This article focuses on BBC News in the United States, where recent developments suggest that a new, powerful 'multifaceted' BBC is emerging -one that integrates the many elements of this venerable yet still-dynamic modern institution. Thanks to its unique combination of historically derived institutional credibility, solid non-commercial funding base, and a newly acquired 'cool' cachet, the BBC brand in the United States can now be presented in multiple ways, using its many 'faces' to attract new audiences while retaining the loyalty of existing audiences, both in news and entertainment. This influence is not confined to the BBC -it can also be seen in other UK-originated news outlets. But it is the BBC that provides the anchor role that underpins the influence of these other institutions.The accumulated impact of the BBC in Britain and around the world -including America -over the past 80 years has been immense. The institution, and the social responsibility/public-service broadcasting model it embodies, has become intimately associated with the very idea of Britain. The BBC controls one of the biggest news organizations in the world, with 3700 news employees and 41 overseas bureaus -more than CNN, far more than even the biggest US newspapers and the networks (Robertson, 2004). Yet it also maintains its role as a prominent producer and sponsor of all types of entertainment programming.This article argues that the news function of the BBC, a traditional statesupported public-service broadcaster in Britain, operates differently in the US context. As the BBC has weakened its public diplomacy function within North America, and shifted its focus there from shortwave broadcasting to the internet and domestic cable television, its role has begun to resemble that of a domestic
This case study focuses on the use of visual elements - and the criticism over such use - in 1920s newspapers in New York, applying Jay David Bolter’s concept of ‘denial of ekphrasis’. The pioneering Jazz Age papers, acting as early ‘multimedia screens’, used photographic elements to communicate information in novel ways, contributing to the undermining of the analytical power of the written word. Elite criticism of these papers evinces nothing more than a class-based contempt for popular cultural forms, while examination of the contemporary New York Times shows that, by the mid-1920s, that paper was already paralleling many of the visual and content-based choices selected by its jazz journalism counterparts. Even so, this study finds that, in line with Bolter’s theories, the underlying traditions of the press were not fundamentally altered by technological developments and the spread of the visual form.
Within the context of a sharp rise in Americans' access to foreign news, especially since September 11, 2001, this article examines the limits of effectiveness of such foreign news influences in influencing the public debate on major policy issues within the United States. With the focus on a major U.K.-originated news story—the “Downing Street Memo” and subsequent leaked U.K. government documents—the article applies and expands the concepts of boundary maintenance and news repair beyond the domestic news realm and considers these as mechanisms by which the U.S. mainstream news media can still contain and limit the effectiveness of such stories in the U.S. public sphere. This study shows that although the rise of the Internet provides substantial new openings for important foreign-originated news stories in the United States, U.S. news media retain some ability to close down stories perceived as threats to their journalistic credibility.
This article examines the issues of media representation and cultural distinctiveness within Scotland, one of many national entities currently denied political and cultural expression at the sub-nation state level. Current output of Scotland's television and film industries is compared with traditional and modern Scottish literature to see which themes and subjects have been preserved, how representative these themes are of Scotland, and whether they remain distinct from dominant English and American trends. The author argues that Scottish media output remains culturally and nationally distinctive in terms of recurring patterns in the selection of various themes and discourses. However, in the absence of a modern Scottish polity that could give political and cultural expression to the country, these themes, discourses, and patterns of use remain inherently regressive and mythic, placing Scottish cultural identity squarely in Scotland's past rather than its present or its expectations of the future.
This article assesses the US conservative attack on the BBC during the post 9/11 terrorism wars, finding conservative blogs, print media and think tanks notably hostile. The processes of media criticism taking place within this conservative triad are viewed through the analytical concepts of news repair and boundary maintenance. The findings suggest that the BBC's perceived transgression was that it threatened to reveal the fallacy of an argument that conservatives had long worked to establish: that the US mainstream news media are liberal and harshly critical of conservatives. This conservative triad supported its attempt to repair this paradigm breach in three main ways: suggesting that reporting multiple viewpoints of the war was evidence of bias; magnifying any reporting errors; and warning against the perils of public ownership of news media.
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