Week 2: machine

Culture is not neurtal: whom does it serve?
National cultural screen productions and their address of the local within a global commodity industry context.

The belief in an objective truth and reality is particularly pervasive when it comes to the news media, despite a long history of efforts to expose the machines which operate in the production of news, and the fact that video production ‘necessarily entails editing, cutting and so transforming and even deforming’1. The importance and emphasis placed on the perception of truth is illustrated when Al Jazeera English asked for youtube video feedback shortly after they began broadcasting.





This demonstrates the fact that the ideologies and values that create truth are seen as universal and unproblematic to many people. In the case of the first video response, ‘truth’ is seen to be an apparently lack of bias, or the representation of a variety of different points of views and reporting of events that may not have received coverage in the US for political or commercial reasons. Obviously political and commercial considerations in decision making at Al Jazeera have been rendered invisible to this viewer.

Stations such as Al Jazeera and CNN arguably operate to not only to serve slightly different markets, but also under different paradigms when it comes to the placing of local and global, and this effects more than just the aesthetic of their broadcasting.

In Acts of Memory: Topolitics and Teletechnology Jacques Derrida talked about ‘a technology that displaces places: the border is no longer the border, images are coming and going through customs, the link between the political and the local, the topolitical, is as it were dislocated.’2 This is, in part, due to an increase in accessibility of media from a variety of sources, that has tended to de-territorialise viewers’ interests and politics. Certain news media seem to have embraced this fluidity of borders and interests, such as SBS World News Australia’s use of the tagline “News from home, if you live in the world,” which without thinking about news media in such a context seems to locate ‘home’ at such low resolution as to seem nonsensical.



What stands out on first viewing of the launch of Al Jazeera English is the heterogeneity of reporters, suggesting fluency not only in English and Western cultural practices for broadcasting in English, but fluency in native language and culture. One reporter talks of international conflict being largely a result of people not understanding each other, and Al Jazeera's role in bridging the divide between cultures and civilizations. This is in stark contrast with the way in which CNN presents itself.

"Inside CNN Baghdad"

While Lisa Parks wrote of satellite images of the Bosnian war, the ideas she presented are easily applied to the case of CNN and the war in Iraq, as well as a variety of other global news coverage. There is a very real colonial aesthetic in CNN broadcasting. Western Imperialist notions still seem to ring true in the way in which CNN operates, the outposts of US journalists suggest an Orientalist ideology, where the practice of “othering” is still heavily relied upon in the conception of self. Incomprehensible and unfathomable events overseas need to be mediated through US journalists to be received by the “civilized West”3. The journalist even talks of “the two worlds of the US military and the Iraqi culture.” There are clear distinctions between “We” and “They” situated in a discourse of inclusion and exclusion that demarcates the nation and community.

This kind of attitude is also evident in the following video, although framed as comedy.



Other translations indicate that this conversation was actually about the execution of Saddam Hussein. Although the source is unknown, this video highlights in a crude way a perceived juxtaposition between Arabic, or even just ‘foreign’ culture, and world media under a US cultural hegemony. This also exposes that often techniques such as what Roland Barthes describes as ‘anchoring’ are needed to attach meaning to an image so that is signifies in a certain way. This not only mediates but restricts the meanings which the viewer can assign to an image.

As is also evident from the advertisement at the beginning of the ‘Inside CNN Baghdad’ piece, there are conflicting interests at play as Parks describes war coverage as a “product of military-information-entertainment complex, which is a hodgepodge of conflicting agendas. Commercial broadcasters claim they have the right to profit by televising world events. Citizen-viewers insist they have the right to know about American intervention in the activities of other nation-states. The U.S. military wants to maintain what is called “Information Dominance” by continuing top-secret intelligence activities. These agendas of state intelligence, public knowledge, and corporate profit are constantly (re)negotiated in the kinds of war coverage that appear on American television screens.”4

These theories are significant considering it is impossible to divorce our understanding of events and the world from the media coverage we have been exposed to. Very few people read Hansard to find out what went on in parliament, and instead rely on the media to select what it considers to be significant for our viewing. It is also worth noting that events that are not captured on camera often do not qualify as news.


John Ellis states “As we emerge from [the twentieth century], we can realize that a profound shift has taken place in the way that we perceive the world that exists beyond out immediate experience. We know more and have seen more of this century than the generations of any previous century knew or saw of theirs.”5 However, as pointed out in several of the articles in this week’s readings, the average viewers’ literacy in the creation of video and images is limited. This may be part of the reason the ideas of truth and reality remain important for so many news media consumers.

references:
1. Derrida, Jaques and Bernard Stiegler (2002), ‘Acts of Memory: Topolitics and Teletechnology’, Echographies of Television Cambridge: Polity: p. 60
2. Ibid. p. 57
3. Parks, Lisa (2005), ‘Satellite Witnessing’, Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 90
4. Ibid. p. 92
5. Ellis, John (2000), ‘Witness: A new Way of Perceiving the World’, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty London: IB.Tauris: p. 9