Truth, Al Jazeera, and Crisis Journalism
Keywords:
International News, Truth, Media Ethics, Interpretation, Propaganda.Abstract
Truth is the generally accepted standard of news media organizations and of social media networks. Most of the codes of ethics including Al Jazeera's specify the reporters' duty to tell the truth. In the traditional view, objective reporting is not merely the standard of competent professionalism, but considered a moral imperative. With the dominant scheme increasingly controversial, theoretical work in international media ethics seeks to transform it intellectually. Truth needs to be released from its parochial moorings in the West and given a global understanding. A new concept of truth as authentic disclosure accomplishes this, and that definition means to get at the core issue, to see the essence of things. The question in researching Al Jazeera is whether it practices what might be called "interpretive sufficiency". This is a robust view of news as knowledge production, in contrast with news as simply informational. Using Al Jazeera as a case study, the new definition of truth-as-disclosure is applied to crisis journalism.
References
Al Jazeera Media Network. “Al Jazeera English Code of Ethics.” June 2008; revised 2014. http://careers.aljazeera. net/en/about/code-of-ethics.html
Figenschou, Tine Ustad. 2016. “Professional Journalism? Aims, Strategies and Dilemmas in Al Jazeera English’s News Production.” Pp. 191-210 in Mapping the Al Jazeera Phenomenon Twenty Years On, edited by E. Abdelmoula and N. Miladi. Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies.
Miladi, Noureddine. 2016. “Reporting News in a Turbulent World: Is Al Jazeera Rewriting the Rules of Global Journalism?” Pp. 71-90 in Mapping the Al Jazeera Phenomenon Twenty Years On, edited by E. Abdelmoula and N. Miladi. Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies.
Fahmy, Sahira and Thomas J. Johnson. 2007. “Show the Truth and Let the Audience Decide: A Web-Based Survey Showing Support for Use of Graphic Imagery Among Viewers of Al Jazeera.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 51: 245-264.
Christians, Clifford, Mark Fackler, and John Ferré. 2012. “Al Jazeera English.” Pp. 21- 38 in their Ethics for Public Communication: Defining Moments in Media History. New York: Oxford University Press.
BBC Monitoring. 2010. “Al Jazeera Discusses Confiscation of Transmission Equipment in Yemen,” March 15.
Nordland, Rod. 2013. “Saudi Arabia Promises to Aid Egypt’s Regime.” The New York Times, August 19.
Lucas, Ryan. 2011. “Egypt Takes Aim at Al Jazeera for Protest Coverage.” Associated Press, February 10. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110210/ap_on_en_tv/ml_ egypt_al_jazeera
Pearl, Judith. 2007. “Another Perspective or Jihad TV.” New York Times, January 17, A 23.
Worth, Robert F. and David D. Kirkpatrick. 2011. “Seizing a Moment, Al Jazeera Galvanizes Arab Frustration.” The New York Times, January 28, A1, A10.
Ezzeddine Abdelmoula and Noureddine Miladi, eds. 2016. Mapping the Al Jazeera Phenomenon Twenty Years On. Beirut, Lebannon: Arab Scientific Publishers; and Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies.
Ward, Stephen J. A. 2015. The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond. Second edition. Montreal and Kingston, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Alston, William P. 1996. A Realist Conception of Truth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Ayer, A. J. 1952. Language, Truth and Logic. New York: Dover.
Russell, Bertrand and Alfred North Whitehead. 1910-1913. Principia Mathematica. 3 vols. London: Cambridge University Press.
Ward, Stephen J. A. 2009. “Truth and Objectivity.” Pp. 71-83 in The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics, edited by L. Wilkins and C. Christians. New York: Routledge.
Lynch, Michael P. 2011. Truth as One and Many. New York: Oxford Clarendon Press.
Christians, Clifford. 2003. “Cross-cultural Ethics and Truth.” Pp. 293-303 in Mediating Religion: Conversations in Media, Religion and Culture, edited by J. Mitchell and S. Marriage. London: T & T Clark.
Taylor, Charles. 1991. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kompridis, Nicholas. 1994. “On World Disclosure: Heidegger, Habermas and Dewey.” Thesis Eleven, 37: 29-45. http://the.sagepub/content/37/1/29/full.pdf
Kompridis, Nicholas. 2011. Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory Between Past and Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Commission on Freedom of the Press. 1947. A Free and Responsible Press. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1955. Ethics. Trans. N. H. Smith. New York: Macmillan.
Pippert, Wesley. 1989. An Ethics of News: A Reporter’s Search for Truth. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Christians, Clifford and Kaarle Nordenstreng. 2004. “Social Responsibility Worldwide.” Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 19:3-28.
el-Nawawy, Mohamed and Adel Iskandar. 2003. Al Jazeera: The Story of the Network That Is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism. New York: Westview Press.
Figenschou, Tine Ustad. 2011. “Suffering Up Close: The Strategic Construction of Mediated Suffering on Al Jazeera English.” International Journal of Communication, 5:233-253.
Barkho, Leon. 2010. News from the BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera: How the Three Broadcasters Cover the Middle East. New York: Hampton Press.
