Al Jazeera Journalism Review

A graffiti by Italian artist Ozmo depicting Italian writer Antonio Gramsci covers a wall in Rome on March 31, 2014.

Foreign funding and orientalism: On the need for an "organic journalist"

8 Minute Read

Western media financing programs cannot be separated from the ideas of cultural hegemony. The agenda set by these financing bodies appear to service the communities they fund, but in reality, money does not necessarily create change on the ground.

In 1988, Indian scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak published her famous paper “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. The Subaltern refers to a person who has lived through colonization and whose knowledge was formed by the colonizer’s tools.

Spivak’s question originated from the idea that the tools for forming and creating knowledge were created by the colonizer and its intelligentsia, and that these tools were imposed on the nations they colonized. After the departure of the colonizer, the “Subaltern” was unable to conceptualize their reality apart from on the basis of these tools, which are – necessarily – decontextualized and inapplicable to societies that differ in their composition and contexts from Western ones. Thus, the “Subaltern” was rendered incapable of expressing themselves in the terms of their culture and socio-political context, but rather from the culture and context of the colonizer which did not represent them.

To return to Arab media, new trends have appeared in the past years, specifically manifesting in what was dubbed at the time as “alternative” or “independent” media. This new form of media became increasingly prominent at the turn of the millennium and even more so with the spread of the internet, the latter of which functioned as a more effective channel for communication between journalists and other bodies, away from the mediums controlled by authorities. Moreover, globalization enabled journalists to create reference points which in turn helped them understand their journalistic reality. With a new awareness of the scale of the global media, journalists began to realize the size of the gap between Western and Arab media, and, more importantly, their own reality and its complications.

The result was a backlash against all previous models of Arabic journalism. What had previously been accepted had been thrown into sharp relief, as it became obvious that Arab media had been reared in the shadow of authoritarian systems which imposed their desires on the press, as well as relegated its role to limited and defined frames. These imposed frameworks ultimately sought to entrench the dominance of the authorities over knowledge and identify the priorities of the society in service of authorities’ agendas.

Journalists then began to turn to the Western model, out of the idea that it constituted the opposition to the status quo and achieved positive results “there.” So, members of the media sought to humour the agendas set by Western donor, for two key purposes: Ensuring continuation by acquiring funding and desiring a “globalised” approach to media that generally secures international recognition for these media institutions.

A television cameraman and colleagues standing on the awning of a shop transmit footage by satellite-phone of the continuing protest in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, Egypt Monday, Feb. 7, 2011.
Picard said that the teaching of Western media principles and practices has drastically failed to develop a healthy press in many areas, because Western programs and agencies specialized in media development did not consider the existence of different social and cultural realities in these countries. (Photo: Nariman al-Mufti AP)

Decontextualized reading

Away from the demonization or glorification of financing institutions, a general reading of the programs of donor organizations reveals that their aim is to encourage new media initiatives and oversee the development of existing ones.

The agendas of donor institutions for media development programs usually focus on causes such as combating corruption, enhancing governance and accountability, women’s rights, and other issues that hold genuine importance for the Arab region. However, these programs address these causes from a Eurocentric and orientalist perspective, derived from their own reading of Arab societies and deductions on how the media can carry out its role more effectively in beneficiary communities. This is of course, if we accept for the sake of the argument, that these stated goals are indeed the aims of said donor programs. The problem however, with such a Eurocentric approach, is that it ignores the particularities of each country they engage with in the Arab world.

At the “Media Development and Sustainability in Africa Conference”, media economic studies professor and former director of Oxford University’s Reuters Institute (2010 – 2014) Robert G. Picard said that the inefficacy and lack of sustainability of media development projects in developing countries is  due to the that Western development programs and agencies make efforts to develop media outlets to serve urgent foreign policy objectives of the home countries of said agencies, rather than set sustainable development objectives for media in these countries. 

He added that the Western development programs’ efforts to develop media outlets sought to recreate the media forms and practices of the West verbatim, without a proper acknowledgement of the wide variances between Western societies and those of developing countries. “What is worse,” – he added – "is that there is an effort to recreate media types and systems that are declining and failing in the developed world.”

Picard said that the teaching of Western media principles and practices has drastically failed to develop a healthy press in many areas, because Western programs and agencies specialized in media development did not take into account the existence of different social and cultural realities in these countries.

Picard’s points highlight the most prominent issues in Western media financing programs, namely that they analyse the media scene in developing countries from a purely Western approach, believing that by re-enacting Western media work patterns and principles, they can solve the problems of media in developing countries.

