Morales is headline news

Today Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, ended his hunger strike to pass a law that will allow Morales to run for the December election, reserve 14 seats in congress for indigenous candidates and allow expatriates to vote.

If you read the New York Times, you will have to search for the term 'Bolivia' in order to get a paragraph from Reuters about the beginning of the strike, posted on April 10th.

CNN you'll find it buried under Latin American news.

On Al Jazeera English - front page.

Here is one example where AJE's mission to be the 'voice of the south' is realized.

Format impacting perception

Visual format is an important element to consider when analyzing today's internet landscape. For braodcasters, different styles of formatting headlines and stories are used in order to cater to different types of readers and shape the way their information is viewed and (potentially) interpreted. This simple observation can be applied when looking at the difference between CNN's format of G-20 coverage versus Al-Jazeera English's formatting of their G-20 coverage.

CNN
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/news/g20.summit/

Al-Jazeera English
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/the2009g20londonsummit/

Questions to be answered about the visual presence include: What type of audience are the broadcasters attracting/ catering to? How does each format invite different reading styles? How do the formats implement or not implement Web 2.0?

Hollywood Delegation in Iran, Part Deux!

Here is a report by CNN on the Hollywood delegations visit to Iran, the first of its kind since the Revolution in 1979. It mentions the two Iranian government officials asking for an apology for certain Hollywood films in an interview with delegation member Sidney Ganis - President of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences. Once again, even though television broadcasters IRINN and IRIB failed to mention this delegation or the request for an apology, four online Iranian news sources have reported on it so far: Tehran Times, ISNA, Ayand News, and Press TV.  Perhaps it speaks to distinctive agendas for state news on television vs. online.

NHK World? Not so much....

Recently re-launched NHK World (of the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation) may want to reconsider the "World" part of its name. While we had previously speculated about what NHK World niche would be, after spending some time on their website, I'm not sure if they know either.

I assumed that NHK World would try to focus on news related to the global economy given Japan's heightened interest and strength in economic issues. Think again. There is not a single story about the Congressional Bailout, which is making headlines on all other broadcasters (even Press TV thinks this is news worthy). Nor is their a reference to the state of the global economy more broadly, something that is of heightened relevance given the continued global economic decline.

The top story listed on the homepage, and I couldn't even make this stuff up if I wanted to, is an announcement for a European conference on protectionism that will take place in March. So much for "opening a new window on the world's most exciting region, Asia" (via the press release announcing the relaunching of NHK World).

Notably lacking from the top stories is any mention of anything going on the Middle East. Nothing. News of the Israeli election results is at least among the top stories at Russia Today, AJE, Press Tv, and everywhere else I've looked. Most broadcasters also are still keeping close tabs on Gaza (like the resumption of UN aid, BBC), general Arab reactions to the Israeli elections (VOA), and the possible warming of ties between the US and Iran (Russia Today), not too mention today's attacks in Iraq (AJE). NHK World? Not interested. Even after a thorough exploration of all of the articles posted on the website (don't give me too much credit, there really aren't that many), there is little mention of the Middle East, and when there is, the stories are less informative that a Reuters newswire. There certainly is not a unique Japanese perspective offered on global events, or a window opened to Japanese culture or society. Also lacking, sans a very short story about Sudan, is NHK World's coverage of the entire African continent. This is despite today's swearing in of Zimbabwe's new Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, which even the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation found interesting. Also, the website is about as high-tech as this blog (no offense intended to Blogger).


I'm not writing this to trash NHK World, or at least that wasn't my initial intent. NHK World claims to want to compete with global news giants such as CNN and the BBC, and I was thus genuinely intrigued to see what they would bring to the broadcasting table. It may be the case that the actual broadcasting is far superior to the content on the website, though that seems to beg some larger questions of NHK's understanding of today's media environment.

"Online and in Jail"

The Committee to Protect Journalists is reporting that 45 percent of journalists that were put in jail in 2008 were web-based reporters or bloggers. Let's put this another way: you are more likely to be jailed for being a journalist if you publish your reporting via the World Wide Web than any other medium. Wow. So much for hoping that the Internet could provide a cover for those trying to report the news in countries that, well, don't exactly welcome a free and independent press.

The VOA's reporting of the findings highlights the most egregious violators: "Among the countries singled out for their hostile press environments were Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Zimbabwe and Cuba." This is especially interesting given the recent cuts in funding for American broadcasting to Russia, China's pledge to sink billions in creating English and Arabic-language international broadcasters to compete with CNN, the BBC and Al-Jazeera, Iran's recent crackdown on BBC Persian and most recently the GAO's report that found that, despite the $500 million that the US government has devoted to broadcasting radio and TV to Cuba, "Radio and TV Martí’s audience size is small, with less than 2 percent of respondents to telephone surveys since 2003 reporting that they had tuned in to Radio or TV Martí during the past week."

Thus, I'll ask again, is the Internet and its associated revolution in communication technologies actually opening up previously close societies, or is this further evidence of governments demonstrating their ability to control the flow of information despite it? 2008's crackdown on online journalism is further evidence of concern that governments are indeed winning the war over who is in control of the World Wide Web. On that note, I'm signing off!