This
study by Swiss Propaganda Research was first published in 2016, it is
presented by
off-guardian.org
in English for the first time. Translated by Terje Maloy.
It
is one of the most important aspects of our media system – and yet
hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage
in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based
in New York, London and Paris.
The
key role played by these agencies means that Western media often
report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition,
governments, military and intelligence services use these global news
agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.
A
study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers
clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in
whole or in part on agency reports, yet
0% on investigative research.
Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of
the US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed
exclusively to the opposite side.
Part
3 - Small abbreviation, great effect
However,
there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their
importance, are virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a
Swiss media professor:
“Radio
and television usually do not name their sources, and only
specialists can decipher references in magazines.”
The
motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets
are not particularly keen to let readers know that they haven’t
researched most of their contributions themselves.
The
following figure shows some examples of source tagging in popular
German-language newspapers. Next to the agency abbreviations we find
the initials of editors who have edited the respective agency report.
Occasionally,
newspapers use agency material but do not label it at all. A study in
2011 from the Swiss Research Institute for the Public Sphere and
Society at the University of Zurich came to the following conclusions
(FOEG 2011):
“Agency
contributions are exploited integrally without labeling them, or they
are partially rewritten to make them appear as an editorial
contribution. In addition, there is a practice of ’spicing up‘
agency reports with little effort: for example, unpublished agency
reports are enriched with images and graphics and presented as
comprehensive articles.”
The
agencies play a prominent role not only in the press, but also in
private and public broadcasting. This is confirmed by Volker
Braeutigam, who worked for the German state broadcaster ARD for ten
years and views the dominance of these agencies critically:
“One
fundamental problem is that the newsroom at ARD sources its
information mainly from three sources: the news agencies DPA/AP,
Reuters and AFP: one German/American, one British and one French….The
editor working on a news topic only needs to select a few text
passages on the screen that he considers essential, rearrange them
and glue them together with a few flourishes.”
Swiss
Radio and Television (SRF), too, largely bases itself on reports from
these agencies. Asked by viewers why a peace march in Ukraine was not
reported, the editors said: “To date, we have not received a
single report of this march from the independent agencies Reuters, AP
and AFP.”
In fact,
not only the text, but also the images, sound and video recordings
that we encounter in our media every day, are mostly from the very
same agencies. What the uninitiated audience might think of as
contributions from their local newspaper or TV station, are actually
copied reports from New York, London and Paris.
Some
media have even gone a step further and have, for lack of resources,
outsourced their entire foreign editorial office to an agency.
Moreover, it is well known that many news portals on the internet
mostly publish agency reports (see e.g., Paterson 2007, Johnston
2011, MacGregor 2013).
In
the end, this dependency on the global agencies creates a striking
similarity in international reporting: from Vienna to Washington, our
media often report the same topics, using many of the same phrases –
a phenomenon that would otherwise rather be associated with
»controlled media« in authoritarian states.
The
following graphic shows some examples from German and international
publications. As you can see, despite the claimed objectivity, a
slight (geo-)political bias sometimes creeps in.
Further
info, references, sources:
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