With Western media struggling against falling revenues, their
international news coverage suffered serious layoffs and shrinking newsrooms
with foreign bureaus closing down and a whole generation of senior journalists washed
away. But when foreign players
started plugging the news hole, they were sized up with a jaundiced eye with a
hint of chauvinism.
It happened last year when the deep-pocketed Chinese government garnered
world attention when it started strengthening its "soft power" aimed
at bolstering the country's international status. China Central Television’s global
push was first into English news coverage in the hope of making China's
"voice" heard in the international arena. The opening of its Africa production centre in Nairobi, Kenya, was seen
by many as a crucial piece in the jigsaw of CCTV's global news gathering
network to enhance the competitiveness of the TV station. Another 14 news
bureaus across African were announce to be up and going by the end of this
year.
CCTV also
officially launched its North America production center based in Washington
D.C., last February.
The Washington center mainly reports on breaking news in
the US and produce programs tailored to local audiences, but with a global eye.
Production centers in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East are scheduled
to be established by the end of 2015.
The
Chinese government also invested heavily in pushing other Chinese media
overseas, including the launch of its 24-hour English news channel under the
Xinhua News Agency called CNC World, which began broadcasting on July 1, 2010.
The same
wave of mistrust greeted the purchase of Current TV, the hotly
sought-after cable franchise in the US started by, among others, Al Gore, by pan-Arab
news channel al-Jazeera owned by the Emir of Qatar, one of the richest
of the Gulf sheikhs, paying a reported $500m. Al Jazeera, aggressively entered
the English-speaking market in 2006, but from the start encountered resistance
from both cable operators in the US, and American audiences. Environmental Al
Gore was lambasted for selling out to a global purveyor of fossil fuel but also
to an outfit often thought to be a staunchly
anti-American voice.
For the cash-rich al-Jazeera, the deal could make the difference to
years of efforts to penetrate the US market jumping from the current 5m
households to a potential reach of almost 60m US homes. However unlimited funds
cannot guarantee buying respectability. US analysts don’t seem to be
particularly worried by the heavy hand of the Qatari owners in controlling
contents. They reserved most of their rancor to deride the inability of
old-time Western broadcasters now fronting various al-Jazeera’s programmes to
dazzle US audiences by delivering a product that is less bland and more spunky
than Current TV.
Chinese
global effort was lambasted too, perhaps for other reasons, the biggest being
suspected as the direct mouthpiece of the Chinese government. Despite
a huge effort to win US audiences by hiring native English news anchors or
locally-hired correspondents wherever breaking news occurs around the world, China's
rising media presence as a global media institution is often demonised. In the US
and other Western countries, CCTV is competing against media titans, all of
which have built reputations as strong, independent news-gathering organisations.
But in
continents like Africa, the picture is altogether different. Audiences
are tired of the Western media's instance on portraying Africa from the prism
of Western-centric worldview as a continent of disease, war and poverty and
nothing else. On the other hand, China’s overseas production centers have found a way to
offer audiences new angles to the same events that are also covered by CNN and
BBC. This may well be the way these networks can cut across the cynicism of US
audiences and capture a slice of the global market.
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