continued: Reflections on the Politics of the Global 'Rolling-News' Television Genre by M. Mehdi Semati
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Notes and references

All News (maybe), All the Time (maybe): The Birth of a Genre
CNN often refers to its coverage of the Persian Gulf War as "our defining moment." It was the around-the-clock coverage of this particular event that introduced CNN to the world. Its 11.7 prime-time rating (January 15-21, 1991) was ten times higher than its usual rating (Hallin and Gitlin, 1994). The recent restructuring and "personnel shake-up" at CNN (Kempner, 2000), however, illustrates that, in spite of its global reach and successful business ventures (e.g., wholesale news service), CNN is struggling to maintain a viable audience in a competitive and media-saturated environment. In the absence of international conflict, CNN's ratings and advertising revenue continue to fall. As Richard Kaplan of CNN puts it, "Our greatest strength, is our greatest weakness" (cited in Jensen, 1999). In this context, Hachten (1999) observes, "It can be argued that CNN is primarily a technological innovation in international news by reason of its ability to interconnect so many video sources, newsrooms, and foreign ministries to so many televisions sets in so many remote places in the world" (p. 49). Moreover, during peace time "the overwhelming interests of audiences everywhere are not about global news per se but, in a more focused way, about their own region and locality" (p. 50). "Yet when the next world crisis erupts," Hachten continues, "global television news will take center stage once again" (p. 50). Thus, we may conclude, truly "global" television news has to be either conflict-driven or it will cease to exist as such. I shall return to this argument in my discussion of the global politics of CNN but here, I want to reflect more carefully on the characterization of CNN as a "technological innovation."

Truly "global" television news has to be conflict-driven or it will cease to exist as such

The ability to "go live" has become, MacGregor (1997) argues, a "selling point" in a highly competitive world of broadcast journalism. He believes CNN makes a "fetish out of live reporting" (p. 184). MacGregor's book, with the suggestive title ("Live, Direct and Biased? Making Television News in the Satellite Age"), is a catalogue of the perils of technology-driven all-news international broadcast channels.(5) He argues that speedy attempts at being first on the spot leave no time for reflection, corroboration, and even news-gathering. One of the more well-known cases on his list is when John Holliman, one of the three CNN men reporting "live" from Baghdad during the early hours of the Persian Gulf War, asked Atlanta for news from the Pentagon and Saudi Arabia. "Intriguingly," comments MacGregor, "the man with seemingly the best seat in the house, the eyewitness to history reporting live on global television, is asking for information" (p. 6). In a section titled "Gas-mask Journalism," he argues that in the midst of all the frantic "coverage" no one from Atlanta, Tel Aviv, Washington, or from Jerusalem itself bothered to ask if the Iraqis would send missiles into what is after all a holy city for Muslims. "Knowledge, calm analysis, stop-a-minute-and-reflect journalism, might have saved CNN some embarrassment as they sought a second night of exclusive live broadcasting" (p. 8). The currency of labels such as rooftop journalism, helicopter journalism, and palm-tree journalism (reporters staying by the hotel poolside with high-tech equipment for live feed), reflects the routinization of such practices.

What is particularly relevant to our argument is that such a development is to a large extent the result of the insatiable appetite rolling-news television channels have for content. Indeed MacGregor (1997) sees the shift in function from newsgathering to reporting live as a response to "the relentless demand of rolling-news" (p. 88). Such a demand is met in other ways as well, the consideration of which leads us to the second striking characteristic of the rolling-news genre. Apart from repetition by way of recaps and summaries, rolling-news channels tend to fill their schedule with "talk" and "speculation" (opinion, analysis, debate, talk shows, etc.). Here talk/speculation takes on an entertainment function. The boundless commentary on a sex scandal (e.g., Monica Lewinsky affair) has been characterized as "tabloid" ("sensational") journalism. The standard argument in such a context is that entertainment is creeping into the news. But if we follow our argument to its logical conclusion we have to turn the argument around. That is to say, we have to conclude that the news industry is taking over the entertainment division of the networks. "The intrusion of the real," Mellencamp (1990) argues, "is also the taking over of entertainment by the news division" (p. 57).

Let us briefly use the concepts of "real-time journalism" and "talk/speculation" to reflect on the genre's defining moment, the Persian Gulf War (the Persian Gulf War as CNN's "defining moment" is effectively the birth of the genre). We may use Baudrillard's (1995) argument to reflect on the intersection of "real-time" journalism and "talk/speculation" as the most significant characteristics of global rolling-news genre. Baudrillard makes a distinction between the event (e.g., the Gulf War) and the televisual simulacrum that purports to represent it (the spectacle of war on CNN). That is to say, real events lose their identity once they are "encrusted" with "information" as real-time media events (p. 48). Put another way, the event (the Gulf War) disappears in the endless speculation and interpretation by experts, analysts, and commentators (the media event). Gerbner (1992) offers a similar argument in an essay titled "Persian Gulf War, the Movie" (the "Movie" is what Baudrillard calls the simulacrum). Gerbner argues, "Instant history is made when access to video-satellite-computer systems blankets the world in real time with selected images that provoke immediate reactions, influence the outcome, and then quick-freeze into received history" (p. 244). Making instant history "requires a total environment of actuality, images, talk shows, slogans, and other creative manifestations"(p. 248). In this context, talk/speculation and real-time technologies, as two significant characteristics of global rolling-news television, are the main ingredients of instant history.

