It’s interesting to see some realism emerging in the media about the causes of the woes of newspapers and journalism as a profession. I can well recall speaking at a number of professional fora over a couple of years where suggestions that something other than changes in the mode of publication and technological shifts might be at the root of the crisis of the media and journalism met with quite hostile or dismissive responses.
Via Margaret Simons at Content Makers, a cri de coeur from Le Monde Diplomatique:
The internet has not destroyed journalism. It has been stumbling for some time under the weight of restructurings, marketing-driven content, contempt for working class readership, and under the influence of billionaires and advertisers. It wasn’t the internet that propagated the allies’ untruths during the first Gulf war (1991) or Nato’s during the Kosovo conflict or the Pentagon’s during the Iraq war. Nor can we blame the internet for the media’s inability to publicise the collapse of savings banks in the US in 1989 and the collapse of emerging nations eight years later, or to warn of the housing bubble for which we are all still paying the price. So if the press really needs to be saved, public money would be better spent on those who purvey information reliably and independently rather than those who just hawk malicious gossip. Those who want to make money from investments or from being pens for hire can find resources elsewhere.
Accusations against the internet often reveal more than legitimate concern about the ways in which knowledge is disseminated: the fear that the reign of a few powerful editorial figures is ending. Dispensing favours in a feudal style, they have created their own domains, arranged sinecures and had the power to make and break ministers and reputations. Unanimous approval greeted their projects and opinion columns. Here and there a few irreverent papers held out. But then one day hordes of the unwashed appeared with their laptops.
If the public remains unmoved, it’s in part because they have realised that the talk of freedom of expression is often just a smokescreen for media owners’ interests.
“Imagine”, says US academic Robert McChesney, “the federal government had issued an edict demanding that there be a sharp reduction in international journalism, or that local newsrooms be closed or their staffs and budgets slashed. Imagine if the president had issued an order that news media concentrate upon celebrities and trivia, rather than rigorously investigate and pursue scandals and lawbreaking in the White House… Professors of journalism and communication would have gone on hunger strikes… entire universities would have shut down in protest. Yet, when quasi-monopolistic commercial interests effectively do pretty much the same thing, and leave our society as impoverished culturally… it passes with only minor protest in most journalism and communication programmes”.McChesney asks: “When, exactly, did Americans approve of the idea that a handful of corporations selling advertising were the proper stewards of the media or that it was inappropriate to ever question their power?
Murdoch goes over to China and spends a billion and with the same deal he put forward to the American establishment: help me set up here and I will shill for your interests at every turn. The Chinese establishment laugh at him and reply that they own the media already. They don’t need him. In that little episode, we have what is wrong with the western media. It is a corporate handmaiden for the establishment. Its success is its downfall.
The old media fiefdoms are indeed themselves to blame for their current problems. Admittedly its easy for us to now sit in judgement of their recent history but surely someone in the industry could have seen ten years ago where huge debt, evolving technology and advertising mobility would put them.
Yesterday I listened to Paul McGeough lament again over the death of the advertiser driven old world media model yet even he acknowledged that as a participant in the recent history of newspapers, he and others should have seen the future coming as far back as the 80’s. You could be excused for thinking that the demon internet is behind the staggering loss of editorial jobs in the US recently but strangely those job losses occurred at exactly the same time as all the funny money in the states disappeared.
I said it before in this forum and others, the journalists, the mighty champions of truth with the god given right to hold power to account have very much been sleepwalking their way through the last few decades. If it was just their necks on the line it mightn’t be so bad, but the damage done in terms of public confidence in the idea of journalism is far more reprehensible.
Perhaps they should all be offered knighthoods…
David_H said: “If it was just their necks on the line it mightn’t be so bad, but the damage done in terms of public confidence in the idea of journalism is far more reprehensible.”
The Internet has nothing to do with the issue of confidence in journalism. Public confidence in journalists has not been anything close to high in Australia for as many years as I can remember. Journalists are usually vying with the likes of politicians and used car salesmen for the bottom of the list.
