Alleyne’s news revolution model, 1997
deals limited TV access to America, but AJE’s
services were readily available online and promi-
nently carried on YouTube.
▶Mohammed El-Nawawy and Adel Iskander,
Al-Jazeera: Th e Story of the Network Th at Is Rattling
Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism
(Westview, 2003); Mohamed Zayani, ed., The
Al-Jazeera Phenomenon: Critical Perspectives on New
Arab Media (Pluto, 2005); Hugh Miles, Al-Jazeera:
How Arab TV News Challenged the World (Abacus,
2005).
★Alleyne’s news revolution model, 1997 In
News Revolution: Political and Economic Deci-
sions about Global Information (Macmillan,
1997), Mark D. Alleyne offers a model which
‘is both a description of the international news
system’s political economy and a theory of the
international relations of that system’. Th e Global
News System comprises ‘the system of compa-
nies, organizations and people that produce
the world’s news’. It works according to two
necessities, Economic and Democratic, the latter
describing ‘the body of reasons used to justify
the existence of the news media’ – the political
justifi cations; and these Alleyne classifi es as (1)
watchdogs on government; (2) ‘conduits for the
two-way flow of information between people
and their government’; and (3) ‘as a source of
information in the so-called marketplace of
ideas’.
Along with political justification there is
economic necessity: ‘The press system and
the economic system interact at a basic level
whenever the media carry advertising. At a more
sophisticated level, the media perform the infor-
mation functions needed for trade, currency,
equities, and bond markets to perform.’ Not least
of the factors relating to economics is the capac-
ity of the media to attract or deter capital: ‘News
of political instability scares away investors.
More positive news attracts them.’
Th e Global News System operates in relation
to three structures of power/authority: the politi-
cal structure (states, international organizations,
etc.); the production structure (international
trade in goods and services); and fi nancial struc-
tures (markets in currency, fi nancial services,
etc.). Th e model identifi es a dynamic of interact-
ing and sometimes conflicting claims, which
often operate in a process of exchange – what
Alleyne terms a ‘trade in claims’; what the media
want from the power structures and what those
structures want from the media with regard to
the nature of information and its fl ow.
Says Alleyne, ‘Like the news media, these
actors [states, companies, international orga-channel’s coverage of world affairs, including
the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict and the second
Gulf War (2003) and the occupation of Iraq, has
offered alternative perspectives and analysis,
braving censorship whenever it is threatened.
Often referred to as the Arab world’s BBC,
al-Jazeera is based in Qatar, and is substantially
funded by its liberalizing emir. It was through
al-Jazeera that viewers were able to witness
the destruction by the Taliban of the giant
Bamiyan Buddhas. Noureddine Miladi in
‘Mapping the Al-Jazeera Phenomenon’ in War
and the Media: Reporting Confl ict 24/7 (Sage,
2003), edited by Daya Kishan Th ussu and Des
Freedman, says that with a regular audience of
35 million and available to most of the world’s
310 million Arabs, al-Jazeera ‘has redefined
Arab broadcasting’: ‘Th e weekly talk shows and
discussion programmes often tackle crucial yet
taboo subjects, like human rights, democracy
and political corruption, women’s freedom,
banned political groups, polygamy, torture and
rival interpretations of Islamic teachings’, which
other Arab channels ‘would not even consider
screening ... Th e animated political discussions
that were confined to private spaces in Arab
countries have been brought into the open after
decades of stagnation and state censorship, to be
debated at a transnational level ...’
Unmediated by Western media influences,
al-Jazeera has incurred the wrath both of the
West – the US in particular – and of Arab
governments. In a UK Guardian article entitled
‘Reality Television’ (21 April 2004), writing
of his time as London correspondent for the
website al-jazeera.net, Arthur Nelsen refers to
al-Jazeera’s ‘track record of honest and accurate
reporting’, commending its ‘principled plural-
ism in face of brutal and authoritarian regimes
within the region, and increasingly from those
without’. Th is, in Nelsen’s view, ‘is why it has been
vilifi ed, criminalized and bombed. It is also why
it should be defended by those who genuinely
believe that successful societies depend upon an
independent media’.
A signifi cant advance occurred with the intro-
duction of al-Jazeera English (AJE) in November
2006; and global interest in the organization’s
news service accelerated as it reported the
massed rallies of popular protest against North
African and Arab regimes in 2010 and 2011 (see
mobilization).
al-Jazeera English is available in over a
hundred countries and broadcasts from Doha,
Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC.
Th e reluctance in the US to strike distribution