Book Review: The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News: Explaining Darfur

Abstract

The Geopolitics of Representation in Foreign News: Explaining Darfur. Bella Mody. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 478 pp. $100 hbk. $44.95 pbk.Bella Mody's cross-national study of news media reporting of the Darfur crisis is among the most extensive and complex of its kind. Mody is James de Castro Chair in Global Media Studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The book is the collaborative outcome of an endeavor spearheaded by Mody that also involved several of her graduate students.The study investigated coverage of the Darfur crisis by ten news organizations over twenty-six months. The organizations were the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, the Guardian, Al-Ahram, People's Daily, China Daily, BBC.co.uk, English. AlJazeera.Net, and Mail & Guardian Online. The range includes some that are based in the global North, some in the South, a mixture of privately owned and state owned, some oriented to national audiences and others aimed at foreign audiences. Some are print, some online. The organizations differ in the extent to which their countries of location had historical geopolitical affiliation with Sudan or current national interests.The study draws on a total sample of 1,198 articles from the ten media, published during the first twenty-six months of the crisis (January 2003 to February 2005). Among other variables, each article was analyzed for its focal frame or dominant focus. Frames included causes (historical and contemporary), conduct (nature, status, process, and conduct of the crisis), and remedies. Headlines and text were also analyzed for the presence of three keywords: ethnic-race terms, genocide, and oil/ petroleum. Coders rated the emotional intensity of articles as high, medium, or low. Following extensive literature review and background on the Darfur crisis, the book is organized by a series of comparative analyses of different pairs of news organizations representing China's state-owned English- and Chinese-Language newspapers (China Daily and People's Daily); South Africa's Mail and Guardian Online with the Egyptian Al-Ahram; UK's Guardian with France's Le Monde; the New York Times with the Washington Post; and the websites of the BBC and Al Jazeera.The study confirms many long-standing criticisms of the performance of news media. While news representations of cross-national foreign events were most noticeable for their diversity of lenses and foci, one noticeable similarity was the relative neglect of the causes of the crisis. Otherwise, coverage was influenced by the national locations and characteristics of news organizations. Perhaps disappointingly for those who hoped for convincing evidence of improvement in North-South performance since the 1970s' NWICO debates, coverage by media of the global North proved strongest in several respects. This was surely related to the superior resources available to those organizations, but many other factors were at play. Locational standpoint matters, says Mody. Each news organization was embedded in a distinct geopolitical context that shaped its news representations.The study constructed a multilevel measure for level of press attention. Le Monde, BBC.co.uk, and the New York Times gave most attention to Darfur. News organizations located in China and Egypt, with a high national interest in Sudan's oil, trade, and water, produced mostly news articles of low emotional intensity. …