Extractivism and Its Discontents: Al Jazeera English's Coverage of Latin America

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Pizarro, Marcela. 2023. Extractivism and Its Discontents: Al Jazeera English's Coverage of Latin America. In: Bruce Mutsvairo; Saba Bebawi and Eddy Borges-Rey, eds. The Routledge Companion to Journalism in the Global South. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 209-219. ISBN 9781032287065 [Book Section]

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Abstract or Description

In the past few decades, Al Jazeera English (AJE) has attracted much academic interest as a channel that set itself apart from global news behemoths such as the BBC and CNN by pledging to produce journalism on and from the “Global South.” Communication scholars have characterized AJE as an example of a “contraflow,” suggesting that in the age of globalized telecommunications, media around the world have been able to contest the monopoly of Western-dominated global TV news journalism. In this chapter, I would like to move the focus to the concept of “extractivism” to characterize news production from the Global North and to suggest that Al Jazeera’s journalism represents a counter to it. Usually applied to the exploitation of natural resources in the Global South, a discussion of extractivism in the field of international journalism allows for a critical understanding of foreign news production itself. This chapter asks if AJE’s coverage on Latin America can be seen as an antidote to the extractivist dynamics of foreign media coverage of the continent. I begin by showing how the channel’s news output disrupts certain trappings of foreign journalism in important ways but that it has never veered radically beyond mainstream conventions. I then argue that other types of programming, such as documentary strands, discussion shows, and magazine shows on the channel (rarely included in scholarship on AJE) perform a series of critical operations to counter the extractivist logics of news production on the region. I suggest the channel has done this by producing knowledge, be it through local journalists, academics, and analysts who are positioned in the “Global South.”

Item Type:

Book Section

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003298144

Additional Information:

“This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge Companion to Journalism in the Global South on 21 November 2023, available online: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Journalism-in-the-Global-South/Mutsvairo-Bebawi-Borges-Rey/p/book/9781032287072. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.”