Priorities of American Global TV： Humanity, National Interest, or Commercial Profit? Rebecca MacKinnon Research Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School In November 2003, I had the rare opportunity to interview Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for CNN. The interview came at an important time as Japan wrestled with the question of whether to send non-combat Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq. It would be the first military dispatch by Japan to a war-torn country since World War II and represented a major turning point in Japan's postwar history. The potential dispatch was also considered to be a political gamble for Prime Minister Koizumi -- given that public opinion polls showed a majority of Japanese were against sending troops at that time. Thus, not surprisingly, most of my 30-minute interview with Koizumi dealt with the Iraq question: Why was he determined to send troops to Iraq despite major public unease? Why did he support the Iraq war when the majority of Japanese did not? And what were Koizumi's views of the way in which his close friend, President George W. Bush, had handled relations with the rest of the world in the run-up to and aftermath of the war? Koizumi voiced strong support for his friend and his policies. He believed that Japan must stand behind the United States against terrorism because this was simply the right thing to do, whatever his critics might say. It was a matter of good versus evil. However, he did have some constructive criticism for Bush: Koizumi hoped that the U.S. would cooperate more closely with the United Nations and do more to build consensus within the international community. This exclusive interview was broadcast repeatedly over a 24-hour period on CNN International, which is seen by viewers around the world but not in the United States. CNN USA, the version of CNN seen by Americans inside the U.S., did not broadcast a single "soundbite" of Koizumi's interview. If one believes that the role of the American media should be to inform the citizens of a democracy about the realities of major foreign policy problems so that those citizens can make informed judgments about their government's ability to conduct international relations, then one is likely to conclude that we failed to do our job. But why did we fail? Was it part of some pro-Bush Administration conspiracy by CNN producers and news executives? No. Were producers of CNN USA news shows making some calculation about U.S. "national interest?" As a CNN insider I saw no evidence of any such calculation. In this essay I was asked to discuss how American global TV media balances the global public good with American national interests. However it is important to understand another, much more important factor that trumps both the global public good and national interest. That factor is commercial interest. It is complicated because commercial interest and national interest can and often do become deeply intertwined. But without an understanding of the commercial interests of American television news organizations and their parent companies, it is impossible to understand how and why certain decisions about programming and reporting get made. Because these commercial interests are primarily driven by American viewers, the concerns of international viewers -- to be bluntly honest -- are not a major factor when it comes to deciding how money will be spent on international news coverage. This is the reality, despite the global consequences. My interview with Prime Minister Koizumi is an excellent example of how CNN USA's show producers decide what international news stories can be seen by Americans. While the budgets and overall coverage direction for major stories like the Iraq war are set by top management, the bulk of decisions are made hour-by-hour and day-by-day by mid-level producers of individual news shows. Here is how the situation played out on the day I interviewed Prime Minister Koizumi: The interview took place in the early afternoon. Afterwards we rushed back to the CNN Tokyo Bureau to edit and transmit the interview to our Atlanta headquarters. (All news material is transmitted to Atlanta, then made available for use on CNN USA, CNN International and all other CNN networks.) Naturally, the CNN International Assignment Desk was aware in advance that the interview would be taking place, and had alerted all CNN International and CNN USA show producers that it was coming. CNN International news shows began airing the interview -- or parts of it -- as soon as it became available. At this point it was very early morning on the U.S. East Coast. While I did not expect CNN USA to run the whole interview or even large parts of it, I did think that the morning shows would run at least a "soundbite" or two from the interview, given that Koizumi was speaking about Iraq and President Bush's handling of the Iraq war -- topics of interest to U.S. viewers. I was wrong. As it turned out, the morning (according to U.S. East Coast time) that we sent in our Koizumi interview happened to be a very busy "news morning" for the CNN USA morning shows. There was CNN's first interview with Private Jessica Lynch, the young woman who had been captured by Iraqi soldiers during the war and then rescued. There was also an exclusive interview with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, and updates on the Michael Jackson Trial. I was told that while the International Assignment Desk editors had lobbied CNN USA show producers to include soundbites from Koizumi's interview in their programs, in the end the producers