European Foreign Conflict Reporting

A Comparative Analysis of Public News Providers

Emma Heywood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134884193
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This book explores the state of European foreign conflict reporting by public-sector broadcasters, post-Cold war and post-9/11.

It compares the values of three television news providers from differing public systems: BBC's News at 10, Russia's Vremya and France 2's 20 Heures. The book examines how these three news providers have reported and broadcast the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which pre-dates both the change in East-West relations and the events of 9/11. In doing so, the work identifies and analyses the role of public and state-aligned broadcasters and illustrates how certain news values are consistently prioritised by the broadcasters and the effect this has on how news stories are portrayed. The book is divided into two parts. Part I focuses on 2006 to 2008 and provides a detailed quantitative overview of the broadcasters' news values. Part II provides an update of the analysis by examining coverage of the war in Gaza 2014 and discusses the findings from audience research into perceptions of this latter war. This book explains that not only do hierarchies in news values exist in foreign conflict reporting but that they are never arbitrary and can be explained, in part, by the structure of the broadcasters and by events occurring within, or associated with, the reporting country, resulting in nationally differentiated perceptions of conflict throughout the world.

This book will be of much interest to students of media studies, war and conflict studies, Middle East politics and international relations in general.

1 Introduction

The daily interpretation and reporting by national television news channels of foreign conflicts and associated international intervention play a central role in informing the domestic audience based on the broadcasters’ construction of the apparent realities of the causes, protagonists and proposed solutions to a given war. We live in a world where war and conflict is a constant presence yet, for the majority, the main representation of these events is via the global news media. The main aim of the book is to provide readers with an understanding of the state of European reporting of foreign conflict in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 period. It examines public-sector and state-aligned television news reporting within the context of these overlapping periods, which symbolise the emergence of a new world in which the established East versus West status quo has crumbled, leaving longstanding global relations shaken, to be replaced by a war on terror conflict frame.

The book is divided into two parts and examines the news values of television broadcasters from three differing public systems to determine which stories are more likely to be prioritised in their news programmes. It focuses on coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict at two different times: the first is 2006–08; and the second, which provides a useful update of the initial findings, is 2014 and the war in Gaza. Many books cover similar areas to this one also drawing upon empirical work (see, for example, Hoskins and O’Loughlin, 2010) but this publication differs because of its comparative nature, focusing on three European broadcasters. These are BBC’s News at 10, representing a British public service broadcaster, nominally independent of government control; Russia’s Vremya on Channel 1, a state-aligned broadcaster, broadly used as a mouthpiece for the government; and France 2’s 20 Heures, a public service broadcaster, from a media system with a long history of state intervention.

The book’s emphasis on news values will help the reader understand why representations of conflicts vary so much from broadcaster to broadcaster and from country to country. Although news values may be globally similar and adhere to comparable definitions, differences in the news-worthiness of reports do occur between national media systems such that what is highly valued in one country may be of less importance elsewhere.

The reader therefore is given an appreciation, comparatively, of the relationships between the three news providers and their respective states and regulatory frameworks and the social, cultural and political contexts within which they conduct their foreign conflict reporting. The overarching argument illustrates that the hierarchy in news values is never arbitrary but can be explained, in part, by the structure of the broadcasters and by events occurring within, or associated with, the reporting country.

