CBA General Conference - 2004
NEWS AND SPEECHES
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What makes News?
Jean-Gabriel Manguy, Head Radio Australia - Nadi, February 2004
'Dog eats man' - 'Man eats dog'. We are all familiar with this example used by Journalism trainers as an illustration that not everything necessarily makes news. It is one of Journalism's key principles with which budding journalists around the world are familiar.
Yet, the universality of these principles first coined by trainers last century is coming under pressure from an increasingly global yet challenged news agenda.
As one of the most diverse organisations of media practitioners, the CBA reflects the universality of media communication but also the diversity of cultures, perspectives, and agendas when one comes to decide 'what makes news'. What is the lead story in one place does not necessarily make news in another.
Why is this so? The answer is in another subset of questions which have as much to do with the process of making news as with the events we report: Who makes news? Or rather who makes THE news? Where is news made? For whom is it made? Etc…
Communication is about 'mediating', delivering information but taking into account the messenger as well as the audience. We do not operate in a cultural vacuum. The context in which events occur and in which they are reported is of crucial importance.
Global media organisations, global distribution systems are increasingly marketing the 'one size fits all' content. THIS-IS-THE-NEWS! To what extent are we the new missionaries of a standardised, sanitised global agenda and today's dominant values?
How much airtime will we continue to give this year to the coverage of daily violence in Iraq and Israel, or to the political fortunes of Tony Blair and George Bush? On the other hand how committed are we to covering more adequately events that are of direct relevance to the lives of our audiences?
Such pious intentions are not always easy to follow: it is cheaper to use the TV footage and the stories that come down the satellite than to send a crew do an important story in a rural area. It is easier to relay every hour via satellite the global radio networks, or Radio Australia for that matter, rather than employ an extra journalist to cover local stories.
Radio Australia is the international radio service of the ABC in Australia. However, when we say international, we do not say global. In our programmes, we endeavour to communicate with international audiences, but these international audiences are mainly located in Asia and the Pacific.
This regional focus drives the choice of countries where we broadcast, the languages in which we broadcast and of course the news service we provide as a Public Broadcaster.
In recent years, we have strengthened our commitment to an informed and comprehensive coverage of Asia Pacific affairs. We started from the realisation that the major news providers focused heavily on the global northern agenda while local broadcasters, often under resourced, were kept busy by the coverage of local events and issues.
This led us to think that if we were to provide a responsible news service, we needed to address the information gap between the 'big picture', delivered through the global news agenda, that most people often have difficulty relating to, and the narrow if limiting focus of local coverage.
Many people in Asia and the Pacific are often better informed about what happens in distant Hollywood or in Europe than in a neighbouring country. Yet, many countries face similar political, economic, social or development issues. They often share close historical, cultural, trade and economic links, beside geographical proximity.
Responsible news coverage endeavours to make people know but also understand what is happening. It is not necessarily about the big picture but about the 'full picture'. As media is about communication, we try at Radio Australia to look for connections between events that occur in another country of the region or another part of the world and local audiences to whom this information will be relevant and useful; whether it be politics, health, economics, and so on…
Breaking the isolation by building south-south information bridges and news exchange networks has been a key objective of responsible broadcasters for many years. Collective endeavours for such exchanges have not always been successful. There is not much revenue on the international market in selling a local story about accusations of nepotism and corruption. Yet, in a neighbouring country where this is also an issue, the story is of particular interest.
At Radio Australia, we have done away with our World News. Our news is international by nature but is focused on the coverage of regional affairs, whether it be Asia or the Pacific. If you are a listener in this part of the world, what is important to you? What should you be informed about today? This does not exclude by any means the major international stories of the moment but it places them in context alongside major regional stories.
Our daily schedule in English is clearly divided in Pacific, Asia and Australian segments, the latter for Australian expatriates. In other words, the audience at a particular time of the day drives as much as we can the nature of the content. This applies of course to news.
It implies on the part of our editorial staff making choices as to what is covered and what is not. As with every choice, it can be challenged. We will always acknowledge that we cover regional issues from our own Australian perspective. In other words there will always be a difference between our take on an event and that of the local media. But we find that audiences acknowledge this and are generally interested to know our perspective on what is going on at home. It is about giving audiences a choice. Attribution and who makes the news is, as we know, an essential part of the message.
As a major regional media organisation, we try as much as we can to rely on the informed perspective of local stringers and correspondents. As always, it is essential to get it right in the first instance but at the end of the day the news making process: the sub editors, the editors will be the brokers, the ones who decide what makes news.
In the age of the internet, satellite television, digitisation and the tidal wave of information that comes with them, the role of responsible media organisations is as important as ever, if not more. A large proportion of the public, whether it does not yet have access to all the new technologies or, increasingly, because it does not have the time to sift through all the data now available, depends more than ever on the professionals that we are to know what really makes news.
It is our responsibility to work up to their expectations and acknowledge the specific information needs of particular audiences. Failing to do so would render our work obsolete and condemn our diverse audiences to the blanc-mange of the global news agenda.