claimed they simply did not have room in their shows that morning to run even one Koizumi soundbite. Later in the day, there was major news in the U.S. about a court ruling on gay marriage, which "blew out" most other stories from the evening programming lineup. Thus Koizumi's words were not heard in the U.S. Why were producers unable to make room in their shows for Koizumi? Issues of public or national interest never entered into the discussion. The words of the leader of America's closest Asian ally, speaking in Japanese and then dubbed in translation, were not deemed sufficiently competitive that day when it came to the bottom line: keeping American viewers from switching to another channel. Producers of every single show on CNN USA -- especially "prime time" morning and evening shows -- are under extreme pressure to boost viewership ratings for their programs. As one news executive once explained to me: "Rebecca, we are fighting for every 15 seconds of airtime!" The goal is to prevent viewers from losing interest and switching to another cable news competitor such as Fox News or MSNBC. Daily viewership numbers for each hour in comparison to other networks are scrutinized by CNN's news executives. It is made clear to the people hired to produce CNN's primetime shows that their jobs depend on their ability to deliver respectable ratings, and hopefully boost them. Advertising revenues are, of course, tied to viewership ratings, and are thus critical for a commercially driven network. And don't forget, all of the U.S. TV networks viewable internationally are not only commercially driven but are owned by major corporate conglomerates such as Time Warner, General Electric and Disney, whose stock price levels depend on the profitability of their various sub-companies. While CNN currently remains more profitable than its main cable news rival, Fox News, Fox has been beating CNN quite consistently in viewership ratings numbers since 2002. And while Fox's profits are not as high as CNN's, their profits grew at a rate of 60% last year while CNN's grew at 15%.1 Thus CNN executives and producers are under tremendous pressure to boost the ratings of prime time shows. Why does this matter for the international, non-American audiences of U.S. global TV networks? It matters a great deal. In fact it has a tremendous and growing impact on what gets reported by networks like CNN -- even CNN International -- to viewers around the globe. When Richard Parsons, the CEO of CNN's parent company Time Warner visited Tokyo in the fall of 2003, he held a Q&A session with a group of Time Warner's Tokyo-based managers whose work ranges from movies, to music sales, to online services, and also to news. I asked him whether he viewed Time Warner's news properties -- such as CNN and TIME magazine -- to have a special social responsibility for educating the public about current events, or whether CNN was just another commodity like any other product or service sold by Time Warner. He replied that he does not view CNN any differently from any other company owned by Time Warner. Top management has made it clear to all Time Warner companies that their number one priority must be to increase profitability. This is the only way to boost the value of Time Warner stock, which remains low since its share price plunged dramatically after the stock market bubble burst in 2000-2001. At CNN, the bulk of profits are generated by revenues from advertising on CNN USA. It was made clear to all Bureau Chiefs by CNN executives that the revenue generated by advertising and subscriptions for CNN International is only a fraction of the revenue generated by CNN USA. Thus, executives told us that the fate of the CNN news group overall depends largely on the improved profitability of the CNN USA network. This means that the company's number one priority is to boost ratings for domestic prime time shows. CNN International is deemed important for the news group's international influence and reputation, but CNNI is not management's priority focus. In late 2003 and early 2004, soon before I left CNN for Harvard, executives informed all international Bureau Chiefs that despite the fact that we reported to CNNI, our number-one priority was to produce stories and reports that would be of interest to CNN USA. While we shouldn't ignore the needs of CNNI, the needs and demands of CNN USA's prime time shows came first. Over the course of 2003, this reality had already begun to make itself clear. It became very difficult -- and usually impossible -- to obtain budget approval from headquarters for travel and other expenditures for stories that CNN USA producers were not interested in. This was regardless of whether CNNI wanted or needed them -- and regardless of whether these stories could be argued to be in the interest of the "larger international public good." In fact, in my own experience from 2003 onward, arguments about international public good had ceased to be considered relevant to a discussion about budget approval for a story. We were increasingly encouraged by international assignment desk editors to "pitch" our story ideas directly to producers of individual domestic shows in order to get budget support. If domestic show producers weren't interested, the story simply could not happen. Thus, the only reason I was able to interview Prime Minister Koizumi at all on that particular day -- and make his views available to the international community -- was because I was already in Tokyo anyway. The interview cost CNN no additional amount of money other than the cost of satellite transmission. To be fair, however, if