The aims and objectives of the book

Central to this book are three elements, the investigation of which helps explain why representations of conflict, and particularly the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, differ from country to country. The first of these is foreign conflict reporting; the second is the provision of this reporting by public sector television broadcasting; and the last is the effect, or influence, of the new international environment marked by the post-Cold War and post-9/11 period on the broadcasters’ reporting. In order to do justice to this broad and complex area of discussion, the chapters address certain principal and overlapping questions, which also help examine similarities and differences between the news providers, thus challenging or confirming potential stereotypes. A key question concerns relations between the state and broadcaster and the extent to which the news providers endorse, and even actively promote, their own reporting country’s external stance. Are national interests and discourses, in fact, prioritised in the foreign conflict reporting? Another aspect under consideration addresses any particular and on-going significance revealed in the broadcasters’ coverage regarding new geopolitical allegiances, or new political blocs, which have emerged post-Cold War and post-9/11. This leads logically to consider whether the reports are framed by the broadcasters so that both their reporting countries and the Israel– Palestinian conflict are situated in a particular manner in relation to these new blocs and whether, as a result, the broadcasters map the world in a specific way. Moving away from the international aspects of the coverage to the field of war, the book also investigates the manner in which the news providers represent the warring parties and whether one party is portrayed to the detriment of others. A final, yet equally important area of investigation considers whether portrayals of the victims of the conflict are considered newsworthy by the broadcasters. This reveals any significance attached by the broadcasters to humanitarian aspects of war, allowing differences in portrayals between the news providers to be scrutinised.

Constructing a reality

The book examines the coverage of two discrete moments during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by analysing the three television news providers’ news values, or what they consider most newsworthy to be broadcast. In order to do this, the focus centres on both agenda-setting and news values: the former determines the salience of the media agenda and the transfer of that salience to the public agenda; and the latter determines how an event is considered sufficiently important to gain a place in the news.

Agenda-setting

The broad framework of agenda-setting is used to analyse the news providers’ media agenda and determine which events are broadcast, in which order and for how long. According to McCombs and Shaw (1972), the salience of these events is then increased and transferred from the news media to the public agenda. Investigations into the agenda set by a news provider illuminate how one event exerts an influence over another in the media and the public agenda, and how pressures on public sector broadcasters from other items in the news schedule or other events, occurring at the same time or in the lead-up, result in certain items being aired, emphasised or shortened. The salience of an item is, therefore, ‘not an absolute but to some extent a relative matter’ (Lang and Lang 1981: 453). Initial research in this area examined the salience of specific topics in the news media and its influence on cognitive awareness (level one agenda-setting). This led to research into second level agenda-setting which then illustrated how the particular attribute salience of these same topics may affect public opinion and attitudes, in other words, ‘readers learn not only about a given issue but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position’ (Cohen 1963). Indeed, frames, or this technique of framing, is described by Edelman as when the ‘character, causes and consequences of any phenomenon become radically different as changes are made in what is prominently displayed, what is repressed and especially in how observations are classified’ (Edelman 1993: 232). Frames can also be influenced by society’s values and the ideology and policies of journalists and elites (Scheufele 1999; Shoemaker and Vos 2009).

Framing complements the public salience of a topic by media emphasis of certain attributes of that topic. In the case of foreign conflict reporting, negative or positive emphasis may be placed on one warring party or another, or on particular leaders or particular strategies for example, whilst others may be omitted altogether reducing their corresponding salience. Although a single conflict or event occurs, news organisations may frame it in such a way that they each create a ‘pseudo-environment’ (McCombs 2004: 21), which is specific to that organisation. While the frequency of occurrence of a particular topic in an agenda may be similar between news channels, it is this representation – the second-level agenda-setting – which may prove to be the distinguishing factor. For example, status conferral (a first-level agenda-setting effect) may raise the salience of a military leader as a result of the frequency of appearances yet it is the image building and the stereotyping (second-level agenda-setting effects) which facilitate the transfer of attribute salience to the public (McCombs 2004). The book therefore illustrates how the three broadcasters selectively frame, or shape news items using various techniques such as image repetition, keywords and phrases and particular visual shots, to encourage a particular response (be it negative or positive) and to promote a particular ideological stance.

