There's no such thing as 'International News'

It's 'English-language' news. Unsurprisingly it's dominated by English-speaking media companies and journalists, and that has a huge impact on what we think of as the 'global' narrative.

Since I started writing about the privilege of speaking English, the messages and emails have been coming thick and fast, turning my inbox and social media comments into some sort of linguistic confessional.

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Most of the stories were depressingly predictable. Some showed gaslighting of the first order while others bordered on the hilarious. If you’ve read my previous post about being taken off air for sounding foreign, you’ll know I have great empathy with anyone who’s been through a similar experience, but I have to admit some of the messages made me laugh out loud. Here’s a selection:

• There was the producer who voiced a report for a British outlet’s website, which elicited panicked messages from viewers who thought the website had been HACKED, because really, why else would a report be voiced in a foreign accent?

• Then the journalist who, after having voiced the script for a report, was told by her picture editor “I LOVE your accent! You remind me of Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro.” Which is probably not what you want to hear when you’ve just reported on a war or natural disaster. Or if you are, you know, female.

• The Italian who was told “Instead of journalism, why don’t you focus on cookery programmes?” (which reminded me of the time I was encouraged to apply for a sports presenter job because of the way I pronounced ‘Sampdoria’ and other Italian football teams. One of life’s missed opportunities.)

• And of course, the message that pleased me most, the one linking my work to the spiritual Godmother of all of us odd-sounding bilinguals, Colombian legend Sofia Vergara, and her now-immortal line “Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?” Oh Sofia, we DO know. It’s practically the motto of this newsletter.

But that’s where the fun stops. Because all the feedback I received is proof that linguistic barriers (which are also national and cultural barriers) are real and have a huge impact on the careers of second-language English journalists. It’s part of a wider issue around diversity and representation that extends beyond journalism, but in this post I’ll focus specifically on the media and the impact the lack of diversity of voices has on which stories are highlighted and how they’re told.

I have spent 22 years working for some of the biggest names in international broadcasting in the world. I started my career as a CNN intern, followed by on-air roles at the BBC and Sky News and then for 16 years I was a prime-time news anchor for Al Jazeera English before resigning in 2022. Based on that experience, I have come to the following conclusion:

There is no such thing as International News. It’s English-Language news.

By ‘International News’ I don’t mean the foreign news section of a newspaper or TV programme.

I mean publications that can be considered journalistic reference points that are read or watched around the world.

Unsurprisingly they are overwhelmingly anglophone (USA/UK) media outlets, which are predictably dominated by native English-speaking journalists.

You know who they are: CNN and the BBC. AP and Reuters. The New York Times. The Guardian. The Economist, the FT. I may be missing some, but there aren’t many other publications that can truly claim to have a global footprint. Sure, loads of countries are getting in on the English-Language news channel game, from China, to Iran, to Russia. But even the more reliable likes of English-language France24 and Deutsche Welle can hardly claim to have an audience or credibility on a par with the BBC. The only one to break the mould in a significant way was Al Jazeera English. for reasons I will explain below.

Some of the publications mentioned above have a dedicated ‘international’ section. That’s certainly true of the broadcasters and broadcasting is, unsurprisingly, where the issue of language is felt most acutely. There’s CNN International and CNN domestic. BBC World and the BBC’s national news channel have recently merged into one TV channel (a questionable decision) but the BBC’s World Service Radio is as close to a truly international outlet as you can get. Credit where credit’s due, the World Service has several non-native English voices in key presenting roles. But am I going to hear any of them on the domestic channels? On the prime-time, national 6 o’clock news? Unlikely. It may happen with some foreign correspondents working on stories outside the UK, and though I won’t say you can count them on one hand, you will have a few spare fingers if you count them on two. They are all notable exceptions. (I’m collating a bilingual journalism hero-list, so please let me know if you have any particular nominations in the comments section below.)

The truth is that the domestic channel will always take precedence over the international one. So when managers decide which reporters and presenters to nurture and whose careers to develop, they will mainly think about who will go down well with the domestic audience. A BBC Radio 4 presenter can easily be moved to the World Service. The reverse isn’t true for a foreign-sounding World Service presenter. It’s not a two-way street. So a channel’s true stars will always be the ones that will appeal to the domestic audience, even if the international one is bigger. After all, the domestic market, whether it’s advertisers or the licence fee, is where the bulk of the money comes from.

As I mentioned, broadcasting presents particular challenges but the concept applies everywhere, not just to on-air journalists or famous bylines in print. It applies to the editorial chain as well. The focus of any publication will always be their domestic audience. Editors who understand it best will thrive, their careers will advance and they will then play a major role in deciding which stories are covered and whose voices get amplified.

*** TRIGGER WARNING ***

“What is she going on about,” I hear you ask. “There’s loads of diversity on screen.”

When I was starting out in TV journalism, I remember a very ugly phrase that I often heard around what made a good international on-air journalist. More than once, I was told there was a ‘formula’. Before recounting the following conversation, I’d like to issue a disclaimer because it’s not sensitive language, and some people may find it offensive. I’ve thought long and hard about writing it up, but I think it’s important, so here it goes:

Nameless News Manager (a composite based on conversations I had with several people from various organisations):

“Don’t you know? There’s a formula for international news presenters.”