Koizumi had been available (as we had originally requested) for an exclusive interview one month beforehand at the time of President Bush's visit to Tokyo when the full attention of Washington and the U.S. media were focused on Japan, I am certain that the interview would have aired on CNN USA. It is a reality that if a major world leader wants to capture the attention of the American media, he or she (or his or her advisors) must choose their moment carefully to coincide with the precise moment when U.S. TV news show producers believe that the American viewer's attention span is most likely to be captured -- however briefly -- by what that leader has to say. As a result of CNN's network-wide focus on the tastes, interests, and attention levels of American viewers, the content of news stories aired on CNN International is inevitably affected. When I started working for CNN in 1992, things were different. Those were what longtime CNN employees now refer to as the "old days" when the network was run directly by Ted Turner, before the 1996 merger of Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner. "When CNN reported to me, if we needed more money for Kosovo or Baghdad, we'd find it," Ted Turner wrote in the July/August 2004 issue of Washington Monthly. "If we had to bust the budget, we busted the budget. We put journalism first, and that's how we built CNN into something the world wanted to watch." He blames the current situation on the concentration of news media in the hands of a small number of mega-corporations, and blames U.S. government regulators for allowing this to happen. "The loss of independent operators hurts both the media business and its citizen-customers," he argues. "When the ownership of these firms passes to people under pressure to show quick financial results in order to justify the purchase, the corporate emphasis instantly shifts from taking risks to taking profits. When that happens, quality suffers, localism suffers, and democracy itself suffers."2 Veteran CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour has been speaking out on this issue for several years. "The powers that be, the moneymen, have decided to eviscerate us," she said in a 2000 speech. "It actually costs a little bit of money to produce good journalism, to travel, to investigate, to put compelling viewing on screen, and to give people a reason to watch us. But God forbid money should be spent on our news operations pursuing quality."3 It would be unfair to say that money no longer gets spent in the pursuit of international news reporting. Money certainly does get spent. CNN and its competitors spent millions of dollars covering the Iraq war, knowing they would incur financial losses from a lack of advertising during the first weeks of the war. Why? Viewership ratings. CNN management hoped that by offering better and more comprehensive Iraq war coverage than Fox, it would regain its ratings lead. This did not happen. While all 24-hour news channels gained viewers, Fox gained more and stayed ahead. In the months after the war there was much internal discussion among CNN staff about the reasons for Fox's lead in wartime viewership. The conclusion of senior producers I spoke with was that Fox's clearly pro-American patriotic stance was what viewers wanted -- or at least the critical mass of cable TV news viewers who end up determining ratings numbers. As producers watched Fox's ratings rise during the first days of the war, there was tremendous pressure not to offend American viewers' sense of patriotism in order to keep ratings up. The people who run CNN International made serious and concerted efforts to provide more balanced, less flag-waving coverage of the Iraq war for international viewers. They worked hard to provide an international perspective through non-American anchors, reporters and analysts. But CNNI did not have full control over its content: the bulk of newsgathering budget money was prioritized for reports aimed at the CNN USA audience, and many major breaking news events were "simulcast" across all CNN networks. The most dramatic reporting came from "star" correspondents embedded on the front lines, and these reporters did not have time to do two versions of their stories -- one for Americans and one for international viewers. Furthermore, it had become very clear to correspondents by then that the key to their future career success was closely tied to the extent to which their reporting "played well" on CNN USA. Therefore it was the U.S. audience -- not the international one -- that most frontline reporters were primarily speaking to in their reports. After the fall of Baghdad, I know of one very specific case in which a CNN correspondent told me he had received "negative feedback" from management in Atlanta after he filed a report describing the postwar situation in Baghdad as "a mess." "I think the press self-muzzled," said CNN's own Christiane Amanpour on a TV talk show in September of that year. "I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."4 CNN International uses the same reporters as CNN USA. It does not have a separate stable of reporters. During the war, it aired what was available, with producers trying hard to contextualize reporting from the field with international analysts and background reports with a more global perspective. But this did not prevent international media critics from lumping CNNI together with other U.S. global networks in accusations of bias. In April 2003, the BBC's Director-General Greg Dyke criticized U.S. broadcasters for "cheerleading" during the Iraq war. "If Iraq proved anything, it