News values

News values, as a concept, establish a number of interacting factors which determine the conditions of ‘newsworthiness’ of a news story and which allow an event to be transformed into news. In the quantitative phase, level one agenda-setting will have determined which items are in the schedule and, now, news values can assess why they are there. Given the importance of television news as a source of information, news values provide a useful tool to discuss possible reasons why an item might be selected for broadcast and also to determine which values are rated higher than others by certain news providers. This helps explain why representations of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, although based on a single and on-going event, differ so much from broadcaster to broadcaster. In Chapters 2, 3 and 4, the book examines the interrelationship of agenda items both on individual days and over the course of several days leading up to a particular news programme. News values help illustrate not only how a news provider represents a foreign conflict (in this case, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict) but also how an image of its own society and the world around it is constructed.

These news values, in contrast to ethics that can also be named ‘values’ and which are either the ethical standards expected of journalists in their work or a code of ethics or canons of what is perceived as responsible journalism, can be understood in the context of the influential study by Galtung and Ruge (1965). This established the principal factors, which determine the conditions of ‘news-worthiness’ of a news story: the greater the number of factors which an event possesses the higher the likelihood that it will be aired. These factors, or news values, can be grouped depending on whether they are associated with the event and its impact, the audience or the media effects. Certain modifications, shown below, have been introduced either to adjust the original factors or make them more relevant to a twenty-first-century media world.

Impact of the event

FREQUENCY: Items, trends and speculation that unfold at the same pace as the news schedule, are reported more than long-term developments.

THRESHOLD: News items must pass a threshold in order to be broadcast, for example, a gruesome murder or an event that affects a large number of people. This is determined by each news provider as they will have their own subjective evaluation.

UNAMBIGUITY: The clearer a news story the more likely it will be selected. Again, a news provider’s own agenda must be taken into account as the reporting of events can be managed by journalists to become more or less ambiguous.

NEGATIVITY: Bad news (wars, murders, deaths … ) is more interesting than good news. The level of negativity differs from one news provider to another as what is bad news for one may be good news for another.

UNEXPECTEDNESS: News stories which are out of the ordinary are more attractive than routine stories. This can also depend on the angle taken by the individual reporter.

Audience identification

PERSONALISATION: This is a human interest or individual angle. A sub-category here could include the CELEBRIFICATION of journalists (McGregor 2002) – a concept that was considerably more infrequent when Galtung and Ruge’s original news values were published in the 1960s. In contemporary reporting, the more a journalist appears in person, the greater the chance of that item becoming news. Particular techniques of on-the-ground reports and pieces- to-camera create an apparent relationship with the viewer and the journalist acquires a voice which might not have been heard four decades ago and s/he is perceived to be an expert delivering judgements, often having the last word in a report. The inclusion of a reporter, and particularly a well-known reporter, raises the newsworthiness of an item.

MEANINGFULNESS: Cultural similarity with the audience, or a sense of identification with the audience, is a subjective category and contributes to an event being selected.

POWER ELITE: This is understood to be elite organisations and institutions as well as people, which is useful when discussing bodies such as the UN, NATO and governments (Harcup and O’Neill 2001). (Harcup and O’Neill also devised a ‘celebrity’ category for people who are famous whether or not they are powerful, but this is more relevant to domestic reporting than to foreign conflict reporting).

ELITE NATIONS: Items relating to elite nations are more likely to become news stories than an obscure nation.

Media coverage

CONSONANCE: This factor also includes predictability. The more an event concurs with a mental image of what is expected, the greater the chance of that event being broadcast. This factor must equally include dissonance: any event that does not conform to a given stereotype might prove newsworthy as it is unpredicted.

CONTINUITY: Once in the news, the familiarity of the event renders it accessible and comprehensible.

COMPOSITION: Stories may not be selected if a similar one has already been chosen in order to maintain balance within the programme.

These last three factors are all discussed in conjunction with agenda-setting, and the predictability or relevance of an item must be examined as part of a series of news either within an individual programme or within a chain of programmes. A further factor to be added is that of ‘visualness’ (Harcup and O’Neill 2001; McGregor 2002)....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Gaza Strip and the West Bank 2006–08
• Part II War in Gaza 2014
• Index