In an age of unprecedented access to information, true and otherwise, people of all ages must improve their media literacy. But that does not let media organizations off the hook. With the help of an aware and critical audience, they must monitor themselves and one another, as they have done in the past.
Two years of bringing media leaders together – this is what I learned
For two years I’ve been in charge of the leadership programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, a home for those who care deeply about journalism and its role in democracy. Listening to and conversing with media leaders and committed journalists from all over the world has shed new light on many issues I had felt so certain about, after having been a journalist for more than 25 years, 15 of these in leadership roles. This is what I learned:
- First, tech is seductive, but it will always be always about people. Senior editors and managers often came to us curious about the latest tools, and the developments in data and tech. But these challenges are manageable. What puzzled editors most were the seemingly mundane things: how to communicate with your newsroom, how to prevent your staff from burning out, how to retain talent, how to create a culture that embraces the adventurous journey of digital transformation while preserving the core of why everyone joined the profession — doing great journalism. There are no fool-proof recipes for this, no miracle tools. But a lot of listening and sharing best-practice helps.
- Second, trust is a difficult matter. Who doesn’t complain about diminishing trust in the digital age? All institutions suffer from it, the media included. In previous decades, people would just read the newspaper or listen to the evening news and trust them, journalists complain. But was this a good thing? Of course, earning trust today is much harder work. Audiences can resort to more sources, compare quality, call things into question, and they also have the means for immediate feedback. This can be a pain for resource-stretched newsrooms. But it is also a call to focus on the basics — focusing on quality, explaining how journalism works, and engaging with those whom the news is published for. Healthy scepticism within the citizenry is an indicator of media literacy and democratic freedom. By the way, some authoritarian regimes rank highly in trust– but it is often born out of fear.
- Third, journalism is a consumer good and a public good. This makes the business of selling journalism messy. In pretty much every industry the willingness to pay is 100 percent. Whether it is the bakery, the clothing store, or the hotel, there is one rule — no money, no product. Meanwhile, willingness to pay for digital news is on average only 14 percent according to the 2018 Digital News Report. There is an abundance of free news to choose from, so consumers need reasons to shell out funds for journalism. And in contrast to popular assumptions, micropayments for single pieces of content are not it. When audiences pay, they do it for experiences, for the expectation of quality, for purpose. Those who want to sell their journalism have to tick at least one of these boxes. Some journalism is also a public good in the service of democracy after all, public service media must provide it.
- Fourth, newsroom leaders better learn how to lead diversity, because running a successful newsroom is about the culture. The diversity of newsrooms is an increasingly major concern for today’s newsroom leaders, at least this is what they say. And they have a point: newsrooms are too male, too white (in the West), too homogenous politically, too urban, and too academic, thus too far removed from the reality of many of the people they serve (the Reuters Institute and the University of Mainz will publish a study on this on July 2, 2019). But hiring diverse talent, as challenging as it might be, is only the first step. For diverse talent to flourish and have an impact, it needs real and active support. Continue with the old routines, hierarchies and practices, and diverse candidates will either hyper-conform or opt out. The impact of this kind of “diversity” is zero. Women or minorities choose the news differently when given enough voice. You’d better listen.
- Fifth, journalism has become more of a craft than an art. But it can’t do without some great artists. Newsrooms used to center around a bunch of reporters and editors, the rest was supporting staff. They attracted big and vulnerable egos, many narcissists and some others who tagged along but could be easily replaced. This doesn’t work in an environment where journalists, product developers, data scientists, marketing experts and many more have to work in teams that produce great and commercially successful journalism. A great product is no longer the achievement of a lone star player but of many hands. Some egos have to restrain themselves, which makes digital transformation particularly hard in old-style TV environments. On the other hand, successful journalism can also be built around single expert journalists who become brands. They run events, publish newsletters, go on cruise ships. Every newsroom profits from a few stars, but none can run without plenty of craftspeople.