was that the BBC cannot afford to mix patriotism and journalism," he said in a speech. "This is happening in the United States and if it continues, will undermine the credibility of the US electronic news media."5 The undermining of our credibility and objectivity had already begun in the months after the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001. It was a process I experienced firsthand while on assignment for CNN in Peshawar, Pakistan, in October and early November of 2001 during the U.S. assault on the Taliban. Because Peshawar is near the Afghan border, many Afghan refugees were coming across to escape the fighting. There were also casualties -- wounded and dead victims of U.S. bombing raids -- being brought into Pakistan from Afghanistan. These refugees and casualties had a major impact on the political situation in that part of Pakistan -- and did much to stir up anti-American sentiment which later led to the election of pro-Taliban politicians. It was made clear to me and my colleagues, however, that CNN had a limited appetite for reports on those political perspectives. In late October, CNN's then-Chairman Walter Isaacson wrote a memo to all international reporters in which he said it "seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan." The memo said that all reports about Afghan casualties must be qualified with information about "how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000 innocent people." The memo was quickly leaked to the international press and ran on the front page of many Pakistani newspapers, leading to increased suspicion about my team's motives among the local people in Peshawar -- many of whom already suspected that we were really part of the U.S. government's propaganda machine. Suspicion by locals about one's intentions and loyalties is nothing new. It is something a CNN correspondent learns to deal with on a regular basis and gets used to. Usually, however, people are not able to point to quotes from your boss printed in the local newspaper as evidence to support their argument. More seriously, Isaacson's memo made it much more difficult to fulfill what I believed to be the duty as a journalist: to report the factual realities of the situation in North-Western Pakistan, and try to explain as clearly and truthfully as I could what the implications of those realities were likely to be. My nationality, I have always believed, should be irrelevant. From the ground in Peshawar, the emotional and political impact of the Afghan casualties on the local population, and the pro-Taliban sentiment generated by these casualties in that part of Pakistan, was very real. I felt that it was important to convey this reality to viewers back in the United States. In retrospect, it does indeed appear that the strong sympathy toward the Taliban among people in Western Pakistan has contributed to the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden. At the time, I believed that this pro-Taliban sympathy whipped up by the existence of war victims was an important story that Americans -- and international viewers -- needed to understand. My reporting was not pro-Taliban or anti-American. I placed my stories in the context of the overall situation, as any decent journalist would. But at the same time it was necessary to report things that could make Americans feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, after Isaacson's memo came out, CNN USA show producers became much less inclined to run casualty-related stories of any kind, and assignment editors made it clear that I should focus my priorities on other subjects. At the time, Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism provided this analysis to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz: "It sounds as though they're worried about people being mad at them more than about providing the information that is useful."6 From where I stood, that is definitely how it looked: CNN management wanted to avoid offending American viewers who were still deeply traumatized and angry about the September 11th terrorist attacks, and that avoiding offense was more important than our duty to report all the facts. But when Rosenstiel spoke of concern for making "people mad," the only people who really seemed to count were Americans. I detected little concern by top management for whether the memo might offend international audiences. Despite the efforts by many truly exceptional and well-meaning journalists, producers, and executives at CNN International, the reality is that the CNN viewed by people around the world today is more American-centric and less objective than the CNNI of 10 years ago. At the same time, the global television landscape has changed dramatically. Western broadcasters are no longer the only global TV "show in town." During the 1991 Gulf War, CNN was the only source of news from Baghdad. During the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement in China, CNN had established itself as the only global news network through which people around the world could witness live coverage of major world events. Now, not only does CNN have other American competition as well as other English-language competition from the BBC; viewers around the world can also choose to watch the Islamic perspective on live 24-hour breaking news through Al-Jazeera and a few other nascent competitors. The emergence of a wider range of alternatives, coupled with CNN management's intensified focus on the U.S., will diminish CNN International's influence and reach -- if not profits -- over the long term. Just one example can be seen in South