Abstract
This article focuses on news photos’ glocal production mechanisms as they are produced in Israel by the three largest international news agencies (Thomson Reuters, AP, and AFP). Designed to make locally manufactured news photos internationally appealing, these mechanisms are required by the agencies if they are to survive in a complex business environment. Yet this environment also mobilizes forces which define the international news organization – not as a unified industrial unit, but as an arena in which different forms of social power constantly struggle. Combining in-depth interviews and interpretive methods while focusing on significant examples in the agencies’ processes of production and organizational structures, the article explores (a) the glocal mechanisms that are activated in the production processes of news photos from Israel by international news agencies, (b) the forces that affect their execution, and (c) how these powers reflect on the international news organization.
Introduction
International news agencies, the ‘wholesale news providers’ (MacGregor, 2013: 35), are perhaps some of the most powerful institutions operating today in the international news flow arena. They are considered to be the first international media organizations and among the first transnational corporations (Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen, 1998); ‘agents of globalization’ (Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen, 1998: 1). Yet, despite their significance, international news agencies have only been explored by very few, and mainly during the 1970s and 1980s (see, for example, Boyd-Barrett, 1980; Fenby, 1986). After the collapse of communism, and due to the emergence of global TV news, technological innovations, and various forms of reorganization, the agencies drew revived interest in the 1990s and also in the following decade (see, for example, Bielsa, 2008; Boyd-Barrett, 2000; Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen, 1998; Boyd-Barrett and Thussu, 1992; Paterson and Sreberny, 2004; Rantanen, 2002; Thussu, 2000). Their production operations, however, are still very much overlooked (see more recent work on news agencies’ production processes in Gürsel, 2016; Ilan, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018; Paterson, 2006, 2011; Paterson and Domingo, 2008; Silberstein-Loeb, 2014).
In that context, an interesting point of departure would be to look at how certain news items that are produced by the agencies become internationally appealing. Fenby (1986), for example, describes a basic condition for the establishment of the four international news agencies as being that they have to be: ‘[…] one thing to all people’ (Fenby, 1986: 23). However, information as to which forces govern the agencies’ international systems of manufacturing, and to what effect, remains scarce.
It is true that the agencies’ tailoring processes had already been recognized in the 1980s: Boyd-Barrett (1980) coined the idea of regionalization in relation to how the agencies differentiate between markets and tailor their services to regional clients. Similarly, Cohen et al. (1996) offered the concept of domestication, which they suggest is made up of the means by which ‘[…] journalists sometimes construct foreign news stories in ways which attempt to create links of meaning between the stories and the history, culture, politics, society, etc., of the viewers’. ‘Domestication’, continue the authors, ‘may be thought of as part of the working-theories that journalists bring to their jobs, one of many craft guidelines for helping journalists “know” how to tell stories’ (p. 85, see also Alasuutari et al., 2013; Baden and Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2017; Cohen, 2013; Curran et al., 2017). Or, for instance, Clausen’s process of localization, in which news people in different positions from local news outlets are used as gatekeepers so as to make global products fit local demands (see Clausen, 2003, 2004).
However, these attempts are hardly sufficient. They draw, for instance, from the false observations that news production is separate from its consumption practices, that international newsrooms operate as somewhat unified fields of production, that production is maintained in linear structures, and that international news products are, by definition, matters of universal concern that need to be stripped of their ‘internationality’ in the process of tailoring to local demands (hence, such observations are heavily influenced, to some extent, by a long-known scholarly trend whereby research was said to be focused on the ‘so-called “universals” of media contents and the “globalization” of media markets and processes’. Cohen and Roeh, 1992: 31). Finally, these attempts also fail to explore the very tailoring mechanisms that are activated in international news production.
