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DOI: 10.1177/1742766512444339
2012 8: 99 originally published online 5 June 2012 Global Media and Communication
Bella Mody
The marketization of foreign news

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Global Media and Communication
8(2) 99 115
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DOI: 10.1177/1742766512444339
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The marketization of foreign
news
Bella Mody
University of Colorado, USA
Abstract
Audience segmentation is generally associated with strategic communication (such as
advertising and public relations), where content is manipulated to suit reader preferences.
News has generally been considered truth-telling unvarnished by such concerns. This
article compares how news of the same humanitarian crisis was designed by 10 news
organizations in seven countries for different market segments. Comparisons showed
statistically significant differences in representation, influenced in part by what the
audience-market was. Like advertising, news seemed to share an attribute with the
strategic design of advertising and public relations. Increasingly carried online, news
will be vulnerable to click-based customization of content like advertising is, taking us
beyond currently observed geopolitical influences on segmentation to advertiser and
market-based differences.
Keywords
audience segmentation, foreign news, geopolitics, Internet, national interests, news
comprehensiveness, news organization ownership
The marketization of foreign news
A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests than people
dying in Africa. (Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive)
1
In the news business, the audience is everything. Some news outlets exploit an unmet
niche while others strive to manipulate the news in a way that will better interest
larger markets competition for audience ratings has become global. (Stephen
Gardner, 2004)
Corresponding author:
Bella Mody, Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Colorado, 1511 University Avenue,
UCB 478, Boulder CO 80309-0478, USA
Email: bella.mody@Colorado.EDU
444339GMC8210.1177/1742766512444339ModyGlobal Media and Communication
2012
Article
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100 Global Media and Communication 8(2)
Nobelist Amartya Sen emphasized the importance of a press free from state control (Sen,
2004). He wrote:
[T]he rulers of a country are often insulated in their own lives from the misery of common
people. They can live through a national calamity such as a famine or some other disaster,
without sharing the fate of the victims. If however, they have to face public criticism in the
media and to confront elections with an uncensored press, the rulers have to pay a price too, and
this gives them a strong incentive to take timely action to avert such crises.
Without detracting from Sens emphasis on freedom from state controls, this article draws
attention to the role of economic influences that shape the press. This is particularly rele-
vant in this era of shrinking budgets and technologically fragmented audiences character-
ized by increasing audience segmentation and branding of news. The marketization of
global communication has been the focus of attention since the New World Information
Order debates in UNESCO in Paris in the 1970s, culminating in its indictment by the
McBride Report (Thussu, 2005). This became worse when the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the International Telecommunication Union and the US-influenced Bretton
Woods institutions (the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank) urged
countries in the global South to remove regulations against private financing and owner-
ship of state enterprises, including media. Driven to bankruptcy by the oil price hike,
many states felt they were in a there is no alternative situation, often called TINA. They
changed their national policies, thus opening up new markets for entertainment and news
exporters. Rupert Murdochs News Corporation epitomizes the global expansion of media
corporations, delivering both news and entertainment to new markets, often by satellite.
While hyper-commercial pressures contributed to the phone-hacking scandal in the UK in
2011, freedom from advertising and Foreign and Commonwealth Office funding of the
World Service is an important cause of the BBCs standing as the queen of news organiza-
tions. Scandinavia and Germanys commercial mass circulation press are qualified by a
high level of state intervention.
Branding and market segmentation are central to the advertising and sales of goods
and services. Online news organizations can make strategic decisions on how they cus-
tom-design and tailor the same event for the different market segments they can now
reach via satellite and undersea cable. Thus, some news organizations, such as the Wall
Street Journal, have developed distinct domestic, regional and global editions. The
Paris-based International Herald Tribune (IHT) has become the New York Times online
global edition, with some different articles from the New York and national editions.
The Global.nytimes.coms IHT has a distinct Asia and Europe edition. Even though its
signal covers wide areas, CNN International has had to tailor its coverage to the distinct
preferences of its elite and hotel audiences in different regions of the world. The BBC
Radio World Service has some common global programs (e.g. Newshour) and many
regional broadcasts. Although it is technically possible for the same news article or pro-
gram to be received across the world instantaneously with three satellites, research indi-
cates that audiences prefer national TV (Straubhaar, 2007) and domesticated foreign
news (Goldfarb, 2001).
