Glasnost
in the political roots of the conflict in which
‘Israel is closely allied to the United States and
there are very strong pro-Israeli lobbies in the
US and to some extent in Britain’.
Bad News from Israel (Pluto Press) by Philo
and Mike Berry was issued in 2004 to be
followed, on the same theme and with the
same dire message about how ‘Israel continues
to spin images of war’, by More Bad News from
Israel (Pluto) in 2011. See topic guide under
research methods.
Glasnost Openness; Russian term for greater
freedom of expression and less state secrecy. Th e
word became universal currency with the elec-
tion to leadership in the Soviet Union of Mikhail
Gorbachev, who welcomed rather than shunned
world publicity and demonstrated an openness
within the Russian nation and in communication
with other countries not experienced since the
early days of the Russian Revolution (and only
fi tfully experienced since). Linked with glasnost
has been perestroika, meaning reconstruction –
reform in relation to government practices and
expectations.
Globalization (and the media) A term bandied
about in all spheres – political, economic,
cultural, environmental – yet rarely satisfactorily
defi ned; or indeed defi ned at all. Th e clues are
many: does it mean cross-border, cross-nation,
cross-cultural? Does it essentially mean, as
the Americans prefer the term, international;
and what part in the advances in globalization
do the media play? Is it about convergence or
diversity, or both operating together; and how
does globalization relate to such notions of the
public sphere as the agora, and thus ideas
concerning democracy?
A scrutiny of the commentators on globaliza-
tion reveals some fairly dramatic differences
of viewpoint. Th ere are those who have been
called hyperglobalizers who predict the end of
the nation state; transformalists who reckon that
globalization is a driving force for change; and
sceptics who claim that globalization is a myth.
First it must be acknowledged that globalization
is an all-purpose catchword requiring defi nition
and redefi nition. If we are referring to media
(and other services) crossing borders, we need to
identify what we mean by borders: between what
borders; for example, would we discuss displaced
populations, cultures within cultures, and are we
talking about the fl ow of news or entertainment
in particular across borders? And in the domain
of eff ects, are we viewing processes of homogeni-
zation (sameness) taking place as a result of the
fl ow of news and entertainment across nationsfi ndings that have won considerable attention
and not unexpectedly drawn fire from the
media under investigation. By 1982 the Group
had published three major works tabulating its
exhaustive research into the way TV handles the
news. First came Bad News (Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1976), which exploded the generally held
image of broadcasters being substantially more
objective and reliable in news reporting than the
press.
‘Our study,’ wrote the eight authors of the orig-
inal study, ‘does not support a received view that
television news is “the news as it happens”’. Th e
Group had monitored all TV news broadcasts
over a six-month period, from January to June- Notable among the Group’s fi ndings was
evidence of a bias in TV against the activities of
organized labour and a relentless emphasis upon
eff ects rather than causes.
Later publications by the Glasgow University
Media Group have been More Bad News (Rout-
ledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), Really Bad News
(Writers and Readers’ Publishing Co-operative,
- and War and Peace News (Open Univer-
sity Press, 1985) about media coverage of the
Falklands War, the Miners’ Strike of 1984 and
Northern Ireland. The theoretical base from
which the Group works may be summarized by
a quotation from More Bad News: ‘news is not
a neutral and not a natural phenomenon: it is
rather the manufactured production of ideology’.
The GUMG was back in the news again in
2002 with research fi ndings suggesting that TV
news has failed to inform young people about
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Reporting on
these in a UK Guardian article (16 April), ‘Miss-
ing in Action’, Greg Philo writes, ‘If you don’t
understand the Middle East crisis it might be
because you are watching it on TV news.’ Th e
research group interviewed 12 small audience
groups involving 85 people with a cross-section
of ages. Th ese were asked a series of questions
on the Middle East situation, and then the same
questions were posed to 300 young people
between the ages of 17 and 22. It was found that
‘many of those questioned had little understand-
ing of the reasons for the confl ict and its origins’.
Th e conclusion drawn from this research was
that the failure to place events into a historical
context occurred as a result of TV news exist-
ing ‘in a very competitive market’ subject to
anxiety about audience ratings: ‘In this respect
it is better to have great pictures of being in the
middle of a riot with journalists ducking stones
than to explain what the confl ict is about.’ Th e
reluctance to contextualize, says Philo, also lies