In this article, I aim to bridge the gap that has been observed in international news production, specifically, in news agencies scholarship, by way of focusing on certain moments in international news-photo production. In the following discussion, I focus on the ways in which these are executed by the largest international news agencies operating in Israel (Thomson Reuters, AP, and AFP), where glocal mechanisms are activated. 1 This is done in order to make the agencies’ news photos emanating from Israel internationally appealing early on, both at different moments and in the sites of their execution, in order for the agencies to survive in today’s complex business environment. Yet, I would argue, such an environment also puts different forces into play that define the international news agency – not as a unified industrial unit of production, but as an arena within which there are constant struggles over different forms of social power and control. 2
Global media production for local audiences
In an attempt to capture and interpret the social changes that have emerged in the post-communist era, globalization has attracted the attention of scholars from various disciplines since the early 1990s. It was taken, for example, as a complex process or set of processes, as a phenomenon, or as a transitional phase in time, having a complex, inevitable, relationship with communications (Held et al., 1999; see also Albrow, 1996; Beynon and Dunkerley, 2000; Friedman, 2000; Giddens, 1990, 1991; Robertson, 1992; Silverstone, 1999; Waters, 1995). Media globalization has, in many ways, been made possible due to the diffusion of digital media, which has resulted in ongoing changes in information and communications technology (Devereux, 2003; Shoemaker et al., 2012). These changes, and others, have paved the way for the emergence of a few transnational media conglomerates who dominate the global media industry, having holdings in all of the media (Bagdikian, 2004; Devereux, 2003).
However, there were also other effects. With the help of information and communications channels, the world has also revealed itself to be maintained by varying communities and populations that differ in their reception practices in relation to similar, internationally distributed, media products; these populations are making sense of media content according to their cultural backgrounds and personal repertoires (see, for example, Cohen, 2002; Liebes and Katz, 1990). What is more, the enormous exposure to media products from the outside has become over-exposure, whereby the audience is bombarded with different signs, without having the ability to interpret these (Clausen, 2003; Lash and Urry, 1994).
The homogeneity that is forced on global media companies, if they are to survive in a complex global business environment, is therefore faced with various heterogeneous forms of reception. In order to address the widest audience possible, global media organizations are therefore required to standardize their products by creating various formats and patterns that are targeted at the lowest common denominator, early on in their lines of production (see, for example, Sinclair and Wilken, 2009). At the same time, however, their products need to be diversified, to be specifically tailored to local markets’ demands.
A similar dialectic is also illustrated in the making of foreign news. On the one hand, new technologies and their recent and rapid dissemination enable broadcasters to produce, gather, and distribute news worldwide (Stępińska et al., 2013). Yet, on the other, foreign news is essentially aimed at domestic television stations, as journalists strive to offer fresh perspectives, but, at the same time, to tailor these to the respective life worlds of their readers (Baden and Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2017; Cohen, 2013). This results in the activation of various glocal mechanisms, such as the selection of news items by local editors that is based on the relevance of the news content to the country of broadcast, as these foreign events become domesticated (Baden and Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2017; Cohen, 2013; Cohen et al., 1996; Cohen and Roeh, 1992; Shoemaker et al., 2012).
Glocal news-photo production
In his seminal work on the problem that is globalization, Robertson (1995) refers to the fact that much of the talk about globalization, at the time, was, in fact, misleading and was assumed to be a ‘process which overrides locality’ (p. 26). This very notion of globalization, he points out, neglects the idea that the promotion of locality is, to an extent, done from above or outside. Furthermore, there is a tendency in the discourse around globalization to regard the global-local problematic in terms of a polarity. Instead, Robertson suggests, the perception of globalization should involve not only the linking of locality, but also, rather, the very ‘invention’ of it. Hence, it is glocalization that best encapsulates the temporal and spatial attributes of the global condition. At the same time, however, there is a different side to glocalization, as it is also used strategically by contemporary enterprises seeking global markets; that is, glocalization as the ‘tailoring and advertising of goods and services on a global or near-global basis to increasingly differentiated local and particular markets’ (p. 28). This side of glocalization was, to an extent, further developed under some of the various manifestations of globalization theory (primarily with the role of Westernization and Americanization in global processes), with the concept of grobalization whereby a focus is put on the imperialistic ambitions of nations and corporations and so on to impose themselves on various geographic areas, having as their main interest seeing their power grow (Ritzer, 2003).