Africa: In January 2003 the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which had been airing CNNI broadcasts for several hours each day, contemplated switching to Al Jazeera.7 While SABC did not end up switching to Al Jazeera, its programming lineup now includes BBC World broadcasts, instead of CNNI. I do not believe, however, that CNN and its approach to reporting is any more or less flawed than most other commercially-run TV news operations. That is why the emergence of alternatives is important: not only alternative TV networks with perspectives from other countries, but also alternative sources of information through the print media and through the internet. No TV news company has the right to claim that it has a monopoly on "truth." Critical-thinking viewers who want to be truly informed should never expect to be able to get all their news from one TV channel or any one single source. It should be the job of the media to inform citizens of democracies. But citizens who want to remain free -- and who want their true interests to be properly represented -- must also take responsibility for their own information consumption. Any person who thinks that he or she can sit on the living room couch every night and be spoon-fed the truth is highly delusional. This is the case for viewers everywhere -- be they American, Middle Eastern, South African, or Japanese. Based on my interactions with Japanese commercial broadcasters, I know that they are under the same kind of budget pressures and competitive pressures to boost viewership ratings as American broadcasters are. As a result, international news reports focus on what producers believe will keep Japanese audiences watching -- which means that like in the U.S., many of the important but "boring" or complicated stories get passed over. Of course, public broadcaster NHK has a different mandate which includes extensive international news coverage. However I have been told by several reporters at NHK that they frequently encounter situations in which producers and assignment editors have been unwilling to contradict majority public opinion or sentiment in Japan. This has been particularly true on stories related to North Korea and to the Japanese citizens who were taken hostage in Iraq earlier this year. Japanese audiences also have access to international channels through cable services and satellite dishes. Both CNN and the BBC are easily available. Interestingly, however, the version of CNN distributed in Japan by its local distribution partner, JCTV, is a hybrid service called CNNj which runs CNN USA programming during prime time morning and evening hours. The CNNj service has been in effect since the spring of 2003 and is the result of market research by JCTV that showed that Japanese audiences prefer to see the American rather than the International version of CNN. Thus CNNj was created in order to boost subscriptions and advertising revenue. As a result, the CNN available to Japanese viewers during prime time hours gives them the American perspective on a lot of U.S. news and a small number of world events, while the more international perspective of CNNI is only available to viewers who watch at odd hours, in the middle of the afternoon or very late at night. Before we leap to moral judgments or condemnations, we must be realistic. In truth, it is unrealistic to expect commercially-driven TV news companies to do anything other than to seek profit maximization -- while at the same time selling a product that can still be defined as "news" in some way. The search for profit maximization means that these companies will shape their news to fit the tastes and values of the majority of their most lucrative potential audience. Citizens of democracies who want to be well informed must understand this. They cannot expect to be passive consumers of whatever news comes their way from a name-brand news source. They must question, contrast, and compare. They must demand better quality information. 1 "Cable TV: Economics," Project for Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media 2004, online at: http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/narrative_cabletv_economics.asp?cat=4&media=5 2 Ted Turner, "My Beef with Big Media," Washington Monthly, July/August 2004, online at: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html 3 Bonnie M. Anderson, News Flash: Journalism, Infotainment, and the Bottom-Line Business of Broadcast News, Josey-Bass, 2004, p. 158. 4 Peter Johnson, "Amanpour: CNN Practiced Self-Censorship," USA Today, Sept. 14, 2003, online at: http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2003-09-14-media-mix_x.htm 5 ABC News Online (Australia), "BBC Chief Attacks U.S. Media War Coverage," April 25, 2003, online at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200304/s839894.htm 6 Howard Kurtz, "CNN Chief Orders 'Balance' in War News," Washington Post, p. C01, online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A14435-2001Oct30&notFound=true 7 Dana Harma, Christian Science Monitor, "For news, S. Africa may shun the West," January 9, 2003, online at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0109/p01s04-woaf.html Profile Page Top Rebecca MacKinnon is currently a Research Fellow at the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, exploring how new forms of online interactive media might improve international news reporting. She worked for CNN in Asia for more than a decade: serving as CNN's Tokyo Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 2001-03 and before that as CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent.