A few years back, there was much talk about global journalism. Academic programs came to life, and they looked like one another: There were references to a new globalist mentality. There were references to the rise of new social media. There were, in short, a signal of some sort of change to come. And in that reflection, founding both academic papers and more professional accounts, was the idea that the concept of “global journalism” deserved attention as a particular kind of approach to doing journalism and learning about journalism.
Me, I am not so sure, and was not back then. The general thrust of journalism is not to present the complexities of global realities, in any case. On the contrary, journalism tends to explain things with local relevance, and with local force, including as local sources as one can possibly arrive at. Journalism, by its very definition, is local.
So, it seems as if the idea of a global journalism outreach or a medium paracticing global journalism, by definition would be a globally outreaching medium, like BBC, or the New York Times. All of which in a sort takes us back to the beginning, for there is nothing really new or profoundly earth shattering in their idea of how to do globally relevant news reporting.
Here is an article from 2009 picking up in these issues. Kai Hafez presented this at the 2009 International Communication Association conference. He says:
- Generally, what we refer to as “global journalism” is but the tip of an icebrg – a very small fragment of the total output of news journalism.
- This is even more true in TV than it is in print.
- News journalism tends to favor nation-framed news, like Galtung and Ruge pointed out already in 1965.
- Most of that news which is actually global in orientation, concerns politics. That leaves ecnomics, culture, sports and leisure out of the equation.
- A few zones of trans-nationality exist, but they are not many.
In sum, the evidence does not point to the existence of global journalism as a reality, according to this unpublished paper.
So, we may want to continue our quest for the meaning of the term “global journalism”.