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SINGAPORE—Al
Jazeera, the upstart global news network, didn’t miss
the chance to point out a major irony in the jam-packed
Global Brand Forum hosted by this city-state.
Southeast Asia’s richest country has long gone beyond
its 1960s goal of survival; it is second only to the
United States
in the world’s competitiveness ranking, riding high on
its image as an efficient, corruption-free and
environment-friendly nation.
These
days, according to Minister of State for Trade and
Industry Lee Yi Shyan, its brand-building focuses on
“intangibles”—social justice between majority and
minority, creativity, tolerance and openness. But a
government handout to visitors underscores books,
magazines and video as “controlled substances.” And Al
Jazeera’s managing director, Nigel Parsons, the opening
day’s most applauded speaker, notes wryly that he
expects a long monitoring before the host government
decides to “unleash” his controversial network on its
citizenry.
As
Asia’s corporations struggle to find their niche in a
global economy dominated by “supranationals,” media
itself have become as much a news subject as a purveyor
of information. Companies vying for a greater market
share in a booming region want results for their money.
Should
they invest in old media—print and broadcast—or
increasingly bet on new media, the brave new world of
the Internet and mobile communications technology?
Google,
the giant search engine, is the top global brand this
year in the list of the Millward Brown consultancy; it
is number 20 on the Businessweek/Interbrand survery
released last month. None of the venerable media brands
are in the Brandz 100 top ten list though No. 2 brand GE
owns some media companies.
Al
Jazeera, which emerged at the turn of the millennium
among the top ten brands, currently has 100 million
viewers worldwide and straddles the divide between old
and new media. It uses provides traditional media
service, analog broadcasting, but its influence is felt
strongly on the Internet. YouTube users, especially in
the US, see it as a kindred soul in the search for
alternative voices and it has tens of thousands new
cable subscribers in a country where it is demonized by
the government.
Middle
ground
In a
panel discussion on the future of mainstream media and
the rise of new media, representatives of the two forms
agree the divide may not be that great.
Freedom
of choice is important. The Internet, with its blogs and
citizen journalism web sites, provides that in spades
and user-generated news provides a venue for information
otherwise ignored by mainstream media.
But the
new media also carries pitfalls: how to find “accurate”
information in the welter of rants and opinions, how to
bring that information and knowledge to the poor who
need it most, and how to evade the iron arms of states
that traditionally fear the free flow of ideas and
information.
CNBC
Asia-Pacific president and managing director, Jeremy
Pink, and Dato Farid Ridzuan, group chief executive of
new media for Malaysia’s listed Media Prima, both agree
that when the dust settles, “credibility is still king.”
It is
content and consistency that builds a media brand, says
Pink. But accuracy must have a compelling presentation
as well, and there are ways to tailor that for new media
users.
Google’s
regional managing director, Richard Kimber, says the
Internet is a fantastic and compelling vehicle for
Asia (even in
China
where the American “do no evil” company has agreed to
state censorship).
But even
Kimber isn’t tossing traditional media out. There is
enough room for the new and old to exist side by side,
he notes. Mainstream journalists fret at how the
Internet bolsters the very human trait of gravitating to
those who speak in “our” voice. Google will not go into
editing, says Kimber and will not stop users from
latching on to any available information, right or
wrong. But Kimber says even on the Web, trust and
consistency remain valuable commodities and people will
go to Amazon for the final word on books and music and
video after reading reviews on their favorite web sites.
In a
world often pictured as gripped in a clash of
civilizations, Pink believes people still gravitate
towards the middle ground and only a few fanatics would
give up the freedom to make up one’s own mind from a
multiplicity of sources and voices.
Bridging
worlds
That,
says Parsons, is Al Jazeera’s strength.
The
media firm, “a child of censorship” that stepped into
the gap that opened when Saudi Arabia pulled funds from
a venture with the British Broadcasting Corp., is proof
that media doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Al
Jazeera’s fortunes have followed how the world has
turned. In the 1990s, it was favored by the
United States
for being “a beacon of democratic journalism” in the
Middle East. The region’s leaders saw Al Jazeera as a threat because it provided the
first open criticism of governments there. It also
insisted on giving
Israel
the right to reply in places where locals had not seen
or heard a single Israeli while believing they deserved
to be pushed out to sea.
Then
9-11 happened, the
US
went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and Al Jazeera’s
democratic journalism was reviled as aid to terrorists
and antiwestern. The American military bombed Al Jazeera
offices twice and called it a spawn of al-Qaeda—fanning
its popularity in the Middle East.
All
because, Parson says, Al Jazeera insisted on showing
things as they were, insisted on asking the tough
questions, and insisted on showing not just missiles
taking off but what happens when they land.
The
network may not share Google’s promiscuous information
flow—though contrary to myth, Al Jazeera has not showed
a single instance of beheading—but it is resolute in
training its lenses and microphones on peoples otherwise
ignored by the bigger competitors and allowing regions
to tell their stories from their own perspectives. It
has since opened English Channels in Asia, and Africa
and can now boast that its news “follows the sun.”
At the
same time, Parson notes, Al Jazeera also tries to show
the Middle East the good side of the American heartland,
which isn’t always about neo-cons beating the war
drums. The result: al-Qaeda has taken to calling Al
Jazeera a pawn of the US Central Intelligence Agency.
One
hundred million viewers aren’t enough for Parsons, who
says the network is a global brand “everyone seems to
know and recognize even without actually knowing about
it.”
The
upstart company will keep on pushing the envelope, with
a “news agenda firmly driven by conflict, politics and
the environment”—issues citizen journalists care about
while the mainstream media increasingly bombards viewers
with lightweight news about young, rich
alcoholics—putting context above sound bites.
The
numbers say it all, Parsons notes. Where old media
provides new blood, there you will find a convergence of
worlds. |
