ but not just from one isolated source but perhaps through perceptions accumulated over time from multiple sources not easy to disassociate and dissect.
No matter how balanced and even handed Aljazeera programmes have been about the shooting incident in Virginia Tech University, a viewer would have been affected to a far greater extent by the Cho Seung Hui’s package received and splashed by NBC and before that how the Columbine High School killings were projected. Thus in affect all the airtime and column space given to the villain of the Virginia tragedy - to his 23-page statements and his 43 sickening photographs - is what mattered most in the representation and perception of the changing dynamics about youth and gun violence.
The way issues are primed and framed over other media outlets creates an effect makes the viewer adjust the mirror and also shape the gaze. The situation gets even further complicated by the fact that many in the news media advance “form over substance, celebrity over ideas” to a level that plagued the public discourse as referred to in a new book The Silence of the Rational Center. Co-authors Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke argue that the members of the foreign policy establishment are no longer doing the job of keeping the US foreign policy informed and rational. Instead, hungry to spin their own versions, they are in the business of advancing simplistic, glib mythologies. The result is that Americans are often presented with a fantasy world of nightmare scenarios rather than with explanations that lead to rational choices.
An Italian scholar of the Arab media, Donatella della Ratta rightly suggests that the West should seriously consider before blaming (or blocking) any channels like Aljazeera that are in fact educating tools to inform rather than a medium providing an embedded version from a warring side. If the likes of Aljazeera English had wider access in to American homes it would not have taken this long to see the contradictions between the lofty claims made at the Capitol and actual realities faced on ground.
Thus when responding about how a viewers finds the coverage of Iraq, the relative positions of the perceiver and perceived may not contain and convey only a snap shot of the moment when the questions were posed. The viewer is affected by factors preceding and following a development also by the manner in which the questions are posed and by whom, including how they are phrased etc. I therefore wonder if the researchers are looking at how one of the best informed and well exposed defence official has looked back at four years of American Media coverage of the Iraq war 2003-2007. Even then it took a uniformed officer four years to speak up his mind in public (upon retirement). What is far more worrisome is that the US mainstream media has not risen up to secure straight, clear-cut answers reflecting a “systematic failing” which is grown as an institutional failure.
General Ricardo S. Sanchez gave his candid assessment of the military and press relationship in his address at the Military Reporters and Editors Luncheon in Washington D.C. While Sanchez believes it to be necessary that the military and the press corps maintain a mutually enabling relationship, in his observation this continues to be problematic listing several reasons paraphrased below:
“As I assess various media entities, some are unquestionably engaged in political propaganda that is uncontrolled,” say the General. In his assessment, the profession of war reporting, “has strayed from these ethical standards and allowed external agendas to manipulate what the American public sees on TV, what they read in our newspapers and what they see on the web. For some of you, just like some of our politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your own preconceived notions, biases and agendas.
Sanchez referred to the way the Iraqi conflict is handled asking point blank: “Who will demand accountability for the failure of our national political leaders involved in the management of this war?”
Media outlets ought to answer why they haven’t sufficiently lobbied for access to alternate sources that can keep the US news corporations on their toes to give frank and fair reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. Media outlets ought to answer why it hasn’t sufficiently probed the cakewalk crowd who promised a casual march to victory in Iraq. How many media activists pressed for accountability of the likes of Ken Adelmen who misled the American media by claiming “measured by any cost-benefit analysis, such an operation would constitute the greatest victory in America’s war on terrorism.” Had American tax payers an easy access to alternate information sources it wouldn’t have taken them four years to question the wisdom of the “cakewalk” bunch. Thus encouraging and embracing alternate sources of media has become increasingly important at a time when many US media organs tiptoe around issues in fear of overstepping their boundaries.
It is pertinent to heed to what top defence officials who have served as key positions till recently have to say about the US media. In General Ricardo S. Sanchez’s observation, the four years of American media’s coverage of the Iraq war continues to be problematic due to a near lack (if not total absence) of accountability.
Had American tax payers an easy access to alternate information sources it wouldn’t have taken them four years to question the wisdom of the “cakewalk” bunch i.e. the likes of Ken Adelmen who misled the American media by claiming “measured by any cost-benefit analysis, such an operation would constitute the greatest victory in America’s war on terrorism.” Thus encouraging and embracing alternate sources of media has become increasingly important at a time when many US media organs tiptoe around issues in fear of overstepping their boundaries.
At a conference, “Creating Connections: New Partnerships for Understanding in the Middle East,” sponsored by the Vermont Peace Academy, Vermont Council on World Affairs and Norwich University, a participant said: “It’s an intellectual tragedy that the United States has cut itself out of Al Jazeera English’s contribution to [informative] conversation. Everything that’s happened to us in Iraq shows that’s very dangerous. The lesson of Iraq is: Ignorance kills.”
The media professionals, public diplomacy authorities and journalism scholars particularly in USA need to befriend with the alternate media entities that capture and portray the facts professionally and far effectively. The fact that alternate news channels are available to provide a different picture only enrich the bigger picture by bringing diverse dimensions and additional perspectives. Thus it is not a either or trade- off between CNN and Aljazeera. Rather, it is a win-win option to enrich the perspectives that none of these two (or any other) can provide singlehandedly. Dave Marash who recently left Al Jazeera English for writing and teaching pursuits offered these comments in his latest article: “If it’s been “market forces” that have kept Al Jazeera/English from an American audience - fears that it would have no audience, or that it would be “terror TV” - it is time to readjust to reality. If it’s been political pressure that has kept Al Jazeera/English off America’s cable and satellite servers, it’s time to reject such literal “know-nothing-ism...I still will watch regularly for its excellent coverage of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Without it, I’d be blind to half the planet. Why would anyone want that?
Now more than ever the USA public and its opinions makers need tools that can help them separate the wheat from the chaff not occasionally but on an on-going, round the clock basis.
Posted by: Jim | April 23, 2008 04:46 PM
I think you both have covered all the bases and debates, in hi-theory and low-culture, so much so I was wondering if we might use this exchange for our upcoming workshop on jihadist media?
VTY
JDD
Posted by: jdd | April 29, 2008 01:40 PM