Even within the US, CNN is beginning to understand that it cannot be all things to all
people (Folkenflik, 2011). Retired journalists recognize that we are no longer a national
by Silvina Tatavitto on October 18, 2012 gmc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Mody 101
audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers, were now a million or
more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers
(Koppel, 2010). Market segmentation, introduced by EW Scripps in the 19th and early
20th centuries, is being taken to an extreme: Scripps business strategy was to seek new
working-class readers, rather than compete with the established Pulitzer and Hearst
papers (Baldasty, 1999). Since the US-led subprime mortgage debacle, the decline in
advertising that finances news has contributed to more fine-tuned market research to
identify potential readers and buyers.
Market segmentation on several dimensions (e.g. demographics, psychographics)
helps deliver audience-specific messages to consumers and electorates. Diverse national
codes of ethics among journalists generally agree on providing a fair and comprehen-
sive account of events and issues (Society of Professional Journalists, 1996). How might
audience segmentation of news affect the foreign news genre? Will comprehensiveness
of treatment of each news item vary, based on general relevance to the geographic
regional audience, by the current national interest of the state in which the news organi-
zation is based, by the historical geopolitical solidarity between the two countries? How
will the specifics of the news item influence its treatment for a region, for example who
is the villain/victim, what is the nature of the villainy? Would a news organization be
more concerned about giving offense to domestic rulers in its national edition than in its
foreign edition, which is less accessible to readers within its home country?
Data collected as part of a larger book (Mody, 2010) on the geopolitical influences
that shaped the coverage of the first genocide in the 21st century in Darfur, Sudan, enable
answers to a few questions about differences in coverage for national audiences as
against foreign audiences (on this issue) and help raise many more questions for further
research. The framework of influences on the Darfur coverage included macro-level
influences that operate at Shoemaker and Reeses (1996) national ideological level, at the
extra-media level and at the meso level of the media firm (see Figure 1). At the national
ideological level, influences included both the news organizations home states current
interest in the crisis under study (namely Darfur) and the news organizations home
states historical solidarity with particular geopolitical groups (e.g. the rich countries of
National ideological
influences
Perceived geopolitical
historical standpoint of
state
Perceived current
national interest
Media organizational
influence
State or private
ownership
Foreign
news
Extra-media
political-
linguistic
composition
of audience
Foreign,
national or
local
Figure 1. Geopolitical model of influences specially relevant to foreign news
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102 Global Media and Communication 8(2)
Table 1. Characteristics of sampled news media
State National interest
in Sudan
Name and ownership of
news medium
Readership (political-linguistic)
segment
China High Peoples Daily, state Chinese-speaking majority
China High China Daily, state English-speaking international
community & domestic elites
Egypt High Al-Ahram (The Pyramids),
state
Arabic-speaking majority
Qatar Medium English.AlJazeera.net, royal
familys private equity
English-speaking international
community & domestic elites
South Africa Low Mail & Guardian Online,
private equity
English-speaking middle class
France Low Le Monde, publicly traded,
limited employee shares
French-speaking left-liberal
middle class
US Low Washington Post, publicly
traded, family controlling
interests
English readers, liberal middle
class
US Low New York Times, publicly
traded, family controlling
English readers, liberal middle
class
UK Low The Guardian, family trust English readers
UK Low BBC.co.uk, state English readers across the
world
the industrialized North or the countries of the Global South newly independent from
European colonizers). At the level of the media organization, state ownership was com-
pared with private ownership. The influence of the market or audience was considered
an extra-media meso-level force: this is the focus of this article.
The article is organized into four parts. Part I is conceptual. Part II focuses on the
research question, design, sampling, coding categories and the construction of an index
that categorizes content in terms of its timeliness and comprehensiveness. Part III dis-
cusses the findings and implications. Part IV addresses implications and limitations.
I Representational differences in news for different
market segments: A foreign versus national domestic
illustration
Advertising campaigns, corporate public relations and cultural constructions by
Hollywood and Bollywood are designed for markets with particular characteristics.
Despite the increasing technological and commercial interconnectedness across coun-
tries, editors and audience studies seem to find that it is local manifestations of the for-
eign that are of interest, not the distant event per se, and especially not when it is complex.
