While the warnings about the demise of viable journalism could hardly have been any clearer, when the vote was taken it was overwhelmingly in support of the freedom and opportunities offered by the internet. Unesco’s annual World Press Freedom Day debate (2.5.2008) produced a spirited exchange of views but ended with a 43-13 vote to reject a motion that “new media is killing journalism.”
Rather than pose a threat the supporters of new media believed that websites and blogs would be the saviour of journalism, continuing a revolution which began with the arrival of the printing press and which was currently producing an outpouring of opinion akin to the 18th century free for all when “anyone could write anything” in the political pamphlets of the day.
But the ominous prediction from the other side of the argument was that the professional journalist would become an endangered species because money was leaching away from the press and into the new media. In fact newspapers were facing a lingering death because no one had found a viable way on re-inventing them on the internet.
Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing Our Culture, said the new media represented a cultural rebellion against the authority of journalists. “The future of new media is personalised networks like Facebook. More and more people will come to rely on these networks and the people they know; they will only trust their friends not journalists.
“People feel that the new media is a good thing but it is a socio-economic fact that the professional world of journalism is being democratised and once mainstream journalists become bloggers they lose their authority.
“The internet has led to an explosion in opinion and we are all empowered to be commentators but the future of new media will be an increasingly personalised, chaotic and colourful environment in which professional journalism will die out. It will no longer be viable to sustain journalists who want to be paid for the collection of information and its distribution by gatekeepers who are accountable. New media does not support viable newspaper business employing journalists who want to earn a living.”
Keen’s predictions were described as “absurd” by the broadcaster Robin Lustig who considered those who were fearful of new media were like 15th. Century monks faced by the arrival of the printing press.
“More people have more access to more information the world over but as journalists we still deploy a core skill which is our ability to report and bloggers cannot replace the work of journalists, just as search engines cannot take place the of journalists. The vast majority of blogs on the internet are read by the blogger and the blogger alone.”
Kim Fletcher, chairman of the National Council for the Training of Journalists, said that while the BBC with its licence fee income and the Guardian with its charitable status were economic models which were sustainable their secure funding did not help every other journalist.
Journalism served an important social purpose, especially in the case of the local press, but money and resources were now “leaching out” of journalism and the collection of news in order to finance newspaper websites. There was less original journalism and more and more commentary in its place.
Fletcher cited the development of the Daily Telegraph’s website and its audio-visual programmes on Telegraph TV. “The Telegraph is doing a brilliant job in developing new media but as a consequence the paper is losing its specialist correspondents. The more resources are drained away from the Telegraph newspaper the more it weakens the resources for good journalism. What we are seeing is new media undermining paid-for journalism and that is what we will continue to see.
“Telegraph journalists who might have gone out to interview a contact are called back to appear on Telegraph TV. We laughed at 24 hour news when journalists stood outside and did a new report every fifteen minutes, just talking to camera. We are now doing the same in the newspaper business.”
Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, agreed there was ample evidence that user generated content and citizen journalism could add to what journalists did but while the potential was one thing, the reality was another.
An NUJ survey of thousands of journalists had shown that increasingly they felt they were unable to do their job properly because they were being asked to supply more and more platforms. Instead of enhancing the quality of their editorial output, newspaper groups were cutting costs and boosting profits. Of those surveyed, 75 per cent believed the quality of their work had been undermined by excessive workloads; 64 per cent had been asked to supply material to new platforms without extra resources; and 40 per cent were engaged in new media outlets without having been trained.
Dear said the Newspaper Trade Association represented 1,400 websites compared with 1,100 newspapers; 68 per cent of newspaper publishers used pod casts; 72 per cent integral video; 52 per cent did video casting; and 66 per cent produced content for mobiles.
John Kelly, of the Washington Post and a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute, believed journalists had fallen prey to the victim mentality because they had failed to keep pace with changes in technology. Rather than complaining they should embrace You Tube and political websites like Guido Fawkes. “Bloggers don’t want to kill journalism, it is the teat on which they suckle.”
But the most passionate defence of new media came from those who argued that it had opened up limitless opportunities in countries where the established media was heavily controlled or extremely limited.
Nazenin Ansari, President of the Foreign Press Association, argued that the internet and the access it gave had become a liberating force in Iran. Ivor Gaber said the journalism of Africa had been transformed by the internet. Instead of receiving newspapers a day or two late or being restricted to a couple of FM radio stations, information could be obtained instantly at an internet café.
The argument ended where it began with the pessimists convinced that new media would spell the death of the traditional newspaper business and the concept of paid for journalism. But the new media defenders were equally confident that ultimately advertising -- and especially classified advertising -- would sustain the internet journalism of the future.
END