This is the age of information. We are surrounded by its endless flow. The odd thing is, the more information we get, the harder it is to find knowledge. Are you getting news, or views?
News outlets serve two masters, their investors and their audiences. This is as true for the NY Times as it is for Fox news; as true for the BBC as it is for the Huffington Post. In a world constructed as much by interests as by ideals, information is everywhere, but truth is elusive. How can we judge the news we read, hear or see? How do we discriminate between propaganda and ordinary point of view?
In their new book, Blur, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel try to make sense of the new media world. They describe 4 different categories of journalism. Let's look at the last 2:
One category is The Journalism of Affirmation - the reporting style that affirms its audience's preconceptions, gains their loyalty and turns that loyalty into advertising revenue and into political support of particular ideas, or political parties.
The authors call their final category Interest Group Journalism - including in it all those think tanks, public interest groups and other advocacy groups who create their own reporting with the goal of shaping the public discourse.
Both styles of reporting, the Journalism of Affirmation and Interest Group Journalism, have a great deal in common. Both cherry pick stories that advance their agendas. In both styles, the reporting on each individual story might be sound and comprehensive. Nevertheless, the totality of coverage conveys the same subtext - that big government is bad, for example, or that the U.S. or Israel is aggressive and immoral.
The lines between the various journalistic forms are blurry; facts may be accurate, but the truth about the facts in the broader context is skewed in a particular direction.
Nowhere is the blurring of lines more obvious than in the case of Al Jazeera, the fast-growing news source that burst on the Arab-speaking scene some 15 years ago. Al Jazeera gained listeners not only because it was the only alternative to state-sponsored news in repressive Arab countries, but also because it pandered to the prejudices of its viewers with anti-Americanism and intense anti-Israel sentiments. With those two flags flying, Al Jazeera was an easy sell in its part of the world. At first, the West heavily condemned Al Jazeeera Arabic. Even media academics, who generally bend over backwards to tolerate loathsome points of view, were critical of the network's bias: Al Jazeera served as a platform for Muslim extremists. It broadcast murderous messages from Osama Bin Laden.
In 2003, Tayseer Alouni, Al Jazeera's Afghanistan correspondent during the 9/11 attacks, was apprehended by U.S. military authorities and turned over to Spain, his native country. In Spain he was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed as an agent of Al Qaida. Al-Jazeera defended him and paid his legal fees.
When Al Jazeera's English service went on the air, it assumed a more cosmopolitan point of view. Nevertheless, it met a great deal of resistance from American viewers and cable operators. But U.S. news organizations fail to cover much of the world,
and Al Jazeera stepped into that information gap. It attracted viewers who preferred news of Africa, Asia and the Middle East to reports on the sex lives of politicians and movie stars.
Then came the series of revolutions against Middle East dictators from Yemen to Egypt to Libya. Government officials under attack accused Al Jazeera of inciting, rather than just covering, the events.
News exists in a dynamic relationship with politics and money.
Who funds Al Jazeera and why? The network is owned by Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani, a cousin of the ruling emir of Qatar, and is subsidized by the government. One might say it is the mouthpiece of the Qatari government. In fact, that is what the U.S. Ambassador to Qatar said. In a confidential cable released by Wikileaks in late 2010, he described Al Jazeera as an instrument of that country's foreign policy. He suggested that the network serves as a bargaining chip in the gulf state's international affairs. It plays a role in Qatar's dealing with Iran, with which it shares a gas field, and with other hostile Middle East players as well, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria. The loudest voice in the region, quoted all over the world, Al Jazeera is powerful bargaining chip, indeed.
Professional journalists who work at the network are troubled about its bias. In the spring of 2011 - the media dubbed "Arab Spring" - Ghassan Bin Jeddo, then director of Al Jazeera's office in Beirut, resigned in order to maintain his professional integrity. He charged the network with abandoning journalistic principles of neutrality. He said it had become "an operation room for incitement and mobilization." He claimed the network highlighted the developments in Libya, Yemen, and Syria, but minimized the same developments in Bahrain.
How can one be well informed? It isn't easy. First, be aware of the overall bias of your news sources. If over time the stories ring the same theme bells, you know you're in the world of the journalism of affirmation and look elsewhere as well. Expose yourself to different points of view. Notice what's missing from the story. Seek context and comprehensiveness.