It would appear that editors who staff the gates on what is news suspect their audiences
use international and national news to understand their immediate workaday environ-
ments, rather than for international education and civic engagement. Researchers have
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Mody 103
shown how news organizations actually domesticate extra-national events in terms that
will make sense for their markets (Rantanen, 2004). Regional and city-based editions of
news brands are proliferating in growth markets such as India, where the largest English-
language newspaper has more than 15 print editions. News organizations select and
emphasize events differently, based on their perceptions of their audience its politics,
language preferences and economic class backgrounds. While some topics may have
blanket legal or informally-enforced prohibitions, professional experience and audience
research will indicate what the nuances are and how to communicate to particular lin-
guistic-political constituencies (e.g. mass circulation national-language speakers as
against elite and foreign-market English-speakers).
Organizational wisdom on appropriate topics of discussion can be audience-specific,
sometimes formally so and sometimes based on informal prudence. The Al Jazeera news
organization was initiated by a member of the royal family in Qatar to explain the Middle
East to the rest of the world, but, for obvious reasons, it rarely puts its spotlight on
domestic Qatari problems. Its Arabic channels for the region and its English channel for
the rest of the world do not treat topics identically. Another illustration is the Voice of
America (VOA), the official external radio and television broadcasting service of the
United States federal government, which broadcasts in 4050 languages. Under Section
501 of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, Voice of America is forbidden from broadcasting
directly to American citizens. The intent of the legislation is to protect the American
public from propaganda actions by its own government. Distinct from domestic media
practices, newspersons are sometimes paid to appear on VOAs foreign broadcasts. The
party press in China may not discuss some proscribed items in its Chinese-language
national mass-circulation papers that it does in its English-language papers intended for
a small Chinese elite and the foreign diplomatic and business community. Similarly, the
state-run Al-Ahram news organization in Egypt may be expected to discuss the same
Israeli event differently in its English-language papers designed for foreign readers and
a small domestic elite, as against its mass-circulation Arabic-language papers.
II Research design: Question, sampling, coding, index
development
What is the influence of differences in audience interests on the content and form of news
about the same event? This comparison of news constructed for foreign as against
domestic audiences is part of a study that used an inductive design to develop general
insights and hypotheses about the genre of foreign news, identify specific influences on
its comprehensiveness, and investigate its potential as a source of cross-national interna-
tional education. The focus was the specific case of news about the 20032005 rebellion
in Darfur, Sudan, and the Khartoum regimes genocidal tactics in repressing it.
The contextual analysis focused on the political economy of news organization own-
ership, audience-press relations, locational national interest and historical solidarity with
the country/event. Comparative analysis of manifest content that is a staple of journalism
research was combined with this contextual analysis to understand the construction of
news grounded in specific time-and-place conditions, rather than in a social and political
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104 Global Media and Communication 8(2)
vacuum. Ten news organizations and states were purposively selected for content analy-
sis from those that covered Darfur and varied on the four predictor variables. They
included organizations in Asia (China, Qatar), Africa (South Africa, Egypt), Europe
(France, the UK) and the US.
Sample
The content under analysis focused on the struggle of Western Sudan for equitable treat-
ment by its national government in Khartoum over the first 26 months of the uprising
during 20032005. All articles that mentioned the word, Darfur, in Chinas Peoples
Daily and China Daily, Egypts Al-Ahram daily, Qatars English.AlJazeera.net, South
Africas Mail & Guardian Online, Frances Le Monde, the UKs BBC.co.uk and
Guardian, and the USs Washington Post and New York Times were first identified. Of
these 3019 articles, those that had more than 50 percent of paragraphs dedicated to
Darfur were then short-listed for content analysis. The sample consisted of 1198
articles.
Coding categories
Variables were coded at the level of the individual article. Each article was analyzed for
its focal frame(s), defined as the dominant focus of the majority of the articles content.
The frames included causes (i.e. historical and present-day causes of the Darfur crisis),
conduct (i.e. the nature, status, process and conduct of the crisis) and remedies (i.e. pro-
posed remedies to the crisis, including peace talks and negotiations to end the crisis,
proposed changes, and aid from governments and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), international courts or African courts). In addition, the headlines and text of the
articles were analyzed for the presence of three keywords: ethnic cleansing, genocide,
and oil/petroleum.
