“Forging a Path to Peace at a Time of Global Crisis:
The Role and Responsibility of the Media”
The Role and Responsibility of the Media”
Dr. Jury Sigov
U.S. Bureau Chief, Business in Russia Magazine
I would like to give you some points that probably will stimulate discussion. The problem is that when we speak about the media, we usually have a certain kind of trust in our favorite media and basically never mention the influence of foreign media, both when you stay in your own country and when you are overseas.
Speaking about foreign media, the most important aspect of this is, of course, foreign correspondents. Maybe because I have been working as a foreign correspondent for almost eight years, I think this topic is one of the most interesting and at the same time least discussed. When foreign correspondents work abroad, what kind of things do they bring to their own country and what kind of influence do they have from the host country, where they stay?
In my capacity I am under two kinds of pressures all the time. One is that Americans think I look at the United States with experienced eyes. When somebody comes for the first time, they experience what is called culture shock. You try to grab the most interesting things in this country. When you have been here for several years, you probably don’t see many things. You think that you are a professional, that you are very experienced, so many things that are interesting for a newcomer are not interesting to you anymore.
At the same time, there is another pressure from your home country, where they look at you as a person who is already Americanized, as being under the strong influence of American media, culture, way of living, and ideology. So when you are writing about something all the time, the people in Russia think, okay, he knows the subject, but anyway he has been there for several years and probably not everything he is writing is truth.
Speaking about foreign correspondents, there is another interesting cultural point. More and more foreign media are trying to recruit nationals as foreign correspondents. Some people say that these people are stringers; some say that they are contributors. Some people don’t like either of these titles, and they say it is our informal correspondent who is sending us stories. But are these people influenced by the local culture and their own media that they work for?
On this particular subject I would like to mention the example of the Arabic-language TV channel Al Jazeera, which has been very much in the news since the United States started the war in Afghanistan. Actually Al Jazeera was set up in 1997, but it became known when the war in Afghanistan started and then when it spread to Iraq. I don’t want to mention the coverage of different kinds of things by this channel, but I am very much interested in the political concept of this channel, which is funded by the government of a country where 99 percent of the journalists are foreigners. You will never find a similar situation in any other country. If you look at CNN, BBC and so on, you will never find a situation where basically foreigners are working for the government channel.
What is more interesting is that these people are recruited just on their professional merits, not on their nationality. The most interesting thing is that this channel is funded by the government of Qatar, when 99 percent of the content of its programs are anti-American and against the government of Qatar. They criticize many, many things about the government that gives them money. Imagine, for example, if a TV channel were set up in front of the White House that was budgeted by Congress and yet said only bad stuff against Congress, the White House, the State Department and so on. I don’t think that, even with democratic principles in this country, it would be tolerated.
But what is again interesting is that these people are foreigners: people from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon, and so on who are against the United States, against the local government, yet who are being funded by this government. And the most interesting thing is that this channel is not closed down, these journalists are not fired, and they are not in prison. They are still working.
There is another interesting situation regarding multinational staff working for media. Is it good or bad? Some people say that the more diversity you keep in, especially international channels or newspapers or magazines, the more interesting will be this mixture of culture, experience, international influence you have. In some newspapers and magazines, racial and cultural diversity is already like a paradigm. This is a most important thing. If this guy is from Africa then the next one should be from Asia, and this correspondent is supposed to be from Europe. Does it really bring a mixture of cultures or does it just make a mixture of everything without real strict important ideas of what a channel is going to do?
Then there is the idea itself of integration of international media. When you look at CNN, BBC, and so on, this is an attempt to bring not only different cultures to the world but it is also a tool to influence other parts of the world through the culture. There is also the interesting question of whom to trust, what kind of media? Shall we trust local media? Shall we trust national media? Or shall we trust international media? That is a point, especially when you stay in this country or you travel abroad.
In the United States the majority of Americans basically watch the local TV channels. They are very much interested in what is going on in Washington, Virginia and Maryland and a couple of things in international news that are brought up at the very beginning of the program. They know perfectly what is going on in Iraq, but they have no clue what is going on anywhere else. That is going on in national media. Even in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times, where international news is much more attentively watched, many things are missed. I don’t see any Americans who are not working for the State Department who are interested in watching BBC or a French TV channel, or in reading foreign newspapers. They think it is enough that they have news from their own local media.
At the same time when I speak to foreigners who work here and stay here, it doesn’t matter whether they have been here half a year or two years or five years, the Europeans, for example, mainly tell me that they watch BBC rather than they ABC and so on. They watch BBC in the evening, even if it is prerecorded. They just want to see the different opinions. And basically they say that at least they know what is going on in the world. They are not so much interested in what is going on in the United States, but they can get information about what is going on in the world. The same happens with French-speaking people. There is just half an hour of French prerecorded news on TV, and they wait until it starts. They get their information on what is going on just from this.
This is in the United States. When you go overseas, like to the Middle East or Southeast Asia, there are 15 or 20 channels in every hotel. Yet it is interesting that the French-speaking people, and not only sometimes because they only speak French, they watch French TV. Germans look for German TV. Americans look for CNN international, and Russians look for a Russian channel. Do they trust only their own media or are they simply not interested in what other media are talking about?
This is again the problem of your cultural background and whether you trust the media or not. This is the interesting thing about perceptions. For example, let me give just a small example about the Russians. Russians are the most critical of their media, saying that it is corrupt, very partial, very influenced by the government and not at all free. It is a media that is under the complete control of the Kremlin. But that is only when we are talking to foreigners, let’s say at an international conference. As soon as the same Russians come into the hotel, they look for the Russian channel to watch what is going on in Russia, even if it is the most biased and most controlled channel that can be imagined. There are three or four channels made in the Kremlin for international consumption, which are even more biased, even more pre-selected to influence Russian-speaking people all over the world. Still, Russians go to those channels, and not only because they are in the Russian language and people cannot understand anything in English. They still believe it is our channel. At least, we can understand between the lines, between the words, what they want to say. If they say 100 percent this, we can trust 20 percent, but it is ours, we know what is there. When you watch CNN, French TV, or German TV, sometimes you have no clue really where there is truth and where is there no truth.
There is one last point that I would like to mention: what kind of influence foreign media has on public opinion in their own countries? There is a big shift in this perception of trust in foreign correspondents. It used to be my experience in 1993, 1994 or 1995, when I first worked here, that there was a real kind of respect and trust. You are staying in a center of information, the center of world politics. Since you are so close, since you are inside, you must really have access to many important things.
Now, the situation is like this. People have access to different kinds of sources of information, including the Internet, so a foreign correspondent, even if he works in the center of world politics, is experienced, is writing really important and interesting things, does not receive such great respect. He is the last person who will be trusted. The person who is working here is a good guy, but we want to know something else. It makes the work of the foreign correspondent much more sophisticated, much more complex and at the same time very challenging. It makes your work much more diplomatic now than it used to be just six or seven years ago.
And it is not only because the world is changing. The world is changing in general terms. But the readership and the people who are consuming your product are becoming much more sophisticated, much more demanding, and sometimes more cynical. I would say it is less a cultural difference than just human differences; it is the same in the Arabic world, Europe, and the United States. It constitutes more or less general guidelines for you if you really want to be heard through your publications.