Dedication in Memory of William Dewey Rollison

William Dewey Rollison, Professor of Law Emeritus: University of Notre Dame 1897-197

From Behind the Lines (with graphics)

Technology has made global communication nearly instantaneous. It is from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world in seconds, if you have the equipment that can be carried around in your suitcase. One of the results has been the development of global news broadcasting. Their audience is the world. And they aggressively work to be on all sides of whatever line there is at the moment. The sides are often less enthusiastic about this relationship than are the reporters and broadcasters. But both sides get equal billing and get to have their sa

After the Second Iraq War: Bad News-Good News

Global news broadcasting now reaches its audience very nearly in real time. The technology facilitating global communication via TV broadcasting and via the web is readily available. Even though the audience is small, there are enterprises that aspire to communicate with this global audience. We studied the development of global television news broadcasting between 1998 and 2003: both CNN, with WorldView, and BBC, with World News, reached out to a global audience. Recently Aljazeera developed an English language website to reach out to a broader world audience. The news on the Aljazeera website can be compared with the news on the globally oriented pages of the websites of BBC and CNN, permitting us to examine the construction of the news across the principal cultural divide of our day. We compare the stories about the conflict in Iraq from January through June of 2005. Three news organizations with different roots had the same story to tell in the spring of 2005. It was a story of unremitting violence at the hands of anti-US fighters and Iraqi self governing getting off to a slow and bumbling start. There were modest differences in focus. There was twice as much of everything at Aljazeera. BBC weighed news from Iraq as less important than did the other two. But broadly construed they told the same story.It was a bad news story at almost every turn, and an administration that desperately wanted good news. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had an explanation.US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has told the BBC his country needs to do a "better job" at communicating its policies to the rest of the world. "I think the US is notably unskilful in our communications and our public diplomacy," he said in Washington. [BBC World June 15, 2005]It is just a public relations problem.A better interpretation would involve the first rule of political journalism: bad news trumps good news almost every time. Only patriotism in the face of extreme stress turns this rule off. News organizations that aspire to a global audience cannot practice patriotism

Globalizing Terrorism and the Internet

The war of the decade is the war on terror. It is a war fought as surely in the public domain of communication and culture as on other battlefields. News organizations that aspire to a global audience constitute this public domain and bring it to the internet. They write and broadcast on the internet because it is their infrastructure for reaching a global audience. This paper assesses how this war is playing itself out in the globalizing media

From Behind the Lines

Technology has made global communication nearly instantaneous. It is from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world in seconds, if you have the equipment that can be carried around in your suitcase. One of the results has been the development of global news broadcasting. Their audience is the world. And they aggressively work to be on all sides of whatever line there is at the moment. The parties are often less enthusiastic about this relationship than are the reporters and broadcasters. But all sides get equal billing. All sides get to have their say

Globalizing Media and International News

A project summary, listing all articles

Picture Framing: Images of War, Protest, and Flags on the Aljazeera in Arabic Website

War and protest are major components of the daily news. "If it bleeds, it leads" is a central axiom of news broadcasting. This paper examines the way that one globalizing news network uses images to frame stories about war and protest. Individualistic images of soldiers and weapons; death, destruction and suffering present important visual themes. At the same time, flag images invoke more communal identities. We examine such images from war and protest news stories in Arabic editions of Aljazeera websites during 20052006

Globalizing Political Action: Building bin Laden and Getting Ready for 9/11

As globalization gathers momentum at the beginning of the 21st century, global communication is increasingly important. Part of this process is global news, which has emerged as a separate genre made possible by the development of new communication technology. Media elites have used the ability to communicate from anywhere to anywhere in real time to create a new global space, which has become a domain for global political action. In this space, media elites mix political content with entertainment values in news reality television, the global political theater of the real. Capturing images from the vast ocean of daily human activity, they create breaking news. They help construct dramatic political characters like Osama bin Laden. They weave past and present experience together in gripping ongoing stories like terrorism that give meaning to current events and prefigure the future.As the media construct characters and stories, they help create the content and context of contemporary world politics. Building bin Laden as a player and getting ready for the spectacle of 9/11, the news media are at work, using professional production values to transform local people and real time events into powerful global political actors and concrete action sequences, trying to make public sense of a crazy, frightening world

Leading with Blood in the Streets: Global Broadcasters, Protesters, and Democratic Leaders

Protesters attempt to broaden conflict by taking advantage of the news media's principle"if it bleeds it leads". Democratic leaders turn that rule back on the protesters. If there is no blood there is no story. All the democratic politicians have to do is disappear. There is no blood. And the protest is silenced. Globalizing media broadcasters and protesters lead with blood in the streets. Globalizing political leaders, on the other hand, can not lead with blood in the streets. Globalizing communication and political actors thus perform the interactive logic of globalization, playing out the mutually reinforcing incentives of globalization