The Global Dynamics of News: Studies in International News Coverage and News Agenda

Abstract

The final two chapters are also of particular interest for very different reasons. Chapter 17 offers "An Analysis of International News Releases from Xinhua," the news agency of the People's Republic of China. When coupled with chapter 11 about Chinese television, it describes in a very insightful manner the change without crisis in the management of the national imagery. Chapter 17 examines Xinhua's role as an alternate source of international news in Asia, a role that it could play in the near future in many other parts of the world. Chapter 18 proposes that the East--West narrative framework at work during the Cold War Era is being replaced by a North--South frame of hostile reporting by the North that focuses on the defects of the South in matters such as environment, human rights, democracy, corruption, child labour, and so forth. But this final chapter is better understood when coupled with Louw & Chitty's "liturgies" of global media largely inspired by the American and other English-language media. In their introduction, the authors express the wish that their text be used for research and teaching. To this end, they offer an Appendix (pp. 409-411) of very broad "Discussion Questions and Assignments." But if I were to recommend this book to my graduate students, I would warn them especially against an element that cuts across the numerous chapters containing content analyses and that may mislead them about what scientific research is really about. The narrative style used to divulge the results of content analysis (reflecting broader tendencies found in scientific publications) erases the hesitations and the surprises of the actual investigation, and leaves the reader with the impression that what the researcher discovered was set from the beginning. Indeed, within such a frame of reference, the theory used for the interpretation and design of the empirical research is established from the onset, the categories of data are evidently the result of a series of trials and errors, and the protocols for the gathering of the data are repeatedly indicated. In the end, the results are presented in a way that brings us to think that the only possible surprise lies in the distribution of data. Although it appears to be scientific because of the numerous figures and quantitative operations, this type of report leaves the impression of being largely tautological and that there has been no real discovery. It obscures the actual process of investigations rather than highlighting the lively process of discovery inherent in empirical research, of which a scientific article is but only one codified moment. Such a narrative style demands that the readers write their own falsifying investigation, one that stresses the excitement of counter-intuitive findings, the continuous interplay between the empirical findings and the previous expectations, the doubting, the numerous refinements of the analytical frame, the openness to surprises from the field, and the challenging difficulties arising from data that do not fit perfectly.