‘Global Civil Society’ and Global News Broadcasters: The Case of BBC World News

Abstract

Part of the development of a global space of politics in which citizens can influence change is assumed to rely on an increasingly global media, not just in terms of an interconnected and cross-border ownership structure, but in the very nature of the media, significantly also in terms of the news. Satellite news broadcasters have come to occupy an important part of this debate, partly because of technological developments that make it easier to gather news from around the world, but also, crucially, because of the growth of these broadcasters and their expanding reach (see Tables 3.1 and 3.2). Since the launch of CNN International, the idea of setting up news broadcasters that could potentially have a global reach has grown across regions and has been well-documented, most recently in an explosion of research on the Arab global broadcaster Al-Jazeera. One of the largest global news broadcasters in terms of reach, however, is BBC World News, which has received much less scholarly attention than both CNN and Al-Jazeera. A news broadcaster such as BBC World News, however, is fundamental to the notion of global citizenship in the GCS nexus. Unlike CNN, which, initially at least, understood itself to be an American broadcaster in a global media market, or Al-Jazeera which defines itself in terms of providing an Arabic perspective on global news, BBC World News adheres to being a truly global broadcaster, both in reach and in practice.