- Sixth, too much of journalism is dominated by a Western worldview. As in every industry, there is a huge conference circuit around journalism where the same individuals meet over and over again in different settings. And it is heavily dominated by American and European participants. Certainly, some stars from the Global South are welcome guests and admired speakers, if only to remind the others that in many parts of the world journalism is a profession that requires more human sacrifices than making below-than-average money and being harassed on social media. But the debates are still very much framed through the Western lens. It doesn’t help that powerful American platform companies, mostly Facebook and Google, shape plenty of the issues at stake (and finance many conferences — as their Chinese counterparts do on the other side of the globe). Developing sustainable business models, research and fact-checking tools and support networks for journalist safety are even more important for newsrooms in the Global South. They face some of the same but also very different battles to save journalism in the digital age.
- Seventh, there will be plenty of AI in journalism, but there will be no journalism without journalists. Rejecting artificial intelligence for the sake of journalism jobs is wrong. There are already plenty of examples of ways that AI can improve products, help sell subscriptions and free newsroom talent from tedious tasks that consume energy which should go toward great journalism. AI can be used to analyze data and point to stories that we may not have noticed before, it monitors audience behaviour and identifies what people care about. Nevertheless, journalism will always thrive on dedicated, committed, sometimes inspiring journalists who are in it for a cause. This is what makes our industry so special.
This column was published by NewsMavens on June 16, 2019
Leadership matters, men matter, but culture matters even more
Why the BBC’s 50:50 initiative has been a success.
It could have been a reporter’s feast, that BBC Director General Tony Hall turned up with a black eye when he opened the BBC’s 50:50 project celebration. This is an initiative that has been successful in bringing up “female” content in many of the participating programs above the magical 50-percent-line, and it has been joined by prestigious national and international media organizations.
But exploiting Hall’s injury from a minor weekend accident as a telling image for scars acquired in the battle of the sexes would have completely missed the point. Because the strength of the 50:50 project, as participants tell you, has been the spirit of friendly competition. Everything was voluntary, no quotas, no obligations, no shaming. And the initiator was a man.
The impressive statistics are all written down in the project report. More than 500 teams signed up. Out of the teams that were running for twelve months or more, three out of four (74 percent) had reached 50 percent of female representation. And the endeavor supplied insights that are not incredibly surprising for those who know a thing or two about leadership and gender equality. But they are so much more convincing when proven and felt in real life.
First, it’s actually not that hard to get female experts and contributors. It just needs to be given the proper priority. Even in sports progress is possible. And the project challenged other assumptions, for example, that there were no women heavyweights to go on air in the Arab world. Surprise, surprise, there are plenty. This should have been expected, given that girls excel in schools and universities all over the globe once they are given the opportunity. But to see it and hear it is a different matter altogether.
Second, leadership matters. It did matter a lot that Director General Tony Hall got fired up about the project. Because who wants to disappoint their top leadership instead of impressing them? What he loved about it, he said, was that there was a big idea and someone would simply go for it. Not regard representation of society as an aspiration, but as something that can be done and achieved step-by-step in the daily works.
Third, experiments matter. It’s convenient to declare something impossible and get on with life or wait for some regulation to happen. But how does one know it wouldn’t work if one hasn’t even tried? Experiments can be fun, too, particularly if they are small scale and there is little to lose but everything to gain from the momentum they create. The fact that this project was voluntary, created all the conditions for a great experiment. Just the goal was carved in stone, achieve this by April 30, 2019. And once experiments work, they can be shared as best-practice examples across the whole industry. The BBC can be proud of being a pace-setter.
Fourth, men matter. Nobody would have said this aloud, and in fact, women took the lead in many teams all over the place. But that popular anchor Ros Atkins was the front man of the 50:50 effort killed all the suspicions that this was just another feminist thing by women who are in it for their own careers (yes, many women have encountered hidden accusations of this sort). Finding male allies is a powerful strategy to getting things done.