Below is an extract from the Reader’s Digest Annual Survey of 2002:
1st Ambulance officers
2nd Fire-fighters
3rd Pilots
4th Nurses
5th Pharmacists
6th Doctors
…
21st Lawyers
22nd Journalists
23rd Trade unions
24th Marketers
25th Car salesmen
26th Politicians
Note that Journos rate lower than lawyers.
http://www.grif.com.au/Trusted-Occupations.75.0.html
And in 2006:
1. Ambulance officers
2. Firefighters
3. Pilots
4. Nurses
5. Pharmacists
6. Doctors
…
22. Lawyers
23. CEOs
24. On-the-street donation collectors
25. Journalists
26. Real estate agents
27. Psychics
28. Car salesmen
29. Politicians
30. Telemarketers
http://rabqsa.livejournal.com/2926.html
I can’t find a more recent poll result online, but I’m willing to bet that the profession of journalism is still in similar company at the bottom end of the list.
… here’s 2009:
30. Lawyers
31. Taxi drivers
32. Journalists
33. Professional footballers
34. CEO’s
35. Sex workers
36. Real estate agents
37. Psychics/astrologers
38. Politicians
39. Car salesmen
40. Telemarketers
http://www.readersdigest.com.au/popular/australias-most-trusted-professions-2008-readers-digest-australia/article77699.html
I wish I could find some pre-Internet years online, but those of us who remember the pre-computer times, in the heyday of the print media, will be familiar with the old saying, “There are only two things you can trust in a newspaper — the date and the price.”
socratese are you quoting readers digest? As to the general trustworthiness of journalist in recent history, relative to other professions I don’t have any dispute with the results but that’s not my point. Specifically, my point is that if journalists were consistently true to own code of conduct then perhaps the public could have reason to trust journalists when they say the end is nigh.
“are you quoting readers digest?”
In the absence of any other such survey that I’m aware of, yes. If there’s another such survey, please point me to it.
“if journalists were consistently true to own code of conduct then perhaps the public could have reason to trust journalists when they say the end is nigh”
I don’t think the public is half as interested in the fate of journalism as the old school journalists would have us want to believe.
Margaret Simons (above) sums it up nicely: “If the public remains unmoved, it’s in part because they have realised that the talk of freedom of expression is often just a smokescreen for media owners’ interests.”
The Internet is the best thing to happen to news dissemination. Attempts to spin the news to suit the publisher are soon outed for what they are.
Rupes has been too successful. He has almost managed a monopoly on “journalism”, and turned it into a parody.
The journos are now indeed like salesmen, which may explain why they rate along with other salesmen (real estate and cars) @3 and @4 above.
Sad really, because there is a useful role there. Most of us need people to interpret and explain complex policy like the ETS, and complex trends like the GFC, and warn about misdemeanors like Watergate, etc.
I guess when the journos turned into salesmen for Rupes, the rest of us turned to the internet? Rupes effectively killed his golden goose, by strangulation.
So now the good jounos will have to earn a crust some other way, perhaps by making documentaries or writing books?
roy morgan polling shows that nurses (89%) have topped the most trusted profession for the last 15 years.
At the foot of the table were the ‘familiar suspects’ with Car Salesman (3%, down 1%) being the profession least associated with ‘ethics’ and ‘honesty’ while Advertising people (6%, down 3%) are the lowest they have been since the survey began in 1979. Newspaper Journalists (9%, down 5%), Estate Agents (10%, unchanged) and Insurance brokers (11%, down 4%) are also perceived as the least ethical.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2009/4387/
None of the foregoing appears to address the changing sources of information journalists use to write stories.
The whole idea that journalism begins with a press release, and ends when that press release has been slightly rewritten with a short quote from somebody else, meant that the value proposition of journalism was always vulnerable to a new technology that a) made original sources of information more directly available, and b) made additional sources of interpretation available.
I think people underestimate serious news as a source of value. The failure to of people to appreciate Canberra groupthink has led marketing not to improve the quality of the journalism, but to regard serious issue journalism per se as boring.
The question is then: what are readers interested in? One answer is celebrity journalism – but this is problematic as people who are seriously interested in celebrity news wouldn’t go to [insert name of Australian mainstream outlet here] anyway. It’s a desperate tactic that doesn’t appear to be working.