In fact, they might actually be causing their aggravation, as neither the political climates in “third world” or “post-colonial” countries are free or democratic, nor do their problems or cultural contexts resemble those in western societies. Hence, when media financing programs focus on issues such as women’s political empowerment, they miss out on the fact that these issues are symptoms of a root cause: a political system in which neither men nor women enjoy free political say.

Thus, financing programs target issues, which, while undeniably important, do not address the root of these problems. For financing programs to focus on issues such as governance without seriously working on the independence of the media, they leave journalists exposed to legislative systems that restrict their freedom and criminalise them should they indeed hold the authority accountable. Asking journalists to expose corruption without a legal umbrella that facilitates their access to information nor their own protection, means that journalists will be restricted to the limited information they are allowed access to, which, by necessity, will not encompass major corruption cases that hit to the core of society’s interests.

An Egyptian walks past a stand displaying state-owned newspapers in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012
The political climates in “third world” or “post-colonial” countries are neither free nor democratic, and their problems and cultural contexts do not resemble those in western societies. (Photo: Ben Cartes AP)

 

Cultural Hegemony

We cannot understand Western media financing programs as separate from the concept of cultural hegemony, which was used prominently in post-colonial studies as it pertains to the nature of imposing northern countries’ knowledge discourse and production on the south.

In this context, cultural hegemony – as defined by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who explained that control is achieved not only by imposing actual power, but also by imposing ideas – is the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, which manipulates the culture of that society (beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, etc.).

Hence, the worldview of the “ruling class” becomes the prevalent culture, and its narrative became the only one deemed “rational.” Through social institutions such as universities, schools, places of worship, courts and others, the ruling class imposes its values, principles and beliefs.

By applying the theory of cultural hegemony to a global scale, and by looking at the process of colonisation that the world has undergone, manifesting today as the great powers in the West and the emergence of globalisation, it is clear that great powers culturally dominate the knowledge narrative in the rest of the world.

Though the stated goal of donor institutions is to encourage and facilitate change in beneficiary communities, this is not necessarily a true imperative and can actually be a secondary goal of their work.

Egyptian men read newspapers as they wait for the Friday noon prayer in the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo
  The journalist must set out in their propositions from the existing culture of nations, weighing their moral and “backwards” positions simultaneously, in order to return people’s trust in the media as a power capable of change, representing their voices and speaking for them. (Khalil al-Hamra-AP)

The need for an “organic” journalist

Media coverage in its ideal form focuses on issues central to the lives of people. In order to ensure that this coverage treats these issues with the proper sensitivities and locates them in their proper contexts, the communities being covered must be understood well and if any barriers to such coverage exist, their causes must be correctly analysed.

Local journalists are best positioned to be able to perform this analysis and interpret their reality objectively and realistically, away from its stereotypes and superficial understandings. Having grown up in these communities and having internalized its modes of knowledge production, they are well suited to define their own reality.

Therefore, the news agendas of Arab institutions must be grounded in the interests of their local journalists and the issues that concern them, rather than follow the “trend” of Western funding.

Sociologists often begin by analysing the structural relationship between power and knowledge production, and how power – in its various forms – monopolises knowledge creation tools which enable their owners to read their reality in a culture and context-specific mannerBecause the press is one of the most important tools to shape people’s awareness of their communities, the issues the media chooses to focus on must be derived in this manner. 

The press then must strive to disseminate information about these topics to make the public aware of them. However, the media’s current reliance on “globalized” tools and criteria to determine what issues they focus on is an obstacle to better serving their communities and public interest.  Before Antonio Gramsci wrote his famous theory on the “organic intellectual” while in prison, he was a journalist that analysed his community, as well as investigated its problems and the means by which to resolve them. 

The intellectual, as seen by Gramsci – in this case the journalist – must set out in their propositions from the existing culture of nations, weighing their moral and “backwards” positions simultaneously. This approach is key to establish a presence in said culture, and, consequently, return people’s trust in the media as a power capable of change, representing their voices and speaking for them.

This trust can secure a place and a voice for journalists in society, rendering them able to form and elevate public awareness around certain issues, which ideally could lead to their resolution. If, however, newsrooms remain sequestered in ivory towers, in thrall to Western stereotypes and their epistemological models, newsrooms will stay isolated from the public sphere, as the former cannot influence the latter, nor can the latter see itself represented in the discourse of the former. 

This is how newsrooms turn into a mere piece of decoration, unable to facilitate real societal change, and instead, proving the turn of phrase in the Arab world which describes lofty speech which has no use or value as “newspaper talk.”