In short, the tragic conflicts around the world, the latest communication technologies ("real-time" journalism), a medium with a relentless appetite for content ("talk/speculation"), and an industry eager to increase its profit margin by exploiting those conflicts (the commercial structure of the transnational broadcasting industry), are the structural ingredients that made possible the emergence of the global rolling-news television genre. In the next section of this article, I discuss the international political implications of the emergence of this genre.

Reflections on the Political and the Televisual
In this concluding section I address the international rolling-news broadcasting operations in terms of the international public sphere framework. I want to reflect on the political dangers and potentials of international rolling-news broadcasting in terms of this framework.

Some of the more significant political implications of global television news may be examined by way of reflection on the idea of "global." I should start by pointing out that some find the term "global" ideologically suspect insofar as it tends to elide the tensions inherent in a term like inter-national (see Tomlinson, 1991). Moreover, it tends to avoid the state (as in nation-state) and its role in a more contentious political realm. Even a term such as "international community" is ideologically charged. Sorting out who belongs to this "community" and who is excluded from it (e.g., that notorious concept of "rogue nations") is essentially political analysis. Yet, the international media, and those whose interests they represent, always strive to construct "the global community" in their address. In this attempt to construct the "global community" lies the political dimension of the international media.

In his research on the television coverage of the Reagan-Gorbachev Summits as global "media events," Hallin (1994) addresses the construction of "global community" by the international media. The framework he finds most appropriate for applying to a divided and conflictual world is that of the public sphere. His analysis examines the possibility of the constitution of an "international public sphere." He defines the public sphere as "the arena of civic discourse, in which citizens enter into an ongoing dialogue about the concerns of the society." The idea of the public sphere "involves a conception of community centered around participation in a common conversation rather than sharing of common values" (p. 161, emphasis original). In this context, he wants to know if such global media events opened up an international public sphere. To the extent that the two "superpowers" engaged each other before the "court of world opinion," and engaged in a conversation with the world press, and to the extent that the journalists from both countries entered into a dialogue with each other, the "summits opened a semblance of an international public sphere" (p. 161). The notion of the international public sphere, however, has its limitations. In order to address these limitations, Hallin breaks down the notion of global community into two views: the civil (the people as the citizens of the of the world) and the statist (the states as the citizens of the world). He concludes that at the statist level, the participation in the "global dialogue" was "extremely uneven" given the fact that the views of many states were excluded from the dialogue. At the civic level, however, the media played a different role. "Because it invokes the standpoint of humanity as a whole, for example, and because it humanizes political leadership, the summit as media event can be seen as pushing toward the civil voice" (p. 163).

Earlier, I observed that "global" television is conflict-driven. The centrality of conflict tends to involve global television news in a statist view of the global community. If we take the case of the Persian Gulf War (CNN's "defining moment") for example, the global media can hardly take any credit for contributing to a global dialogue or the constitution of an international public sphere. Quite the contrary, the research shows not only a lack of dialogue, but it also paints the global media as instrument of war and propaganda in the hands of those with the means to deploy them (e.g., Denton 1993, Mowlana 1992, Gerbner 1992, Manheim 1994, Cumings 1992). The conflict in Kosovo, to take another example, follows the same path in privileging the views of a few (e.g., Taylor 2000, Thussu 2000, Vincent 2000). This trend has been present in the post-Vietnam "low-intensity conflicts" in the Falklands, Grenada, and Panama as well. These cases alarmingly question the status of the press as instruments of dialogue and civic discourse and their role in a democratic transnational civil society.

At the same there are some optimistic signs as well. There are occasions when the international rolling-news television contributes to a civil view of the global community and in doing so it contributes to the constitution of an international public sphere. The continued international coverage of disasters and catastrophes (e.g., earthquakes, famines, accidents, etc.), as well as other public ceremonies (e.g., Olympics, royal weddings, summits, etc.) does contribute to a conception of a single humanity and a single international (civil) society. Additionally, in the absence of conflict and disasters, through the insatiable demand for content, albeit in the form of talk and speculation, the international rolling-news television cultivates interest in participation in matters of public concern. The televisualization of foreign policy issues and policy-making processes (e.g., public affairs programming, current affair talk shows, etc.) amounts to a politicization of those processes.(6) Such a development promises democratic potential by fostering accountability to the public in publicizing those processes.

In this article I have focused on some of the issues raised by the debate on "the CNN effect." I have addressed those issues in terms of the emergence of a new television genre. If a medium with a relentless appetite for content has the technological means to reach a truly global audience, then we have reasons for both optimistic and pessimistic views of the future. The transnational broadcasting technologies may be used to promote the views and the interests of the powerful. Alternatively, they could be used to bring to the global audiences matters of international concern to promote dialogue. It is not the communication technologies but their deployment that can foster or shun democratic values. TBS

Notes and References

The author thanks Patty Sotirin for her comments on an earlier version of this paper.

M. Mehdi Semati is Assistant Professor of Communication at Eastern Illinois University in the United States. Semati’s research interests include international communication, cultural politics of global communication, and communication theory. His writings on cultural studies, media and transnationalism, culture and international relations, and pedagogy of international communication have appeared as book chapters and articles in journals such as the Journal of International Communication, Journal of Popular Film and Television, and Critical Studies in Mass Communication.