The concept of glocalization has drawn attention again more recently in various fields of inquiry, such as education, social work, and organizational studies – among others. Roudometof (2015) suggests several clusters of scholarship in the study of glocalization that are, perhaps, mostly relevant in urban and management studies, and also in consumer culture studies. The analytical employment of glocalization in the latter, suggests Roudometof, was primarily in the discourse on the role, the significance, and impact of consumption upon societies and cultures around the globe. Academic debates on glocalization within the consumer culture cluster were therefore polarized between exploration of the socio-economic facets of organizations, on the one hand, and the tailoring of goods and services to diversified consumer audiences, on the other. Yet, the scholarly focus on tailoring goods and services to various audiences, he points out, lies mostly in the varied appropriations of similar commercial objects in diverse cultures, leaving out the cultural logic of the capitalist enterprise, or the very management of organizations (Roudometof, 2015).
Such a lacuna is clearly expressed in foreign news scholarship. Global news broadcasters, such as CNN International, BBC World News, Al Jazeera and so on, for example, are known for sending their signals worldwide, while their meanings are conveyed differently by members of varying social groups (Cohen, 2002, 2013; Cohen and Roeh, 1992). Similarly, news agencies’ clients around the world (local and global news outlets) receive packages (video, stills, and text) of raw material for potentially arresting stories internationally. This results in the selection of certain items which, in turn, will be modified at the clients’ end to fit local demands. Yet, much work is still needed on the manufacturing processes of such signals and raw materials, and their consequences.
The following discussion explores the forces that govern the agencies’ international system of photo-making and their effects. It focuses on whether it is simply part of a large business scheme, forcing the agencies to tailor their goods and services to particular markets, or, rather, a far more elaborate system of production whereby such photo-products are designed to appeal both internationally and locally: a process which eventually defines the international news organization – a setting wherein social power is both settled and contested by various forces.
Of course, the idea that news organizations are sites of conflict is certainly not new (see, for example, Breed, 1955; Stark, 1962), it is especially significant when these are large-scale multi-cultural organizations that are likely to be affected by various administrative, social, and political complexities. This notion therefore deserves more attention – for several other reasons also.
First, it is important to remember that, much like all news products, international news also acquires certain layers of meaning in the very early stages of production as it transforms from an idea into a product (Ilan, 2018). Drawing from a long tradition in the study of news organizations and routines (see, for example, Molotch and Lester, 1973, 1974), it reflects not only the reality it is designed to render visible (if at all), but rather the set of processes within which news is created – the news work. To that end, such conflicts inside the agencies’ newsroom are those which, in many ways, contribute to the very making of international news; that is, how the news product ‘[…] comes to look like it does’ (Molotch and Lester, 1974: 111).
Second, when international news is packaged in the form of a special image – the (international) news photograph – its production apparatus becomes even more intriguing: having a more powerful link with indexicality than words, it serves as a dominant contributor in depicting the world ‘as it is’ (communicating through a high denotative force – both as photographic evidence and as international news information, this also helps enhance journalism’s authority as the main provider of information about the world). At the same time, however, it also works through a connotative force whereby various symbolic systems that draw on various meanings are in play in what is depicted (Zelizer, 2006).
When the news photo is explored in the international news agencies’ glocal production context, such ontological denotative/connotative tension is, in fact, settled through a special form of flexibility, a ‘chameleon-like effect’ (Zelizer, 2006: 5), in the very early stages of production: its denotative connection to a particular locale dissolves into its connotative traits to reflect a certain vagueness regarding its location, so that it can travel more freely – attracting global news markets while being able to be easily transformed at the request of various local domains (news or otherwise) to fulfil the needs of diverse audiences. 3
Such inner struggles in agencies’ news-photo production services, I would argue, are indeed problematic at times, yet at others they serve as part of a particular generative framework that is utilized productively by the agencies so that their news-photo products can eventually work at multiple levels and across diverse markets and cultures. More specifically, this article seeks to demonstrate how these local/global tensions and struggles, which appear at various levels of production, are a significant force to be considered in the making of extraordinary products – agencies’ news photos that are both aimed at global audiences and that, at the same time, are tailored to specific local demands. Eventually, what I hope to make manifest here is how these conjoined, and sometimes also contested, force-fields reflect on the overall international news organization – a significant player in the international news flow arena that is designed to produce news products that are taken as ‘one thing to all people’ but that is simultaneously propelled by different people from various sites, cultures, and professional backgrounds, and through multiple negotiations and conflicts.