Me:

“Really? Well tell me, what’s the formula??”

Him:

“The formula is: THIRD WORLD FACE, FIRST WORLD VOICE.”

(pause)

“You see, the problem with you Barbara is that you have it the wrong way around.”

Now, for those of you who’ve chanced upon this newsletter without knowing much about my career (and why should you) I would like to make it crystal clear that I obviously don’t think the issue here is a diversity of faces and ethnicities. That has gotten better over the years though it is still far from being truly representative. And obviously domestic news is a different conversation altogether. But I do think the fact that the so-called ‘first-world voice’ is still a barrier for so many is a major issue when it comes to having a truly global narrative.

What is meant by first-world voice? Some of my British and American friends and ex-colleagues from minority ethnic backgrounds often refer to it as ‘sounding white.’ I don’t agree. It only ‘sounds white’ if you are looking at diversity through British and American eyes. Because it sure as heck doesn’t mean sounding German. Or Dutch. Or French. Or, as many of my Danish friends who have faced this issue will attest, sounding Scandinavian. And you don’t get much whiter than the Scandinavians. What it means is sounding like native Brits and Americans, with some Australians, Irish, New Zealanders and Canadians thrown in. That’s the ‘first world voice’. Nationality is the key factor here, not skin colour.

So, why does it matter?

It matters because it affects what we consider to be the global narrative around some of the biggest stories of our time. It affects CONTENT. Language is never just language. Language is culture. Language is the conduit for the culture of the countries it originates from. All of us speak the way we do because of the influences that have shaped us. IF A CULTURE HAS HAD ENOUGH OF AN IMPACT ON YOU TO AFFECT THE WAY YOU SPEAK, IT WILL UNDOUBTEDLY HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF AN IMPACT TO AFFECT THE WAY YOU THINK.

That’s why this lack of diversity in international journalism dictates which stories are told, how they are told and who tells them. The world sees itself through the eyes of the anglophone media.

Trying to rebalance the global news narrative was the reason behind the launch of Al Jazeera English back in 2006. At the height of the so-called War on Terror, the English-language sister channel to Al Jazeera Arabic was created to provide an alternative narrative to the Arab World and the Global South in general to that told by American and British media. The feedback I heard most often as an Al Jazeera anchor was “You tell the stories other media networks don’t show”.

More recently, the war in Ukraine also showed how the anglosphere, and the debates within it, dominate what is called ‘Western’ journalism. When it comes to continued support for Ukraine, whether it’s arming Ukraine or sanctions against Russia, public opinion varies within the Western alliance, and just listening to the narrative from the US and UK doesn’t paint the whole picture. You might also remember the criticisms at the start of the conflict that the Ukraine war and Ukrainian refugees were getting special treatment because they were white. I agree with the concept that (tragically) certain people and wars don’t make the headlines like others. There are a lot of reasons behind that, racism being one. But a war in Europe with such potential to escalate will cause a strong reaction in continental Europeans, and bring up the not-so-distant memories of the horrors of WW2 that impacted their countries and families differently than in the UK, which was heavily bombed but never invaded or occupied. It’s not just because ‘Ukrainians are white.’ I wrote about it in detail in this article for the Al Jazeera website .

And then of course there’s a story very close to my heart - the threat of fascism. Readers of this newsletter will know that I made a documentary called Fascism in the Family about my grandfather’s links to Mussolini’s regime and the current threat of a return to fascism in Italy. Once it aired I was amazed by how different the reactions were between continental Europeans on the one hand, who will have family histories of dictatorship, collaboration, occupation or deportation, and the Britons and Americans who don’t have recent history of dictatorships and whose countries were on the right side of history in WW2. Their narrative focuses on heroes and victims, but not so much on perpetrators and bystanders. I’m currently writing a book on this topic but the upsum is that I sense a lack of understanding within the anglosphere about how dictatorships can take hold, underpinned by the sentiment of “It could never happen here/it could never be me.” Considering that the rise of the Far Right is one of the biggest stories of our time, I find the mono-cultural approach of some of the coverage worrying.

So, no, it’s not International News. It IS English-language news. The exclusion of non-native voices is not intentional or malicious but it does create blind spots. Though it must be said that if we have to have a dominant culture in journalism, we could do worse than the Anglosphere, where the press is largely free of direct government interference unlike many other parts of the world. It’s a huge subject. Back in the 1970s, UNESCO tried and failed to redress the dominance of journalism from the global north to the global south, and I’ll look into that case in closer detail in a future newsletter. But I’m more convinced than ever that we need more variety of voices if international news can really live up to that name. I’ll write a post soon with specific advice I’ve gathered in 20 years in TV journalism for second-language English speakers trying to navigate their way in a native-speaker’s industry.

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Thank you for reading, it’s an off-beat topic so I really do appreciate your time and attention. I’d also love to know your thoughts in the comment section below.