Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION NEWS

2010; Routledge; Volume: 11; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1461670x.2010.503020

1469-9699

Christian Kolmer, Holli A. Semetko,

ICT Impact and Policies

Abstract In contrast to the United States, Germany has a strong public service broadcasting system that reaches all parts of the country and is mandated to deliver news from around the world each day. We discuss the key characteristics of the German public service broadcasting system and compare the quantity of foreign affairs news in evening news programs on the flagship public service (ARD and ZDF) and private channels (RTL and SAT.1) from 2001 to 2007. We find that while the amount of foreign affairs new ebbs and flows, it remains substantial and within the range of 40–50 percent of the programs on both the public service and the private channels. We then compare programs in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, United Kingdom, South Africa, United States and on transnational Arabic channels, for one year from April 2007 to April 2008, to assess what regions are covered and what predicts foreign news. Geographic proximity and national interest were shown to be important factors in explaining the regional focus of foreign news in these countries and outlets. Keywords: Arabic newsEuropegeographic proximityinternational newsnational interestpublic service broadcastingSouth AfricaUnited States Notes 1. The United States and Germany have equally high household rates of Internet subscription (24 percent) and in proportion of the population using the Internet (74 percent in the United States and 75 percent in Germany), based on ITU data accessed on 18 January 2010 (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportName=/WTI/InformationTechnologyPublic&RP_intYear=2008&RP_intLanguageID=1). The United States had 59 percent of homes using cable TV in 2006 and 25 percent using satellite. (http://www.connectmycable.com/resources/cable-vs-satellite.html, accessed 18 January 2010). 2. Literally: “Staatsferne”. 3. In German: “Landesmedienanstalten”. 4. The nine regional public corporations regulated by state law within the ARD umbrella are: Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), Hessischer Rundfunk (HR), Middeldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), Radio Bremen, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenberg (RBB), Saarländischer Saarlandischer Rundfunk (SR), Südwestrundfunk (SWR), and Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (WDR). 5. The German term is “Grundversorgung”. 6. Translation by Christian Kolmer. 7. Unless otherwise noted, the information in this summary section relies heavily on the ARD English 2009 annual report. See also Augustin and Weismuller, 2009. 8. Unless otherwise indicated, this summary information comes from http://www.zdf.com/index.php?id=181 (accessed 20 January 2010). 9. Translation by Christian Kolmer. 10. Translation by Christian Kolmer. 11. Translation by Christian Kolmer. 12. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria “considers itself as a forum of controversial thinking and critical examination, as a mediator between different controversial parties/lobbies and its work as contribution to the generating of public opinion and public will.” In the United States, Lutheran-born humorist and radio personality Garrison Keeler might say that in his home state of Minnesota, there is no such thing as an “Evangelical Lutheran;” with that in mind, readers should be cautioned to not assume the term evangelical has the same political meaning everywhere even though Bavaria is among the most religious of the German states. See the website http://www.ev-akademie-tutzing.de/en/ (accessed 22 May 2010). 13. We include here the main evening news programs in the early evening on these four channels in addition to the leading news magazine programs on ARD and ZDF each evening, Tagessthemen and heute journal. Our comparison of the proportions of foreign and domestic news on these programs showed no significant differences from the early evening news on ARD and ZDF. 14. Germany: ARD Tagessthemen, ZDF heute journal, RTL Aktuell, SAT.1 News, ARD Tagesschau, ZDF heute; France: TF1; United Kingdom: BBC 10 o'clock news, ITV News at Ten, BBC2 Newsnight; Italy: RAI Uno; Switzerland: SF DRS Tageschau; Spain: TVE1; US ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News; South Africa: SABC 3 News @ One, SABC 3 News@ Ten, SABC Afrikaans News, SABC 3 English News, E-TV news, SABC Zulu/Xhosa News, SABC Sotho News; TransArab Satellite: Al-Jazeera; Al-Arabyiha. 15. The Media Tenor Institute for Media Content Analysis is the world's leading provider of international media content analysis (print, TV, radio, online, blogs, newsgroups) on a continuous and wide-ranging basis. 16. Percentages are based on the number of stories. 17. See the case made by McChesney and Nichols (Citation2010) for introducing a strong public service broadcasting system in the United States 18. ZDF's news program heute airs at 19:00 daily followed later in the evening by the in-depth news magazine heute journal at 21:15 daily. ARD's main evening news program Tagesschau airs at 20:00 daily, followed later in the evening by the news magazine Tagessthemen at 22:15 each day. On both channels, the later evening news magazine programs are 30 minutes on weekdays and 15 minutes on weekends.