Opposing Power Narratives – Or watch out for the Other Guy

It is clearly more difficult to state definitively that RT or AJE economic news presents a national identity narrative. Unlike DW and CCTV, whose selection of geographical focus, speaking actors, and news norms suggest that the channels conform to existing understandings of international broadcasting; AJE and RT operate differently. Counting the Cost is invariably present at the site of stories, even when they combine the item with a studio interview. Boom Bust goes in the other direction, essentially never reporting onsite and operating in the studio with expert figures providing an air of authority for the projected narratives. Because RT and AJE do not focus attention on Russian or Qatari economic news,67 the programming analyzed

here focuses on geostrategic rivals and attempts to undermine their policies. Using the issue and geography variables indicates what nations are of most interest to a program’s editorial staff. If a

67 _{There is one exception, a story on low oil prices and their effect on the Russian economy. That item} was an in studio interview where the guest was economic strategist Marin Katusa. The item grappled with the larger question of dropping oil prices and Katusa claimed that falling prices were the result of a Saudi plan to weaken ISIL, Iran, and the USA. Russia, the guest assures us, will weather the storm because of its cash reserves and Chinese energy imports.

Qatari rival, for example, pursues policies the Emir opposes, Al-Jazeera’s content should reflect negatively on that specific state.68 In addition, just as IB content projects the identity narrative of

the state on CCTV then the identities of rival states are arguably not ones Qatar would assign to itself. I examine how each network frames the international economic system in Chapter5, but in this section I use the sources on the economic policies of Russia and Qatar seen in Chapter 3 to examine the extent to which their respective broadcasters project those policies. As the following section will demonstrate, the dominant news narratives embedded RT and AJE coverage target rival states and policies by suggesting ulterior motives or incompetence on the part of those states.

Russia grounds its broader foreign policy in terms of “sovereign democracy;” Russia, and only Russia, can define its governance norms (Ziegler 2012). The Kremlin thus routinely

questions prevailing international norms, including the economic system, and particularly Western dominance of it, as we have seen in Chapter 3 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013). Practically, the Russian Federation wants Western sanctions lifted (Lavrov 2015) as well as greater economic integration with Eurasian states (Dutkiewicz and Sakwa 2014). Energy policies are particularly significant as gas exports account for 68% of Russian GDP (US Energy

Information Administration 2014). While Boom Bust rarely addresses Russian economic news, the program tacitly mirrors Russian foreign policy goals by adopting different narratives that emphasize the perfidy, incompetence, or maliciousness of the West, particularly the USA, EU, and UK. During the period under review, several news items, for example, focused on how central bank policies will lead to “currency wars.”69 The currency wars narrative reflects a sort of

68 _{See Chapter 3 for a thorough examination.}

69 _{The concept of currency wars comes from Jim Rickards, a strategist for West Shor Funds, and a} frequent guest on the program.

inverse great power narrative, which Miskimmon et al. (2013) suggest frames powers as both independent to pursue action but also responsible to other, weaker powers. In a typical example from a January episode, Boom Bust host and producer Edward Harrison explained that as the EU engages in quantitative easing to try and solve the financial crisis there, the USA wants to raise interest rates leaving it “alone” and potentially leading to “currency wars.” These arise from the “policy divergence” between the USA, EU, Canada, and other developed nations and will “roil markets” until the USA shifts its policy and, Edward promises, RT will continue to watch the “policy war.”70 _{When these international actors pursue policies designed to improve domestic}

economic health, they weaken other economies by “stealing growth” from their neighbors. Another example comes from an interview with Axel Merk of Merk Investments who suggests that the EU would be better off lifting sanctions against Russia to increase economic growth than engaging in monetary policy. At the very least, this narrative frames the USA and EU, as well as other advanced economies, as self-interested and shirking their responsibilities as great powers (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle 2013). At worst they are predatory, where great powers are meant to be responsible leaders of the international system, the USA and EU pursue policies that benefit only them and will bring about international conflict. Ultimately, these findings support scholars such as Pomerantsev (2014) and Price (2014) who argue that RT’s strategy is less about making Russia look good than about making its rivals appear hypocritical and self- interested. It is also worth noting that RT overwhelmingly airs independent elites from the USA and UK, who would potentially have more credibility with Western publics. In this way, RT appears to be giving a platform to experts expressing a learned opinion instead of a platform for

70 _{The use of inclusive language, like the host promising that they will continue to monitor a situation for} “you” as in the audience is a common linguistic trope in the RT programming analyzed here. It invites the audience into a personal relationship with the hosts and guests and precludes the possibility of seeing economic news and policy on the ground as we do in the other networks.

the interests of the Russian state and its leaders. That the key hosts are also Americans means the

Boom Bust’s presents Americans speaking to American about American issues in several items. RT’s economic news content, therefore, does not project Russia so much as it projects the “Russian view” (“About RT” 2016) that the Western dominated economic system is a threat to Russia specifically and to the sovereignty of states broadly.

AJE follows a somewhat similar strategy, eschewing coverage of Qatari affairs in favor of covering underreported regions and giving “voice to the voiceless.” This editorial line also supports Qatar’s broader foreign policy goals based on shared interests between states (Powers 2012). As outlined in Chapter 3, Qatar’s new Emir wants to shift Qatari foreign policy away from its previous openness; and Qatar currently has several rivals on opposite sides of the Syrian Civil War. Journalistic accounts suggest energy politics drive Qatar’s involvement in the

conflict. Syria rejected plans to build a gas pipeline through its territory via Turkey and on to Europe, which would have bypassed Iran and Russia, undercutting their stakes in the European gas market (Orenstein and Romer 2015).71 _{Scholarly (Samuel-Azran 2013) and journalistic}

(Booth 2010; NDTV 2010; Fahmy 2015) evidence suggests that the Qatari government uses Al- Jazeera channels contingently to undermine the legitimacy of their geopolitical rivals and the data point to one particular state as a target in economic coverage.

