Assessing the potential of Channel NewsAsia as the next ‘Al Jazeera’: A comparative discourse analysis of Channel NewsAsia and the BBC

Abstract

In the last decade, Western news organizations such as CNN and the BBC have been increasingly upstaged by satellite news services from the global South. The Qatari news network, Al Jazeera, has emerged as a prime example of a global media contra-flow that has been able to give its region a voice in the international news arena. At a time when developments like the global economic crisis have called for greater checks and balances on Western governments and corporations, this paper takes a critical look at an increasingly prominent news player in the fast-growing developing region of East Asia, Channel NewsAsia, to ascertain if it is likely to rise up the ranks to the level of Al Jazeera. A critical discourse analysis comparing the coverage of Channel NewsAsia and the BBC’s most salient stories, however, shows that the Singapore-based station falls short in its claim to ‘provide Asian perspectives’ because it is constrained by political-economic factors to operate within an authoritarian developmental news model.

Exploring the Image of Indonesia in International News Media through a Comparative Analysis of Leading News Websites from the World

“…Al Jazeera's headquarter is in Qatar. This news media has emerged as a primary source of the regional voice in global media (Wu, 2013). This study coincides with the study results of studies conducted by other scholars as well.…”

“…There are two prime reasons for Al Jazeera's success, firstly it originated in a region with most media censorships and restrictions, and secondly because the audience of the region needed a channel to express their frustration and a network to stand up against the authoritarian and totalitarian Arab government. However, seeing the growing significance of Al Jazeera in Arab representation, academics are interested in studying the "Al Jazeera Effect" (Bahry, 2001;Wu, 2013;Lynch, 2006).…”

“…The news channel shows the latest information and advancement to provide a local worldview from Asia to an International audience (Natarajan, Xiaoming, 2003). CNA is publicized as the most important channel from Asia in the global arena along with the wider range of satellites in the Asian region (Wu, 2013).…”

Framing Analysis of China's Relationship About the South China Sea Dispute on Channel News Asia

“…Global Reach: While Channel NewsAsia primarily focuses on Asian news, it also provides extensive coverage of global events and issues. This international perspective allows viewers to stay informed on significant eventsbeyond their region and promotes a better understanding of the interconnectedness of the world (Wu, 2013).…”

Encounters with Western media theory: Asian perspectives

“…On the one hand, several media scholars have developed a handful of non-Western focused theoretical frameworks, including de-Westernizing media studies (Curran and Park, 2000), re-centering globalization (Iwabuchi, 2002), non-Western modernities (Shome, 2017), regionalization (Jin and Lee, 2012; Otmazgin, 2013), hybridization (Kraidy, 2005), post-colonialism (Ching, 2010; Erni and Chua, 2005), and the Global South (Ma, 2000). As the Global South emphasizes case studies of any individual countries in non-Western regions, some of them modify and challenge existing theories in explaining the emergence of non-Western media systems, like soft power with the ‘Korean Wave’ (Jin, 2016; Nye and Kim, 2013), ‘Bollywood movies’ (Athique, 2019), ‘contra-cultural flow’ with either Al Jazeera or Chinese media (Thussu, 2018; Wu, 2013), and ‘intra-cultural flow’ with the case of Hong Kong and Japan (Fung, 2007). These paradigms are not clearly exclusive as some of them like hybridization and post-colonialism overlap.…”