Methodology
The findings in this article are derived, in part, from extensive ethnographic fieldwork on the production processes of news photos at a leading international news agency. This work was based on participant observation at various production sites (e.g. the local pictures desk, the global hub, The Guardian’s pictures desk, which served as the agency’s client) in three countries (Israel, the United Kingdom, and Singapore). In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with 26 pictures professionals: four global heads and managers, five global editors-in-charge, four global and one local senior editors, four global sub-editors, one global administrator, one global graphic journalist, and one local Israeli photographer – all from the agency; and with The Guardian’s head of photography, head of sub-editors, website picture editor and features’ picture editor, in 2005–2007, and later, in 2008–2011. 4 In-depth interviews were also conducted with the current agency’s local chief photographer in Israel and with two photographers from the two competing international news agencies operating in Israel during 2016–2017. This was done in order to flesh out (a) the glocal mechanisms that are activated in the production processes of news photos from Israel by international news agencies, (b) the forces that affect their execution, and (c) how these powers reflect on the international news organization. 5
In order to systematically analyse how glocalization is expressed in the making of news photos by international news agencies, the following analysis was focused on significant examples through a structure/process divide in the agencies’ photo services.
Of course, it is clearly difficult to separate structure and process in the study of news organizations, as one often dictates the other, and vice versa. Yet, in the glocal production context of news photos, I would argue, it is precisely because of such difficulty that this analytical framework is useful. In other words, what I hope to make clear later is that such process/structure tension is eventually what illustrates the dual functioning of glocalization in international news agencies – not only an elaborate business strategy to enhance sales (and therefore their products are both aimed globally and tailored locally), but also an essential element that runs through the international news organization’s genetic code.
Findings and discussion
Structure
The organizational mosaic
A spatial rescaling
In his recasting of a globalization process as one of glocalization, Swyngedouw (2004) suggests a form of scale transformations: a continuous reshuffling and reorganization of spatial scales serving as social strategies for control. The ‘Gestalt of scale’, Swyngedouw points out, becomes produced as temporary stand-offs in a socio-spatial power struggle. These struggles change the importance and role of certain geographical scales, reassert the importance of others, sometimes create entirely new significant scales, but – most importantly – these scale redefinitions alter and express changes in the geometry of social power by strengthening the power and control of some while disempowering others. (Swyngedouw, 2004: 34–35)
A similar spatial rescaling that also results in power struggles emerges in the agencies’ pictures divisions. In Israel and the Palestinian territories, the local photographers of all three agencies usually send their photos to picture editors operating at the regional desks, by whom the photos are being monitored before they are sent to clients: AP’s Middle East regional desk is in Egypt (Cairo), AFP’s is in Cyprus (Nicosia), and Thomson Reuters’ is in Poland (Gdynia).
In addition, when I conducted my observations at the agency, a unique spatially targeted division of the pictures service was established: the local bureau, having local photographers and editors working under a foreign chief photographer; the regional level of operations, on which several bureaus were reporting to a regional pictures editor (e.g. the Jerusalem bureau under the Middle East regional division); and all of the bureaus from around the world were sending their photos to the global pictures’ desk which was then located in Singapore, where local (Singaporean) editors did the final editing and then moved the photos to the agency’s global/local clients worldwide. These would then be published by local/global news providers and they were finally picked again in their ‘final’ form to undergo an impact inspection, at the agency’s international desk, by local pictures’ editors, who would learn from the percentage of the agency’s publications compared with its international rivals’ so as to improve future processes (Ilan, 2018).