Articles that discussed causes were coded for the specific reason(s) that they cited for
causing the crisis, as well as the parties that they identified as responsible for causing the
crisis. The reasons for the crisis consisted of ethnic/racial tensions, religious differences,
access to oil fields, government inequity in terms of distribution of resources to the
Darfur region, outside factors (i.e. interference in Sudans affairs by other nations), scar-
city of environmental resources, other causes, and no cause identified. If articles con-
tained multiple reasons, the first two reasons that were mentioned were coded. Coding
categories for groups that caused the crisis included the Janjaweed militia, the Khartoum
government, the rebels, a combination of the Khartoum government and its militia, a
combination of all three domestic groups (i.e. the Khartoum government, the militia and
the rebels), other groups, and no group identified.
Groups that the news media named as responsible for ending the crisis also were
coded. These groups included the Khartoum government, its militia, the rebels, the com-
bination of the Khartoum government and the militia, the combination of all three
domestic groups (i.e. the Khartoum government, the militia and the rebels), Sudans
neighbors (i.e. the African Union (AU), Arab League groups or individual neighboring
nations), the United Nations (UN) and its specialized agencies, the International Criminal
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Mody 105
Court (ICC), foreign countries (i.e. countries or governmental organizations such as the
US, the UK and the European Union (EU)), a combination of the UN and foreign coun-
tries, a combination of the UN and domestic, neighboring and foreign groups, and no
group identified.
Articles were also coded for the presence of direct quotes from the following sources:
the Khartoum government, the militia, the rebels, Darfuris, other Sudanese leaders (i.e.
former leaders not connected to the current government), Arabs outside Sudan, non-Arab
Africans outside Sudan, NGOs, human rights monitors, the UN, the US, the UK, the AU,
the EU, other foreign leaders (i.e. leaders of nations such as France and Japan), and the
media.
Coders rated the emotional intensity of the articles as high, medium or low. High
emotional intensity articles devoted at least half of their coverage to describing the
conditions on the ground in Sudan; included descriptions of atrocities committed
against civilians; had more than three uses of terms that indicated the atrocities such
as genocide, ethnic cleansing, humanitarian crisis, growing disaster and rape;
included photos of victims or refugees; quoted sources who assisted with the humani-
tarian needs of the refugees; and/or included quotes from refugees describing the
events they had witnessed. Medium emotional intensity articles provided some
description of the events and atrocities; used terms such as genocide, ethnic cleans-
ing, humanitarian crisis and rape between one and three times; devoted less than
half of their coverage to describing the situation on the ground; included quotes that
questioned the veracity of reports, even if there were high intensity descriptions from
survivors; and/or referred to government policies rather than graphic details of local
conditions. Also, if photos were included, they depicted leaders or non-dramatic
events. Low emotional intensity articles recited numbers with no descriptive context;
reported on policies; discussed negotiations or peace talks with no description of con-
ditions on the ground in Sudan; characterized Darfur as an internal dispute or a
regional conflict that the Khartoum government was moving to control; covered offi-
cials as they toured areas as opposed to the conflict itself; covered a press event that
discussed what was occurring or denied that the situation was as bad as media reports
indicated; and/or described the situation with terms such as conflict, rebellion or
uprising, as opposed to using terms such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, humani-
tarian crisis or rape. Finally, the articles were coded for their publication date, word
count (including headlines, bylines, datelines and captions), presence of author byline,
presence of news agency credit (i.e. Associated Press, Asian Press Service, Guardian,
Kyodo News Agency, New York Times Press Service, Reuters, South African Press
Agency, Washington Post, Inter Press Service, Xinhua, China Daily, Irin, AFP, multi-
ple agencies, and other agencies) and article type (i.e. hard news, news brief, press
event, news features and background, and opinion column). Letters to the editor were
not included in the study.
Content was coded by student native speakers of Arabic, French, English and
Chinese. After receiving training on the coding scheme, the same 10 percent of
selected articles per news medium were coded by a pair of coders to establish reliabil-
ity. Scotts pi (used to measure reliability) ranged from .71 to .94 for all coded
variables.