Barkho, Leon. 2016. “Burman’s News Model: How to Do Journalism in the Twenty-first Century.” Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies, 5(3): 485-502.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Third edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bonsey, Noah and Jeb Koogler. 2010. “Does the Path to Middle East Peace Stop in Doha? Al Jazeera’s Influence on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” Columbia Journalism Review, February 16. www.cjr.org.
Figenschou, Tine Ustad. 2013. Al Jazeera and the Global Media Landscape: The South is Talking Back. New York: Routledge.
Hammersley, Martyn and Anna Traianou. 2012. Ethics in Qualitative Research: Controversies and Context. London: Sage Publications.
Erraji, Mohamed. 2016. “The Epistemology of News Coverage of Arab Issues at Al Jazeera Channel.” Pp. 237- 262 in Mapping the Al Jazeera Phenomenon Twenty Years On, edited by E. Abdelmoula and N. Miladi. Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies.
Van Dijk, Teun A. 1988. News as Discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Vander Linde, Gerhard. 2001. “Alternative Models of Knowledge Production.” Mousaion, 19(1): 53-61.
Christians, Clifford. 2004. “The Changing News Paradigm: From Objectivity to Interpretive Sufficiency.” Pp. 41-56 in Qualitative Research in Journalism: Taking It to the Streets, edited by Sharon H. Iorio. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Denzin, Norman K. 2014. “Symbolic Interactionism and the Media.” Pp. 74-94 in The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication, edited by Robert Fortner and Mark Fackler. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
Harkov, L. 2017. Netanyahu Threatens to Shut Al Jazeera Jerusalem Office. JPost. http://www.jpost.com/IsraelNews/Netanyahu-threatens-to-shut-Al-Jazeera-Jerusalemoffice-500886.
Blumer, Herbert. 1948. “What Is Wrong with Social Theory?” American Sociological Review, 19: 3-10.
Cherribi, Sam. 2006. “From Baghdad to Paris: Al Jazeera and the Veil.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 11:121-138.
Erdbrink, Thomas. 2011. “Al Jazeera TV Network Draws Criticism, Praise for Coverage of Arab Revolutions.” Washington Post, May 14.
Hanafi, Sari. 2012. “The Arab Revolutions: The Emergence of a New Political Subjectivity.” Contemporary Arab Affairs, 5:198-213.
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2014. Discourse and Knowledge: A Sociocognitive Approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
“Editorial Guidelines.” 2015. Second edition. Al Jazeera Media Network. Beirut, Lebanon: Arab Scientific Publishers.
Kaplan, Robert D. 2009. “Why I Love Al Jazeera.” The Atlantic, October, 55-56.
Zran, Jamel. 2016. “Perceptions of Al Jazeera: Pluralism, Reception and the Public Sphere.” Pp. 43-70. in Mapping the Al Jazeera Phenomenon Twenty Years On, edited by E. Abdelmoula and N. Miladi. Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies.
Zayani, Mohamed. 2016. “News Reporting and the Politics of Representation: Al Jazeera’s Culture of Journalism.” Pp. 91- 98 in Mapping the Al Jazeera Phenomenon Twenty Years On, edited by E. Abdelmoula and N. Miladi. Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies.
Leland, John. 2011. “A Long-Anticipated Opening in Cairo.” The New York Times, February 3, A11.
Figenschou, Tine Ustad. 2012. “The South is Talking Back: With a White Face and a British Accent—Editorial Dilemmas in Al Jazeera English.” Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 13(3): 354-370.
Winter, Charles. 2017. “Media Jihad: The Islamic State’s Doctrine for Information Warfare.” International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR). Kings College, London.
Ellul, Jacques. 1965. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. Trans. K. Kellen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Ellul, Jacques. 1970. The Ethics of Freedom. Trans. G. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Ellul, Jacques. 1981. “The Ethics of Propaganda: Propaganda, Innocence, and Amorality.” Communication, 6: 159-175.
Willems, Wendy. 2014. “Beyond Normative Dewesternizing: Examining Media Culture from the Vantage Point of the Global South.” The Global South, 8(1): 7-23.
Shadid, Anthony. 2011. “Qatar Wields an Outsize Influence in Arab Politics.” The New York Times, November 14.
Ward, Stephen J. A. 2010. Global Journalism Ethics. Montreal and Kingston, Canada: McGill-Queens University Press.
Ward, Stephen J. A. 2011. Ethics of the Media: An Introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1966. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lule, Jack. 2015. “The Global Imaginary in Mumford and McLuhan.” Pp. 321-336 in The Ethics of Intercultural Communication, edited by B. Shan and C. Christians. New York: Peter Lang.
Cherribi, Sam. 2017. Fridays of Rage: Al Jazeera. The Arab Spring, and Political Islam. New York: Oxford University Press.
Benhabib, Seyla. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Padstow, Cornwall, UK: Polity.
Lynch, Michael P., ed. 2001. The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Kirkham, Richard L. 1992. Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Christians, Clifford. 1995. “Propaganda and the Technological System.” Pp. 156-174 in Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, edited by T. L. Glasser and C. T. Salmon. New York: Guilford Press.
