WorldView was prime time CNN. They broadcast at 6:00 p.m. eastern; it was the evening news. And it was, as the anchors frequently announced, broadcast live around the world. Its audience was the world. BBC World News is equally global in focus. They broadcast live to the United States. They broadcast live to the world.

For the first time in history live news is able to be global news.

The possiblity does not guarantee its coming into being, however. Someone had to want to do global broadcasting. Earlier than other American television owners and executives Ted Turner wanted to be in the global news business [Flournoy and Stewart, 1997]. Cable Network News was established as an independent news channel in 1980, and very shortly thereafter he began to explore how he might take it global. BBC was global much earlier. Its radio broadcasting to the Commonwealth led quite straightforwardly into television for the globe as the technology became available in the 1980s and 1990s.

What are the constraints that operate when a network aspires to a global audience? How do they position themselves differently and broadcast differently than do networks that aspire to a less global audience? How does the resulting broadcasting contribute to and shape an emerging global political culture? These are the questions we pursue in this report.

Before turning to these questions it is important to be clear about how the story is told differently when the audience is the world and when it is a narrower audience. We will begin by examining a single story that was told by both CNN Headline News and BBC's World News.

The day was April 8, 2002. The story was the rise in oil prices. It was the lead story for Headline News, and this is how they set it up for their audience.

Click on the Image to Go To the Video

It was the first preview for the thirty minute broadcast. You should watch this broadcast to learn what it will cost you to drive this summer -- they said.

Click on the Image to Go To the Video

• The government says drivers are going to pay a lot more to drive this summer.
• The price will be the third highest in history.
• The announcement was made after Iraq canceled oil exports for a month.
• Sadaam is willing to let his people suffer.
• The scale of the impact depends on what other countries do, and we will have to wait and see about that.

It was a story for American drivers who were warned to get ready for high gasoline prices in the forthcoming summer. And they were told who to blame -- Sadaam's Iraq.

Flournoy, Don M. and Robert K. Stewart (1997) CNN Making News in the Global Market, University of Luton Press.