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106 Global Media and Communication 8(2)
Timeliness and comprehensiveness index
Rather than merely compare space dedicated to a topic or look for variations in objectivity,
the representations of Darfur by the 10 news organizations were ranked on 13 indicators
to form a timeliness and comprehensiveness index: total articles with mention of Darfur;
the monthly average of articles with substantial coverage of Darfur; the date of the first
article with more than 50 percent of paragraphs (substantial coverage) on Darfur; the
percentage of articles longer than 500 words; the percentage of news features and
background articles; the percentage of articles that went beyond who, what, where and
when to address causes (why) and remedies (so what); the percentage of articles that
provided details such as the names of the groups that had caused the crisis and the names
of the groups held responsible for remedies; and the percentage of quotes from non-
traditional sources (i.e. Darfuris on the ground, human rights monitors, NGOs, rebels and
the AU). Comparative ranks were assigned on each of the dimensions. Standard
competitive ranking (10997) was followed, where tied ranks were followed by a skipped
rank. The rank score on all 13 indicators was summed up to produce an index score.
Consistent with Careys (1986) point that a news organization should be judged on its
total output or curriculum, the score on the comprehensiveness index is an organizational-
level variable and not per article. Since there are only 10 scores weighted by the number
of articles, there is less error. Double value (Gurevitch and Blumler, 2004) was obtained
by studying the object of study (news content) and its associated political-economic
contextual linkages.
III Findings
This section presents a fine-grained comparison between the quantity and quality of
coverage intended for foreign audiences and domestic audiences. Nationally focused
news editions included the state-run Al-Ahram Arabic daily, Chinas Chinese-language
Peoples Daily, the UKs Guardian, the French-language Le Monde daily, and the
English-language Washington Post and New York Times from the US. News that focused
on foreign audience segments included BBC.co.uk, English.AlJazeera.net, South Africas
Mail & Guardian Online, and Chinas English-language China Daily.
Figure 2 shows the total number of articles, breaking out those with more than 50
percent of paragraphs on Darfur. The differences were large, ranging from 726 in
Al-Ahram in neighboring Egypt to a low of 45 in the Chinese-language Peoples
Daily.
News designed for each of the two audience segments (national and foreign) was
compared on the nature of coverage dimensions, which included the percentage of news
articles versus opinion columns, the focus of framing (causes of the crisis, unfolding
conditions and remedies), specific causes indicated, use of keywords (e.g. oil, genocide,
race), identification of who was responsible, use of quotes and emotional intensity. The
scores for articles published by the Mail & Guardian Online, China Daily, BBC.co.uk
and English.AlJazeera.net were compared with the scores for the domestically-focused
New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, Guardian, Peoples Daily and Al-Ahram
on 24 dimensions. Table 2 shows that the differences between the characteristics of news
by Silvina Tatavitto on October 18, 2012 gmc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Mody 107
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
550
600
650
700
750
800
850
900
950
1000
1050
1100
1150
1200
1250
1300
1350
1400
1450
1500
1550
Articles with mention of Darfur,
but less than 50% paragraphs on
Darfur
Articles with more than 50%
paragraphs on Darfur
Figure 2. Total articles with mention of Darfur, January 2003February 2005
Table 2. Differences in news media coverage of Darfur by audience type
Nature of news coverage Domestic
audience
Foreign
audience
Significance of
difference
Total articles with mention of Darfur 2259 837 N/A
Total articles with more than 50%
paragraphs on Darfur
800 398 N/A
Percentage of news articles 82.00 97.49
2
(1, N = 1198) =
56.91, p < .001
Percentage of opinion columns 18.00 2.51
2
(1, N = 1198) =
56.91, p < .001
Percentage of articles with agency credits 35.38 36.93
2
(1, N = 1198) =
0.28, ns
(Continued)
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108 Global Media and Communication 8(2)
Nature of news coverage Domestic
audience
Foreign
audience
Significance of
difference
Focal frame combinations: percentage of
news articles on conduct of crisis
63.53 71.21
2
(1, N = 1198) =
6.87, p < .01
Focal frame combinations: percentage of
