An international journalism model of cultural values in news production the concepts and the measurements

Abstract

This study is aimed to contribute in establishing an international journalism model by testing a new cultural model on the content of a news organization to know what values were more prevalent in news production. The main purpose is to explore the degree to which this model predicts the cultural values in the media content. In particular, this model was tested on the content of a leading news organization in the Middle East, Al Jazeera (JA), to identify to what extent JA considers the cultural, social, language, religious, and interest backgrounds of its targeted audience when producing its contents in different languages. A total of 592 news stories-234 from AJE and 358 from AJA-published from January 1, 2014, to April 30, 2014, were analyzed. The findings of this study indicate that Al Jazeera Arabic was in the middle range of the culture index, and Al Jazeera English was in the low level. Al Jazeera at a broad level communicates its different audiences in different ways. Al Jazeera is not producing the same content and is not embedded its Arab and Islamic norms and values to its non-Arab readers. Scholarly implications, future studies and limitations were presented in this study.