This glocal structuring at the agency eventually enabled the complex local-global circulation of its news-photo products. At the same time, such institutional formations also serve as a unique mechanism through which to ensure the optimal quality control that is required in large organizations that are operating on a global scale, thereby strengthening the power of some spatial scales while disempowering others. Here, the regional hubs (and the former global desk) clearly serve as the agencies’ ‘last line of defence’ before the photos are sent out to local/global clients; if mistakes are made somewhere along the production line, they can easily be fixed (e.g. captions that have gone wrong and photos that are found to be too gory). 6
The spatial rescaling at the agencies’ pictures’ divisions therefore resembles a two-headed glocalization pattern: on the one hand, there is the restructuring at the institutional level (the international news organization) from a national scale upwards (the regional bureau, the global pictures’ desk, and the international desk) and downwards (the local pictures’ department). On the other, it also serves as part of an elaborate operational global-localization strategy, so as to strengthen control over diverse markets (Swyngedouw, 2004); a complete articulation of geographical scales that becomes ‘internalised in firm and inter-firm networks that reach from the local to the global and back again’ (p. 38). 7
Yet, such spatial divisions at the agencies can sometimes generate tensions that result in various power struggles. Note, for example, how an agency local photographer describes a chat with a global editor about captions, Not long ago, I sent a couple of pictures from a certain event and added my captions. For some reason, someone in Singapore insisted that I should change the captions. I refused, and he called up the editor in charge, who immediately solved this in my favour. After all, I was at the event and not him, so it’s pretty obvious. (Agency photographer, personal communication, 27 April 2006)
Indeed, this can simply be interpreted as a struggle over a sense of authority between a photographer (having firsthand knowledge of things) and some editor. However, when the editor is described as ‘someone from Singapore’, where the agency’s global pictures’ hub was then located, geographical distance (which also results in an occupational one) plays a significant part thereby contributing also to the formation of an intriguing local/global testimonial tension: the now local photographer was ‘there’, on the ground, and was able to witness the event(s), and therefore his testimony (in the form of captions, in this case) was more valid than that of a Singaporean (hence, a global) editor; locality dominates globality, as the testimony of the local (closer) photographer overrules that of a global (distant) editor.
The regional/global desks are clearly demonstrated here as being part of a larger socio-spatial strategy for control – the ‘final stop’. At the same time, they also serve as unique production sites that may generate a specific socio-spatial struggle over authority between the local and global levels of pictures’ operations.
Organizational cosmopolitans
All three international news agencies offer various career opportunities to their pictures’ employees. Such opportunities serve as incentives to pictures’ personnel not only to encourage them to excel in their current positions, but also to help in building an effective organizational hierarchy. New positions are open to anyone working in the agencies; pictures’ employees constantly receive information about new openings and can easily apply. This results in international photo services that are operated by hundreds of local and foreign photo employees working in various countries, having the option to move between positions and worldwide locations – organizational cosmopolitans (Tomlinson, 1999). This resembles Appadurai’s (1996) notion of guest workers in a dynamic model of a global economy and global cultural flows; a glocal structural formation whereby agency photo employees, much like other professional groups, are constantly moving or are having ‘fantasies of wanting to move’ between positions and bureaus (p. 34).
Of course, some agencies’ pictures’ professionals are clearly more ‘cosmopolitan’ than others, as some locals can move relatively easy around the world (e.g. those holding US or EU citizenships), while others cannot: Israelis, for example, are not welcome in several Arab countries, and neither are certain Arab citizens in Israel, and there is also the case of Palestinians, who, apart from their citizenship, are also constantly subject to various restrictions on mobility, depending on where they are based (e.g. Gaza or the West Bank).