During the study period, AJE covered Russia in 5.3% of its news items. The overall narrative AJE provides both undercuts Russia and Vladimir Putin, while also showing European states alternative energy projects, which would free them from Russian supplies of gas.

Examples of the former come from items that examined the overall health of the Russian

economy and Russia’s gold buying. In contrast to the RT narrative where the Global North were

71 _{A trend which Europeans may welcome given the continent’s reliance on Russian energy (Ahmed} 2013).

the villains, AJE’s narrative of Russia paints Putin as a feckless and deluded leader who “won’t get away with” annexing Crimea and whose presence in Ukraine led to an IMF bailout and Western sanctions. In the February 26 episode, for example, three stories appeared to directly challenge the Russian “currency wars” narratives and frame Danish plans for energy

independence as a viable path forward. In the first item, during an interview with David Marsh Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) on central banking, the host, Kamal Santamaria, directly queries whether we will see a currency war. Marsh responds that it is unlikely and argues that interest rate policies can have a positive effect on economies, a point that RT guests continually deny. In the next item, Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard suggests that Danish energy policy gives Denmark more freedom of movement should Russia cut off energy supplies. In another news item the host interviews Bill Browder, a hedge fund manager who has accused Putin of attempts on his and his lawyer’s lives (Harding 2015). Finally, AJE reported on site in Moscow to show Russian shoppers buying goods before their currency loses value against the Euro because of sanctions. To the extent that these items created a narrative, they paint Russia as a rogue state that bucks the norms of the international system (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle 2013), suggesting that AJE allows Qatar to “leverage the network’s credibility for public diplomacy purposes in times of crisis” (Samuel-Azran 2013, 1307).

While AJE’s reporting parallels RT’s economic news by avoiding domestic coverage, it also differs in specific ways. Unlike RT, which uses citizens from rival nations to criticize economic policies, AJE did not interview a single Russian, interviewing Ukrainians, Danes, and British instead. Likewise, the host Kamal Santamaria, of New Zealand, likely reflects the larger negative views of Russia RT was initially meant to address. Second, AJE did not focus

exclusively on Russia or Iran, but covered a wide variety of states particularly those of the Global South suggesting that factors other than geopolitics inform editorial decisions, potentially the interests and training of their locally hired journalists. These considerations on the part of editorial staff may have long-term effects on network credibility, though further study is required to determine this. Counting the Costs news items, therefore, support Qatari interests not by depicting Qatari policy as legitimate, but by depicting Russia and its leaders as incompetent and malicious.

RT and AJE’s omission of domestic news items represents a departure from what the academic literature would lead us to expect. The USA founded Voice of America, for example, to project American journalistic values and promote American interests and policies while

undermining rival states (Heil 2003). In addition, states founded the post 9/11 broadcasters such as France 24, Press TV, Telesur, and Russia Today with the understanding that traditional global news channels omitted their national perspectives. As such, IBs exist, within the limits of their respective media systems and their legal and editorial mandate, to project the sponsoring state. We should see Russia in RT and Qatar in AJE, but do not. The absence of sponsors is, thus, unexpected. However, there are several possible reasons for state absence as well as purposes it might serve for the state.

Avoiding domestic stories may serve these broadcasters by diverting attention from their sponsors’ lack of press freedom. Indeed, Russia Today rebranded itself into RT in 2009, when editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said “‘Who is interested in watching news from Russia all day long’” (quoted in von Twickel 2010). Similarly, AJE’s founder initially sought to segregate the English and Arabic branches of the channel, though this ultimately did not come to pass (Powers 2012). State sponsor absence in this case would be a means of eliding any potential

charges of propagandistic intent or credibility damaging associations with the sponsor. Absence, then, would not be a failure of the broadcaster’s PD potential, but a possible strength derived from disguising the channel’s origins and relationships.

State sponsor absence may also bolster the activation role of a given broadcaster. As Samuel-Aran (2013) and Price (2014) have suggested, IBs may serve a state’s interest by operating as a BBC style news channel, then being activated by the state to aggressively shape issue or system narratives to the sponsor’s advantage. Certainly, the data suggests that both AJE and RT project state narratives, but subsequent analysis of RT will show that the channel’s editors obsessively focus on the USA and UK in economic news content.72 _{Meanwhile, Counting}

the Cost and AJE do cover a wide array of issues and states. While they may not be the “voice

for the voiceless,” coverage does follow the economic news cycle. This being the case, future studies should question which model builds credibility and with which audiences.

Finally, state sponsor absence does not appear to undermine the ability of a broadcaster to project state narratives or interests. RT content shows remarkable consistency in its anti-Western message, even if the speakers’ draw their ideological critique from different ends of the political spectrum. That message apparently resonates with many in the West given its 2 million

subscribers on YouTube and on regular cable services in place likes the UK (Bullough 2013) and German politicians’ criticisms of the channel (Amann 2016). AJE may follow the regular news cycle, and does provide a fair amount of coverage of the Global South, but as this section has demonstrated it also acts to directly undermine Qatari rivals, as in the case of Russia. Each channel thus supports state narratives and policies, just not in the uniform way that the majority of academic literature suggests. Media systems norms inculcated in journalists help to explain

72 _{Chapter 5 shows that RT’s regular newscasts cover a similarly constrained set of states. However, items} do cover Russian affairs.

these differences, but financial journalism, specifically its deference to market based values also shapes IB economic news content.