news articles on remedies to the conflict
56.02 63.50
2
(1, N = 1198) =
6.03, p < .05
Focal frame combinations: percentage of
news articles on causes of the conflict
14.16 19.02
2
(1, N = 1198) =
4.66, p < .05
Regional inequity as cause of crisis* 10.63 15.58
2
(1, N = 1198) =
6.06, p < .05
Environmental change as cause of crisis* 4.00 6.53
2
(1, N = 1198) =
3.70, ns
Ethnic or racial differences as cause of
crisis*
6.63 28.39
2
(1, N = 1198) =
105.50, p < .001
Keyword use in text: ethnicity-race 12.88 22.61
2
(1, N = 1198) =
18.65, p < .001
Keyword use in text: genocide 30.25 28.64
2
(1, N = 1198) =
0.33, ns
Keyword use in text: oil 10.13 15.08
2
(1, N = 1198) =
6.27, p < .05
News articles that named groups who
caused the crisis
47.88 78.64
2
(1, N = 1198) =
103.40, p < .001
News articles that named groups
responsible for ending the crisis
50.38 71.36
2
(1, N = 1198) =
47.83, p < .001
Mean quotes per article 0.91 1.58 t(1194) = 9.49,
p < .001
Percentage of quotes from Khartoum
government sources
16.00 34.92
2
(1, N = 1198)=
54.96, p < .001
Percentage of quotes from human rights
monitors
6.51 6.28
2
(1, N = 1198) =
0.02, ns
Percentage of quotes from NGOs 5.75 14.32
2
(1, N = 1198) =
24.85, p < .001
Percentage of quotes from AU 3.13 9.57
2
(1, N = 1198) =
22.12, p < .001
Percentage of quotes from Darfuris 8.25 8.04
2
(1, N = 1198) =
0.02, ns
Percentage of quotes from rebels 5.00 15.08
2
(1, N = 1198)=
35.27, p < .001
Percentage of news articles of low
emotional intensity
66.88 39.95
2
(1, N = 1198) =
79.06, p < .001
Percentage of medium-intensity news
articles
19.50 34.17
2
(1, N = 1198) =
31.03, p < .001
Percentage of high-intensity news articles 13.63 25.88
2
(1, N = 1198) =
27.40, p < .001
Note: *Based on the first cause that was listed.
Table 2. (Continued)
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Mody 109
for foreign and domestic audiences were significant on 19 of the 24 variables. The group
of news organizations that focused on foreign audiences achieved significantly higher
scores on the percentage of news articles (over opinion), the percentage of articles that
focused on the conduct of the crisis, the percentage that focused on remedies and the
percentage that focused on causes.
Regional inequity and ethnic reasons were listed as causes of the conflict significantly
more often. Oil was used as a keyword more often in news designed for foreign audi-
ences than local audiences as were also the names of the groups responsible for ending
the crisis. The percentage of quotes from some sources was higher for this group, namely
the Khartoum government as a source, NGOs, the AU and the rebels. Emotional intensity
was significantly higher for news organizations in this audience segment.
Table 3 focuses on the performance of each news organizations coverage on the time-
liness and comprehensiveness index that ranked values on 13 indicators. Comparative
ranks were assigned on each of the following dimensions: total articles with mention of
Darfur; the monthly average of articles with substantial coverage of Darfur; the date of
the first article with substantial Darfur content; the percentage of articles longer than 500
words; the percentage of news features and background articles; the percentage of arti-
cles that went beyond who, what, where and when to address causes (why) and remedies
(how to remedy the problem); the percentage of articles that provided details such as the
names of the groups who had caused the crisis and the names of the groups held respon-
sible for remedies; and the percentage of quotes from non-traditional sources (i.e.
Darfuris on the ground, human rights monitors and NGOs, rebels and the AU). Standard
competitive ranking (10997) was followed, where tied ranks were followed by a skipped
rank. The rank scores on all 13 indicators were summed up to produce an index score. No
news organization received more than a 70 percent score on the comprehensiveness
index, indicating room for improvement. Only half of the news organizations achieved
passing grades of 60 percent or higher. The BBC took first place with a score of 86 (67%
of the total possible score of 130). It is clear that the UK license fee and Foreign Office
allocations to the BBC World Service provide knowledge of consequence to global pub-
lic education. The Washington Post came in second with a score of 85 (66%), while the
Mail & Guardian Online took third place with a score of 84 (65%). The New York Times
was in fourth place (80, 62%) and Le Monde, in fifth place (78, 60%). Mid-range per-
formers on comprehensiveness were English.AlJazeera.net in sixth place (73, 57%), the
Guardian in seventh place (70, 54%) and China Daily in eighth place (60, 47%).