There are, however, two cases here that deserve more attention than the others: First, in some locations, local photo professionals can be extremely valuable, given their local ‘expertise’ (and nationality), in which case, the agencies will have no interest in relocating them. In Israel, for example, the agencies employ both Israelis and Palestinians to cover the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Technically, this works well, as Israelis cannot cross over to Gaza nor can Palestinians cross to Israeli territory, and so such dual employment is necessary in order to achieve maximum coverage, as well as maintaining balanced coverage. The second is the case of the pictures’ chiefs who, unlike photographers and editors, are required by the agencies to move between positions and are replaced every few years. In ‘volatile’ regions, however, a more delicate chief positioning process is required in all three agencies: in Israel, the position of chief is often filled by a foreigner, primarily as a way to keep up neutral coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and also because a foreign chief can easily travel in both Israel and the Palestinian Territories and can help out in the daily coverage if necessary.
Here is an example of how Glocalization is made manifest in agencies’ pictures operations: local professionals are clearly an asset, given their local ‘expertise’; they are familiar with the territory, the language, and the cultural innuendos – they have local access. This clearly makes things easier throughout the coverage of various events, and also, as I later make clear, helps in the delicate selection process relating to which stories to cover and which to ignore. In ‘volatile’ regions (e.g. in Israel and the Palestinian territories) such professionals, who also hold the ‘right’ nationality, are an even stronger local asset, as they help to maintain balanced coverage.
The foreign chiefs, however, fulfill a global/local position on a number of levels: they belong to one of the more ‘cosmopolitan’ occupational groups at the agencies, as they are required to move. They also serve as the mediators between the local and global levels of operations, and therefore answer to the regional/global picture editors, but, at the same time, they are also responsible for all the local activity. Finally, in the more ‘volatile’ regions, their foreign nationality helps them to gain access to all regions, so they not only can assist local photographers in the daily coverage but also in keeping it neutral.
Yet, the fact that chiefs are replaced every few years may also cause some difficulties, especially in complex geo-political environments: it will often take some time for a new chief to ‘study the local story’ in complex regions and to become familiar with the local culture, and so it will take a while before new chiefs become productive. However, by that time, as I was told by an agency’s former pictures’ editor, they are already setting their eyes on their next position: On the one hand, I believe the decision to replace the head of the department after a certain period of time is right; the situation here [in Israel] requires someone who is fresh, mainly since the daily work of our photographers is rather intense. On the other, what usually happens here is that the new chief usually dedicates his first year to studying the local story, and so, in their last six months in the country, chiefs are already setting their eyes on where their new position will be. (Agency pictures editor, personal communication, 11 November 2016)
The case of organizational cosmopolitans thus illustrates two forms of glocalization at the agencies’ pictures’ divisions. On the one hand, a glocal branding of the agencies, as part of their elaborate business pictures’ strategy, is in play: the agencies cover the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the help of locals from both sides (who provide maximal coverage of the conflict areas, but who also contribute to the global image of balanced agencies) whose activities are usually monitored by foreign (neutral) chiefs, as the photo-products of such coverage are both aimed at global markets and are tailored to diversified clients and audiences. On the other, there is the very structure of the local departments, wherein temporary foreign chiefs, serving here as representatives of the global levels of operations, monitor the daily activities of the more permanent local professionals. Occasionally, this will lead to tensions in the departments: embittered employees having to comply with a foreign chief with less local ‘knowledge’, who then makes the wrong decisions about which local-global stories to cover, and how (as discussed in the next section); or, on the contrary, chiefs that are more interested in their next position than in the local story, in which case, the local employees are those ‘calling the shots’, and they are therefore sometimes given the impression that the foreign chief’s position is simply redundant.
Process
Glocal stories
While local news providers tailor their photo-story selection to local audiences, stories that are covered by international news agencies require a more complicated selection and execution procedure. On the one hand, these stories need to be internationally appealing, since an international agency eventually sells its materials to various local/global news providers from around the world. To that end, agency personnel are required to predict what might be found arresting by global audiences early in the selection of the stories that are covered daily, and this also affects their processes of production (see, for example, Gürsel, 2016). At the same time, however, these stories also require a certain ‘local sensitivity’, as their coverage will eventually be targeted by agency clients at local audiences (once they have been ‘locally’ modified at the local news organization; see, for example, Clausen, 2003, 2004).