 

* Photo Credit: Graffiti by Italian artist Ozmo depicting Italian writer Antonio Gramsci covers a wall in Rome on March 31, 2014. (AFP-Alberto Pizzoli)

More Articles

How Does Misinformation Undermine Public Trust in Journalism?

Reports reveal a growing loss of trust in the media, driven by the extent of misinformation that undermines professional journalism's ability to influence public discourse. The platforms of misinformation, now supported by states and private entities during conflicts and wars, threaten to strip the profession of its core roles of accountability and oversight.

Muhammad Khamaiseh 1
Muhammad Khamaiseh Published on: 13 Nov, 2024
Challenging the Narrative: Jeremy Scahill on the Need for Adversarial Journalism

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill calls for a revival of "adversarial journalism" to reinstate crucial professional and humanitarian values in mainstream Western media, especially regarding the coverage of the Gaza genocide.

Mohammad Zeidan
Mohammad Zeidan Published on: 10 Nov, 2024
Freedom of the Press in Jordan and Unconstitutional Interpretations

Since the approval of the Cybercrime Law in Jordan, freedom of opinion and expression has entered a troubling phase marked by the arrest of journalists and restrictions on media. Musab Shawabkeh offers a constitutional reading based on interpretations and rulings that uphold freedom of expression in a context where the country needs diverse opinions in the face of the Israeli ultra right wing politics.

Musab Shawabkeh
Musab Al Shawabkeh Published on: 8 Nov, 2024
Voting in a Time of Genocide

The upcoming U.S. presidential election occurs against the backdrop of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, with AJ Plus prioritising marginalised voices and critically analysing Western mainstream media narratives while highlighting the undemocratic aspects of the U.S. electoral system.

Tony Karon Published on: 22 Oct, 2024
Journalists Should Not Embrace the Artificial Intelligence Hype

What factors should journalists take into account while discussing the use of AI in the media?

Jorge Sagastume Muralles
Jorge Sagastume Published on: 16 Oct, 2024
A Year of Genocide and Bias: Western Media's Whitewashing of Israel's Ongoing War on Gaza

Major Western media outlets continue to prove that they are a party in the war of narratives, siding with the Israeli occupation. The article explains how these major Western media outlets are still refining their techniques of bias in favor of the occupation, even a year after the genocide in Palestine.

Mohammad Zeidan
Mohammad Zeidan Published on: 9 Oct, 2024
A Half-Truth is a Full Lie

Misinformation is rampant in modern conflicts, worsened by the internet and social media, where false news spreads easily. While news agencies aim to provide unbiased, fact-based reporting, their focus on brevity and hard facts often lacks the necessary context, leaving the public vulnerable to manipulation and unable to fully grasp the complexities of these issues.

Ilya
Ilya U Topper Published on: 30 Sep, 2024
Testimonies of the First Witness of the Sabra & Shatila Massacre

The Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 saw over 3,000 unarmed Palestinian refugees brutally killed by Phalangist militias under the facilitation of Israeli forces. As the first journalist to enter the camps, Japanese journalist Ryuichi Hirokawa provides a harrowing first-hand account of the atrocity amid a media blackout. His testimony highlights the power of bearing witness to a war crime and contrasts the past Israeli public outcry with today’s silence over the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Mei Shigenobu مي شيغينوبو
Mei Shigenobu Published on: 18 Sep, 2024
Anonymous Sources in the New York Times... Covering the War with One Eye

The use of anonymous sources in journalism is considered, within professional and ethical standards, a “last option” for journalists. However, analysis of New York Times data reveals a persistent pattern in the use of “anonymity” to support specific narratives, especially Israeli narratives.

Mohammad Zeidan
Mohammad Zeidan Published on: 8 Sep, 2024
India and Pakistan; Journalists building Bridges for Understanding

Amid decades of tension, journalists from India and Pakistan are uniting to combat hostile narratives and highlight shared challenges. Through collaboration, they’re fostering understanding on pressing issues like climate change and healthcare, proving that empathy can transcend borders. Discover how initiatives like the Journalists' Exchange Programme are paving the way for peace journalism and a more nuanced narrative.

Safina
Safina Nabi Published on: 12 Aug, 2024
From TV Screens to YouTube: The Rise of Exiled Journalists in Pakistan

Pakistani journalists are leveraging YouTube to overcome censorship, connecting with global audiences, and redefining independent reporting in their homeland.

