The new cross-border news wave

Reporting from Moscow, Raymond Snoddy examines the new thirst for multiple international news sources in an era of increasing geopolitical complexity.

By any standards the international conference in Moscow’s Metropol hotel to mark the 10th anniversary of the launch of RT – the former Russia Today – was interesting.

As the geopolitical issues of the day were debated with the likes of the resurgent Ken Livingstone, US Lieutenant General and former director of the Defence Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn and Julian Assange in a live feed from London, perhaps the single most significant and revealing attendees were at the official dinner.

To mark the launch of RT on 10 December 2005 the Russian president Vladimir Putin was in attendance and there was also a rare public appearance by his great predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev.

If ever there was a demonstration of the importance Russia attaches to the importance of the “soft power” of the media and RT in particular that was it.

RT has more than £180 million a year, despite falls in the value of the rouble, to make itself available in English, Spanish and Arabic in more than 120 countries.

In the UK too the current government has got the soft power thing – though some would argue rather belatedly.

First the government shuffled the cost of the BBC World Service onto the BBC licence fee which was itself under the pressure of a freeze.

It was a piece of opportunism to get rid of a slice of public spending off the balance sheet rather than to make the World Service appear more independent, though that was a side effect.

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Then earlier this year the BBC took another hit with the imposition of the cost and responsibility of free licence fees for the over 75s with further pressure on the World Service and its broadcasts in 37 different languages.

Then in the Autumn Statement up pops more than £250 million over five years to fund such things as expanded services for Russia and North Korea. Unfortunately, for some reason of bureaucracy or inter-departmental budgetary rivalry, the money came out of the defence budget.

This was an unfortunate piece of symbolism and critics were able to say – there you are, the proof that the World Service is no different from all the rest and influenced, if not controlled, by the British government.

In reality not much had changed. After all, for most of its history the World Service money had come from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the BBC’s culture of editorial independence from government had stood the test of time.

As the pay master the government was able to determine the number of hours of broadcast to which particular countries but after that it was up to the BBC.

A radio documentary about that very issue – independence from government – for the World Service failed to come up with concrete examples of government interference despite extensive interviews with former directors and senior politicians.

If attempts were made they tended to take a very British form – a raised eyebrow or muted expression of surprise at a cocktail party.

In the world of the government-funded international broadcasters this is not widely accepted and in the end you have to see China’s CCTV, RT and indeed the BBC as the cultural products of very different political systems.

RT’s response to Ofcom complaints of breeches of its impartiality rules and the threat of sanctions is to say the channel reflects Russian values.

Apart from the growing geo-political importance of soft power the RT anniversary conference highlighted the emergence of the new diversity of international broadcasters over the past decade that have sprung up from Africa and the Middle East to South America.

Research commissioned for the conference from consultants PwC looked at the growth of the phenomenon and the increasing propensity for the young, educated and affluent of the world to access their news from a number of sources rather than just the Anglo-American “establishment.”

The research on “The rise of cross-border news” will be published as a detailed paper next month but it found increasing interest in, and curiosity about, the rest of the world among its respondents – a symptom perhaps of globalisation.

As Tony Danker, head of strategy at the Guardian Media Group told PwC: “Cross-border events stimulate cross-border news…Post 9/11, US audiences came to us to understand global stories.”

The PwC survey was based on 5,000 people in 10 countries selected at random from existing survey panels but designed to be “broadly representative” of each country in terms of age, gender and income.

The research shows that 82 per cent of cross-border news users go to different news providers to get a different perspective on the same event and 50 per cent of respondents use cross-border news for coverage of events in their own countries.

Overall the picture is that the Western international broadcasters are retaining their market share while other cross-border news sources have shown rapid growth as overall demand has increased.

In the survey 44 per cent of the respondents using cross-border news services cited US sources and 30 per cent UK, with French on 9 per cent, Middle East 7 per cent, Russian 4 per cent and Asian sources 3 per cent.

Growth rates on monthly usage have been significant over the past decade, according to PwC with US sources showing a 202 per cent increase, the UK 192 per cent with the Middle East up 305 per cent, Russia 225 per cent and Asian sources up by 258 per cent.

There would certainly appear to be a need for a greater number of news sources and perspectives if veteran foreign correspondent John Simpson, speaking in the more narrow British context, is to be believed.

Simpson recently attacked the British media’s “grotesquely selective” reporting of deaths from terror attacks around the world. The Paris attacks were one of the most important events of the decade but 130 terrorist deaths elsewhere can be ignored.

The signs suggest that in future there will be more international news broadcasters rather than less. One of the most famous Indian broadcasters and executives Arnab Goswami, whose daily TV show attacking corruption and hypocrisy gets 80 million viewers, has ambitions to turn India, as the world’s largest democracy, into an international news hub.

Goswami, who sounds like David Frost on speed, is president of the Times Network and editor-in-chief of the Times Now channel and has ambitions to go international – but funded entirely by the private sector.

He will make new cross-border news waves whoever he goes.