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The Battle for Free Trade

The Reporting of Economic Globalisation in 1999

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The Political Content of British Economic, Business and Financial Journalism

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Abstract

The World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in Seattle in 1999 was a crucial moment in the development of economic globalisation. Delegates from national governments agreed that the trajectory of global trade was towards liberalisation. Outside of the Conference, however, an informal coalition of trade unions, environmental groups and NGOs highlighted the negative social consequences of this form of globalisation. With its statutory commitment to impartiality, one might expect the BBC to give credence to both positions. But the analysis of articles published around the time of the Conference reveals that the BBC’s coverage bore greater resemblance to the overtly pro-liberalisation Times and Sunday Times than the more traditionally left-leaning Guardian and Observer. Although the latter pair generally supported the progressive reformers, radical interpretations were excluded, and in very few instances were arguments for a more humanised version of economic globalisation pitched on equal terms against the dominant discourse

BBC (1999n).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Chanda (2007: 246–247) analysed a database of 8000 newspapers, magazines and reports and found that ‘globalization’ appeared in just two items in 1981. Appearances increased significantly in the late 1990s and hit 57,235 in 2001.

  2. 2.

    The search phrases were: ‘World Trade Organisation ’; ‘WTO’; ‘globalisation ’; ‘anti−WTO’; and ‘anti−globalisation’.

  3. 3.

    For the sake of brevity, references to the Guardian−Observer sample will henceforth be shortened to the ‘Guardian’. Similarly, the Times−Sunday Times will become the ‘Times’.

  4. 4.

    The labels ‘anti−capitalists’ and ‘anarchists ’ were also attached to dissenters. See below—critical discourse analysis .

  5. 5.

    The BBC News website lists ‘economy’ as a subset of ‘business’. This is, arguably, the inverse of what one may expect.

  6. 6.

    For example, ‘fight’, ‘disorder’, ‘violence’, ‘dispute’, ‘protest ’, etc.

  7. 7.

    For example, ‘negotiate’, ‘discuss’, ‘debate’, ‘impasse’, ‘stalemate’, etc.

  8. 8.

    News items based predominantly on an extended statement, a speech, manifesto or a prediction.

  9. 9.

    These tendencies are discussed in greater depth in the discourse analysis section.

  10. 10.

    The WTO is officially non−partisan but the then WTO director general Mike Moore ‘believes that free trade is a force for good and spent his life savings… campaigning for the job of pushing forward the process of liberalisation ’ (Elliott 1999a).

  11. 11.

    See Chapter 1.

  12. 12.

    This includes the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, the Scottish Nationalist Party and the Liberal Democrats.

  13. 13.

    Political positions and discourse patterns are discussed in detail below.

  14. 14.

    The remainder were typically foreign newspaper journalists or anonymous ‘correspondents’.

  15. 15.

    For example, President Clinton voiced his support for minimum international labour standards (BBC 1999d).

  16. 16.

    See Chapter 2: methodology.

  17. 17.

    The weighted total was calculated by multiplying the frequency of articles in the ‘detailed coverage’ category by 3; ‘brief coverage’ by 2; ‘acknowledged’ by 1, ‘critical coverage’ by minus 1 and ‘no mention’ by zero. See Chapter 2.

  18. 18.

    This chart understates the liberalisation figure of the Times by 5% because the charting software doesn’t accommodate the minus 5% score for fundamental reform .

  19. 19.

    In 1999, the BBC News website did have not have reporters’ blogs nor the ‘Have Your Say’ reader comment facility.

  20. 20.

    The bellicose theme was also evident in several article headlines. For example, ‘Hippies declare web war on WTO ’ (BBC 1999f) and ‘Body blow for free trade ’ (BBC 1999h).

  21. 21.

    ‘Modernisation ’, ‘change’ and ‘reform ’ were defining words of the first half of Blair’s tenure as prime minister. See Chapter 4.

  22. 22.

    Destroying genetically modified crops (Riddell 1999).

  23. 23.

    This photograph was also the lead image for three more BBC articles which further imprinted the association with violent dissent and anarchy in readers’ minds.

  24. 24.

    For example, some BBC articles that conceived the WTO −globalisation as a development, environmental or labour issue used images of life in Africa, plants and workers, respectively.

  25. 25.

    This subset represents almost a quarter of BBC articles.

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  1. University of Roehampton, London, UK

    Gary James Merrill

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  1. Gary James Merrill
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Correspondence to Gary James Merrill .

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Merrill, G.J. (2019). The Battle for Free Trade. In: The Political Content of British Economic, Business and Financial Journalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04012-3_3

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