The decision on which local stories are found more suitable internationally is clearly a complicated one to make; it is based on various factors and players along the production routine of agency news-photos, and the process almost always begins with a single question that has no clear answer – why is this of any interest to us? For example, a local photographer may thus come up with an idea for a story that his chief would gladly approve. 8 Or, on the contrary, the chief might send a photographer to cover a story even when, in the eyes of the photographer and the chief, there is no worthy agency story to cover, simply because its coverage is requested by a certain client in advance.
Such complexity can sometimes result in constant power struggles between professions, perhaps even over the very formation of locality. To begin with, agency photo chiefs, photographers, and editors alike are constantly preoccupied with the selection process of which daily events to cover, those which are deemed potentially arresting for global markets. In order to cover events locally while competing neck and neck with rival agencies, international agencies therefore employ local editors and photographers who, as I mentioned above, are familiar with the local surroundings and cultural codes and innuendoes. Yet, when the local activity is monitored by a foreign chief, this may result in certain inner conflicts about the selection/prioritization of stories and their coverage processes, over socio-spatial power. Agency photographers today, for example, receive information, written in a ‘local’ language, about events, mostly via closed WhatsApp groups and so on. This clearly empowers the local photographer, who very often needs to decide on his own, and sometimes very quickly, which stories are really worth coverage by an international agency, simply because ‘he [the chief] doesn’t know […] today with WhatsApp, SMS, he receives all the information, but he doesn’t know what it’s about’ (AFP photographer, personal communication, 13 December, 2016). Here, local knowledge is what enables the local photographer to exercise power over his foreign (global) chief throughout the delicate prioritizing process in regard to which stories to cover.
Sometimes, however, chiefs will argue with their local photographers about certain stories to cover that are, in fact, found to be less appealing (globally) by the photographers. In such eventualities, the photographers are clearly left frustrated about having to comply with their boss (see, for example, Ilan, 2018). However, this also has other effects: all news agencies also have a limited workforce in their local pictures’ departments. As a result, this requires a delicate prioritizing process in the selection of the stories to cover, as sending photographers to certain areas would necessarily eliminate their availability in others, in a case where any potential agency news events suddenly occur. Furthermore, there is also a delicate local/global news ecosystem to preserve. This means that the international news agency is required not to cover events that are found to be overly-local, since this may result not only in local news organizations having to let go of their own photo personnel (as they will simply rely on agency materials), but also in the agency not covering enough internationally appealing events.
A fascinating dual process therefore occurs here in the formation of locality: it is illustrated in the selection of news-photo events and their execution by international agency photo personnel as an ‘invention’ (Robertson, 1995); that is, the means to handle more efficiently the complex daily making of agency photo materials that are both internationally appealing and are yet tailored to particular markets demands. Yet, at the same time, it also represents a different, perhaps more elastic, form of locality, somewhere beyond the limited local event (Beck, 2000); one that is both strongly attached to a certain place but, at the same time, can also reach out to other localities, which enables it to become internationally accepted.
Glocal language: The glocal contextualization of events
International news agencies cover selected local events to international markets; a process within which photographers and pictures’ editors are constantly thinking of ways to allow such coverage to be ‘easily digested’ by clients internationally. In the captioning process this is done by way of a delicate word selection, so as to glocalize a local/global setting. Note, for example, how an AP photographer makes a decision on how to write down a particular location in one of his captions: In the past two years I have had lots of pictures from Mikhmoret [a small Israeli town] […]. If it’s by the sea, then I’ll write down ‘The Mediterranean Sea’ so that people will understand. Because, you know, there are refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea in Libya, in Italy, and there’s the Mediterranean Sea here [Israel]. (AP photographer, personal communication, 28 December 2016)
Two levels of representation are in play: first, there is the verbal description of the local photographer’s experience (for he was there, at the local scene) whereby an epistemological gap between the actual experience and its verbal description is formed (Peters, 2001). Then, there is the translation process – from Hebrew to English. And in the captioning process, a transition is being made from the private (experience) to the local public (for the verbal description is public; Peters, 2001), and, eventually, to a glocal audience; that is, from experience through a local, verbal description (Hebrew) on to a glocal verbal one (English) wherein the local setting (‘by the sea’) is being glocalized (‘by the Mediterranean Sea’).