Al-Ahram was in ninth place (56, 44%) and the Peoples Daily in 10th place (48, 37%).
The lowest three performers were news organizations owned by the state in countries
with high current national interests in Sudan and historical geopolitical affinity with the
former colony in the global South.
Table 4 shows that the two sets of news organizations (national-audience focused
and foreign-audience focused) were significantly different on the comprehensiveness
and timeliness coverage index scores, too. News organizations that constructed news on
Darfur that was intended for foreign audiences scored higher on comprehensive cover-
age (80%) on average than news organizations that were concerned about potentially
offending political guidelines on domestic political communication (63%). The
Communist Party-owned China Daily, produced for the English-speaking international
by Silvina Tatavitto on October 18, 2012 gmc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
110 Global Media and Communication 8(2)
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112 Global Media and Communication 8(2)
and diplomatic community, strategically provided much more comprehensive coverage
than the Chinese-language daily designed for domestic consumption. This is because
English-language readers of the China Daily can also read the New York Times and the
Washington Post. The majority of Chinese-language readers of the Peoples Daily do
not have alternative sources of information. Some Chinese work in Sudan, and a few
have even been kidnapped by the rebels. What the Chinese public knows about Darfur
and its governments complicity with the ruling regime in Khartoum could influence
their willingness to work overseas. News organizations seem to have made strategic
decisions in the light of their readerships lack of a political constituency, as if it were
easier to speak the truth to a public with no power. The news message is different for
distinct audiences, although for reasons that are different from advertising design.
Ulrich Becks hope that transnational media might promote cosmopolitanism is worth
investigating.
The relative impact of each of these predictors ownership, geopolitical location,
national interest in Sudan, and global audience on comprehensiveness index scores was
assessed through multiple regression analysis. Table 5 shows that each of these predic-
tors made a statistically significant contribution to higher comprehensiveness index
scores. National interest in Sudan was the strongest predictor, followed by intended audi-
ence, under study here. Historical geopolitical vantage point in the Global North or South
was third, speaking to the possible declining influence of historical geopolitical solidar-
ity. Ownership type had the least influence on comprehensiveness of coverage. Overall,
the four predictors accounted for a large percentage of the variance: 95 percent. News
organizations appeared to design news on Darfur strategically in the light of these four
Table 4. Rankings on comprehensive coverage index by national versus foreign audience
News organization Comprehensive coverage index score % Ranking*
National audience
New York Times 83 63.85
Washington Post 87 66.92
Le Monde 74 56.92
Guardian 72 55.38
Peoples Daily 46 35.38
Al-Ahram 47 36.15
Mean comprehensive coverage
index score = 63.47**

Foreign audience
Mail & Guardian Online 85 65.38
China Daily 62 47.69
BBC.co.uk 87 66.92
English.AlJazeera.Net 77 59.23
Mean comprehensive coverage
index score = 80.36**

Notes: *Percentage of total possible score (130); **means are significantly different, t(1196) = 18.10, p < .001.
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Mody 113
influences. Whether the audience was foreign or domestic explained a large part of the
variation in comprehensiveness.
IV Discussion
This study found that each news organization made strategic, systematic, predictable and
significantly different news construction decisions on the genocidal put-down of a
regional rebellion by the national government in Sudan, bearing in mind who its intended
audience was (in addition to national interest, geopolitical solidarity and ownership
influences). On average, coverage by news organizations edited for foreign audiences
(BBC.co.uk, Mail and Guardian Online, English.AlJazeera.net and China Daily) was
more comprehensive and timely than news designed for domestic audiences. Could rep-
resentations of news on human abuse be a curriculum then for cross-national public
education and inoculation against, say, genocide? Would it be easier for foreign coverage
to consistently report on pressing problems to enable resolution, also pinpointing who
was responsible, as per Iyengars advice (1991)? Would problem-prevention journalism,
as advocated by Power (2004), be easier to conduct in foreign editions with low domestic
readership, thus avoiding national retribution? This is a question for future research.