Anam Hussain
Anam Hussain Published on: 28 Jul, 2024
How AI Synthesised Media Shapes Voter Perception: India's Case in Point

The recent Indian elections witnessed the unprecedented use of generative AI, leading to a surge in misinformation and deepfakes. Political parties leveraged AI to create digital avatars of deceased leaders, Bollywood actors

Suvrat Arora
Suvrat Arora Published on: 12 Jun, 2024
The Rise of Podcasting: How Digital Audio Is Revolutionising Journalism

In this age of digital transformation and media convergence, podcasts stand out as a testament to the enduring power of journalism—a medium that transcends borders, sparks conversations, and brings the world closer together.

Anam Hussain
Anam Hussain Published on: 6 Jun, 2024
Under Fire: The Perilous Reality for Journalists in Gaza's War Zone

Journalists lack safety equipment and legal protection, highlighting the challenges faced by journalists in Gaza. While Israel denies responsibility for targeting journalists, the lack of international intervention leaves journalists in Gaza exposed to daily danger.

Linda Shalash
Linda Shalash Published on: 9 May, 2024
Your Words Are Your Weapon — You Are a Soldier in a Propaganda War

Narrative warfare and the role of journalists in it is immense; the context of the conflict, the battleground has shifted to the realm of narratives, where journalists play a decisive role in shaping the narrative.

Ilya
Ilya U Topper Published on: 21 Apr, 2024
The Privilege and Burden of Conflict Reporting in Nigeria: Navigating the Emotional Toll

The internal struggle and moral dilemmas faced by a conflict reporter, as they grapple with the overwhelming nature of the tragedies they witness and the sense of helplessness in the face of such immense suffering. It ultimately underscores the vital role of conflict journalism in preserving historical memory and giving a voice to the voiceless.

Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu
Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu Published on: 17 Apr, 2024
Journalism in chains in Cameroon

Investigative journalists in Cameroon sometimes use treacherous means to navigate the numerous challenges that hamper the practice of their profession: the absence of the Freedom of Information Act, the criminalisation of press offenses, and the scare of the overly-broad anti-terrorism law.

Nalova Akua
Nalova Akua Published on: 12 Apr, 2024
The Perils of Journalism and the Rise of Citizen Media in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia's media landscape is grim, with low rankings for internet and press freedom across the region. While citizen journalism has risen to fill the gaps, journalists - both professional and citizen - face significant risks due to government crackdowns and the collusion between tech companies and authorities to enable censorship and surveillance.

AJR Contributor Published on: 6 Apr, 2024
Orientalism, Imperialism and The Western Coverage of Palestine

Western mainstream media biases and defence of the Israeli narrative are connected to orientalism, racism, and imperialism, serving the interests of Western ruling political and economic elites. However, it is being challenged by global movements aiming to shed light on the realities of the conflict and express solidarity with the Palestinian population.

Joseph Daher
Joseph Daher Published on: 1 Apr, 2024
Ethical Dilemmas of Photo Editing in Media: Lessons from Kate Middleton’s Photo Controversy

Photoshop—an intelligent digital tool celebrated for enhancing the visual appearance of photographs—is a double-edged sword. While it has the power to transform and refine images, it also skillfully blurs the line between reality and fiction, challenging the legitimacy of journalistic integrity and the credibility of news media.

Anam Hussain
Anam Hussain Published on: 26 Mar, 2024
Breaking Barriers: The Rise of Citizen Journalists in India's Fight for Media Inclusion

Grassroots journalists from marginalized communities in India, including Dalits and Muslims, are challenging mainstream media narratives and bringing attention to underreported issues through digital outlets like The Mooknayak.

Hanan Zaffa
Hanan Zaffar, Jyoti Thakur Published on: 3 Mar, 2024
Silenced Voices and Digital Resilience: The Case of Quds Network

Unrecognized journalists in conflict zones face serious risks to their safety and lack of support. The Quds Network, a Palestinian media outlet, has been targeted and censored, but they continue to report on the ground in Gaza. Recognition and support for independent journalists are crucial.

Yousef Abu Watfe يوسف أبو وطفة
Yousef Abu Watfeh Published on: 21 Feb, 2024
Artificial Intelligence's Potentials and Challenges in the African Media Landscape

How has the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence impacted newsroom operations, job security and regulation in the African media landscape? And how are journalists in Africa adapting to these changes?

Derick Matsengarwodzi
Derick Matsengarwodzi Published on: 18 Feb, 2024
Media Monopoly in Brazil: How Dominant Media Houses Control the Narrative and Stifle Criticism of Israel

An in-depth analysis exploring the concentration of media ownership in Brazil by large companies, and how this shapes public and political narratives, particularly by suppressing criticism of Israel.