Sometimes, however, the delicate selection of words in agencies’ captions also reflects a glocalization process, since it is simply designed to communicate neutrality so as to make the photos ‘easily digested’ by global/local audiences. In some cases, a verbal description of certain figures/locations may thus make it seem as if an agency is showing its support to one side or the other. In such situations, photographers and editors are therefore told to stick to the agency’s ‘Bible’, as described by an AFP photographer: ‘We would never write “terrorists”; Jerusalem is “Jerusalem” [and not, say, the capital city of the state of Israel]’ (AFP photographer, personal communication, 13 December 2016). Similarly, captions can also be used to communicate neutrality whenever the visual elements might suggest the agency is taking a side in the conflict, as I have already discussed elsewhere (see, for example, second event analysis in Ilan, 2018). It is then the visual denotative force of the photo that is dominated by the connotative traits of the written text, through which the photo acquires a particular neutral sense of place.
Finally, when text/image relations are put into the local/global production context, additional formations are unveiled. On the one hand, the caption can help in de-locating a possibly overly-local image. This can be done by slightly ‘blurring’ its location verbally, so that it will communicate better globally (like an image of a particular Tel-Aviv beach, captioned simply as ‘beach’). On the other hand, the caption can also help in communicating locality to a possibly, somewhat generic (and hence visually de-located), image (e.g. the image of a beach that is now captioned The Gordon beach in the City of Tel-Aviv). These relations, connecting text and image and connotative/denotative forces to various local/global formations, are therefore activated in the making of agencies’ news photos to enable their suitability in a glocal context that puts them to work for local and global audiences alike (see Zelizer, 2006).
To an extent, this resembles the observation made by Cohen et al. (2013) on the domestication processes of foreign events in the news which require a more phenomenological approach to the question of location, a question that exceeds the boundaries of geography; the ‘mental maps’ of the world, or the ‘geography inside people’s heads’ (Crang, 1998: 11). For ‘the study of “where” in news should not only be about geography in the traditional sense, but also about the relationship between people and places’ (Cohen et al., 2013: 8; see also Relph, 1976).
Conclusion
Journalists and editors from international news agencies are constantly occupied in the performance of gatekeeping processes, and they are eventually the ones who determine the form of international news coverage (Stępińska et al., 2013). Yet, when scholarly work on the manufacturing processes inside the agencies is lacking, it can only be assumed that ‘the actual use of their [the agencies] materials and their impact on the newscasts is significant, even if not clearly identified’ (Stępińska et al., 2013: 28).
This study offers a glimpse inside the hidden structure and production process of international news agency materials through focusing on the ways glocalization is performed in the making of agency news photos. It illustrates how glocal mechanisms are activated in various ways, early in the production process, so as to help to make agencies’ news photos international in appeal, and yet still tailored to specific local markets demands. On the other hand, it also suggests that the forces of glocalization have a significant impact on the process and on the very structural formations of international news agencies. Such forces illustrate the international news agency as a glocal arena in which power is constantly struggled over in various local/global sites of production: between personnel (local photographers vs foreign chiefs and global editors), between different spatial structures (global desk vs the local bureau), in the selection of the stories to cover (global vs overly-local), and in captions (communicating locality for a possible de-located image vs de-localizing a possible overly-local one).
Clearly, far more research is required on the leading international news agencies and on their visual products which, in many ways, determine the ways we perceive the world as it is. In particular, more ethnographic work is required on the daily labour that is invested by the agencies’ editorial personnel, through which agency news materials acquire additional meanings early in their making. Notwithstanding the vast changes that the international news flow arena has undergone in recent years, these powerful news providers are clearly here to stay for many years to come, and they very much set the tone for the future of international news. Eventually, this scholarly path through which a focus is put on international news’ industrial system of production, may add to our understanding of the news product at large; as that which illuminates the forces behind its making and the various divisions and forms of organization, and the relations between them, through which such forces are propelled.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