Was the cause of the observed difference between news intended for foreign and
domestic audiences confounded with the technological platforms in this study, since
three of the four foreign audience-targeting organizations were online and none of the
others were? This is possible. Findings from studies of differences between online and
print versions of the same event are slowly becoming available, e.g. audiences do not
read long articles online (Kinsley, 2010), but these are transitional times. As print news
firms with their own traditions move online, they could bring their organizational and
cultural conventions with them, maintaining their current brand images despite techno-
logical influences. Given the global expansion of financing by advertising despite state
ownership and control, it is timely to ask how vulnerable many news brands are to the
audience commodification of Google. To maximize users, Internet companies such as
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! use invisible algorithmic personalization filters devel-
oped by harvesting mouse clicks. The success of the online Financial Times (FT) of the
UK in harvesting reader clicks was a major factor in an almost 25 percent increase in
digital sales in 2010 (Pfanner, 2011). The FTs ability to give advertisers more informa-
tion about customers led to a doubling of its advertising revenues. Eli Pariser (2011)
Table 5. Predictors of scores on timeliness and comprehensiveness index
Adjusted R square Predictors Beta*
Comprehensiveness
index score
0.95 Low national interest in Sudan
Global audience
0.53
0.40
Geopolitical location in the Global North 0.21
Private ownership 0.19
Note: *All Betas are significant at the p < .001 level.
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114 Global Media and Communication 8(2)
mourned the loss of his illusions about the democratizing potential of Internet news as he
slowly understood that the new gatekeepers who had replaced the newsroom editors
were engineers who wrote programming code. News organizations such as the
Washington Post and the New York Times use these filters to personalize and custom-
design the news to fit in with viewer search histories. Thus, the serendipitous exposure
to multiple viewpoints and diverse issues that was possible with the printed newspaper is
ruled out. Individual Internet users have interests of commercial consequence for news-
paper brands, like the national interests of states. While many computer users personal-
ize the news they get from different sites, will personalization of news by news
organizations result in individualized My News versions of the FT? Are we at a juncture
where we need to weigh the public-sphere-creation goals of journalism against this
intensified commodification of audiences by news suppliers or should we be changing
our rhetoric about the role of journalism in these new times?
This study was intended to generate conceptually sound hypotheses for subsequent
testing. It has focused attention on the relative influence of four shapers of the foreign
news genre. The influence of the intended audience has not been documented before.
Future research might investigate how robust these influences are on a variety of foreign
news topics, such as the coverage of the events in Libya in 2011. The complexities in
studying audience segmentation were listed earlier. An additional area is the relative
influence of different motivations for audience segmentation (political, as in the case of
the China Daily-Peoples Daily, as against the FTs Internet-enabled market expansion)
on the precise nature of news differentiation, for example topical foci, sources, attribu-
tion. What are the political and economic conditions under which foreign-targeted news
on international topics will be more comprehensive as observed here? Under what geo-
political location, historical solidarity, ownership and audience conditions will online
foreign-targeted news be likely to carry Becks (2006) cosmopolitan vision? Other than
the observed differences found between foreign and domestic constituencies in Chinese
state media coverage of the Darfur crisis, what are the differences between the different
versions of news produced by privately owned organizations, such as the New York Times
and Washington Post? What are the results of the other bases of audience segmentation
(e.g. large metropolitan areas as against small-town markets) in domestic news for com-
prehensiveness of coverage? Or other measures of news quality? Which professional
norms will emerge as objectivity as a strategic ritual gives way to audience segmentation
for news customized by gender, class, ethnicity, income, profession, education and
national market?
Note
1. Quoted in Pariser (2011).
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Biography
Bella Mody teaches in the Journalism and Mass Communication program at the University of
Colorado in Boulder. She specializes in international applications of communication technologies,
the political economy of media in developing countries, and design research on public service
applications of media. Modys authored/edited books include The Geopolitics of Representation in
Foreign News: Explaining Darfur, International and Development Communication: A 21st Century
Perspective, The Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication, Telecommunication
Politics, and Designing Messages for Development Communication.
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