International media régime and news management: implications for African states

Abstract

This paper attempts to understand the political implications of the information revolution, which is giving rise to an international media regime. Despite the technological and political obstacles, the paper contends that an identifiable international regime around the issue‐area of media is emerging in the international system. The characteristics of this regime are most apparent during crisis situations and news or media ‘management’ has become an institutionalized feature of this régime. Therefore, this paper will use the framework of regime analysis to identify the elements of the international media regime and analyse its impact on Zimbabwe's media policy.

Notes

Meenal Shrivastava, Department of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Nathalie Hyde‐Clarke, Department of Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

The trend in the direction of standardization or harmonization of domestic policies in a wide range of issues—investment, competition, technology, government procurement, taxation, labour and environmental standards—is referred to as ‘deep integration’ and has far‐reaching implications for the weaker members in the international economy. In spite of the opposition by many developing countries, deep integration has remained high in priority within the trade regime.

For instance, the IMF now controls only 2 percent of the world's liquidity and is able to impose some monetary discipline on only a few developing countries. Further, its ability to prevent recurrent and highly damaging financial crises is seriously questioned. Similar problems affect the World Bank, whose management of African debt is vigorously criticised. The WTO is beset with an expanded mandate accompanied by the lack of a clear agenda and uncertainties over the capacity and institutional arrangements for the tackling of new issues.

For example, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resource (IUCN), which led to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which was central to the Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion.

A possibility that loomed large over the Kyoto Protocol on climate change when the USA decided not to ratify it.

John Duffield (1992), for example, showed how the rules of NATO led to stability in force structures. Lisa Martin (1992) found that the use of international institutions enhanced the level of multilateral co‐operation to impose economic sanctions. Ronald Mitchell (1994) demonstrated that regime rules had a definitive impact on intentional oil pollution by ships discharging their tanks at sea. As cited in Martin (Lisa, 1999, p. 85).

For instance, see Herman and Chomsky (1988). Their theory is that contrary to Bolshevik‐style political commissars, ‘free’ societies like the bourgeois democracies rely on less overt but more insidious forms of censure to keep unwanted ideas out of the popular consciousness. The end result of this filtering process is to reduce popular dialogue to a wafer‐thin ‘consensus,’ representing the attitudes of the power elite who run these democracies.

Hence, for instance, AOL Time‐Warner, the world's largest media corporation, now owns more than 20 percent of the share of the Internet market in the US (Bagdikian, 1997).

For instance, the media campaigns of Berlusconi in Italy or that of Tiny Rolands in Britain to discredit their competitors.

Even though the members of the United Nations were divided on how to deal with the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they all agreed that there was a need to address it. The debate centred not on the question of intervening in Iraq's domestic matters but how to do it: arms inspections or military confrontation.

A table compiled by the Guardian, London, on 23 January 1991, compared terms used to describe the coalition and the Iraqi forces during the Gulf War. The table indicates a clear bias to coalition forces referring to them as ‘knights of the skies’, ‘heroes’ and ‘protectors of democracy’. In contrast, the Iraqi's are presented as ‘cowardly’, ‘hordes of a tyrant’, etc. These labels are by no means confined to this conflict. In Iraq 2003, two clear labels emerged. Iraq was referred to as part of the ‘axis of evil’ and the countries that rallied against Hussein were the ‘coalition of the willing’.

The number of civilian casualties caused by strategic bombing in recent conflicts is very rarely discussed, and then most often referred to as ‘collateral damage’.

For a transcript of the Peter Arnett interview, see: www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD

In South Africa, crime and HIV/AIDS statistics have been held back from the media and hence the public. Both of these issues are problematic for the South African government due to policies that have not addressed these concerns adequately. Thus, the role of the media remains stifled.

The Davies Report into the future funding of the BBC forecast the emergence by 2010 of an ‘80/80 world’, in which 80 percent of the population in Britain will have access to digital media on the web, while 80 percent will continue to access terrestrial TV channels. Hence, in the foreseeable future the old and the new media will substantially operate side by side (cited in Stirton, undated).

Media is the digital media which is making news, education and entertainment increasingly interactive. The evolution and the expanding reach of the new media potentially have far reaching implications for citizen's debates and participation in public affairs.

Civic networking can be defined as the application of information infrastructure to the broad public good—particularly by putting information infrastructure to work within local communities to improve delivery of local government services, improve access to information that people need tin order to function as informed citizens, broaden citizen participation in governance, and stimulate economic and community development.