Fifth, representation matters, and it’s all about cultural change. Many media organizations are aware of the fact these days that they can’t pursue business as usual if they want to (re)gain the trust of their audiences. The media has been representing the few and catered to for few way too long. The current crisis of journalism is not only one of business models, it is also a crisis of representation. Many top leaders in the industry are aware of this. Now it is time to get into the doing.
This text was published by NewsMavens on May 16, 2019
Do you really have to be a brand? Don’t worry, some of the best leaders aren’t
Social media news feeds constantly tout the necessity of turning ourselves into a brand but if we don’t want to can there still be an upside?
Power and pin money: Time for a new deal between big tech and the media
There’s a clear irony in engaging in a lively debate about the impact of big tech companies on journalism as part of a festival largely financed by Google and Facebook. The recent International Journalism Festival in Perugia offered more than one example of this. Welcome to the new media universe, in which powerful platform companies call the shots and news organisations struggle to keep up.
Big tech and the mainstream media currently appear to be locked in a love-hate relationship – one in which hypocrisy plays a large part. The same people who often criticise the Silicon Valley giants in public are more than happy to take their money when it is offered. The time has come for a more pragmatic approach.
Tech companies influence the media in several ways. Most importantly, their algorithms dictate the kind of content that readers see. If Facebooks decides to go slower on news – as it did in 2018 – users see less of it in their feeds. The way in which Google ranks search results has a direct impact on the exposure that media brands get.
Secondly, platform companies influence the kind of innovation projects and storytelling formats that newsrooms feel able to take on board. New tech projects almost invariably receive the label “innovation”, whether or not they are genuinely innovative. “The expensive job of innovation in newsrooms increasingly means asking ‘What would Google want?’ – influencing what newsrooms choose to develop, from virtual reality, to voice skills, to photo libraries”, the Tow Center’s Emily Bell writes. The consequence is that other areas in which innovation is desperately needed – management styles, processes, talent acquisition and retention – tend to be neglected.
Thirdly, big tech companies engage in direct funding. They support projects, research, training and the like. The collaborative research project “The Publishers’ Patron”, carried out by Netzpolitik, Republik and Falter and led by Alexander Fanta, shows the contribution made by Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI) to journalism innovation.
No more “church and state” separation
What should we make of all this? Of course, newsrooms have never been totally independent of the media ecosystem in which they operate. Media outlets have always had to contend with powerful owners, advertising clients and political interests lurking in the background. And let there be no mistake: even crowdfunding is not without its pitfalls if the funders feel let down, as the heated debate around The Correspondent’s unexpected withdrawal from the US has demonstrated.
The situation has evolved in recent years. There used to be a clear division between the editorial and the business sides – similar to the concept of the separation of church and state – which wasn’t perfect but was at least an attempt to shield newsrooms from external pressures. This has now gone for good, as it no longer makes sense in a digital environment in which product development, marketing and editorial have to work hand in hand. And on top of that, platforms have a much greater influence on the daily business of producing news than anything ever seen before.
It’s an inescapable fact that journalism needs all the help it can get, and most media outlets are in no position to reject (well-intended) support. The Washington Post under its owner, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, is a good example of how a news organisation can flourish given certain conditions – the main ones being stable, transparent investment and editorial independence.
Here are some thoughts on what the two sides of the equation need to bear in mind before deciding to accept or offer funding, whether this is for a newsroom, a research institution, training and knowledge exchange or for tools to facilitate editorial work:
Tips for recipients
- Make sure your funding comes from a range of reliable sources. Diversity of income sources used to be the rule in the days of advertising, and it should still apply. Your business should not be entirely dependent on one source of income.
- Consider what the money will be used for. Is it a small-scale experiment or a narrowly defined project, or does it have an impact on your core business? This makes a difference to the precautions you need to take. Don’t use the money for research that is directly related to the donor. For example, it’s not a good idea to use Google money to research the influence of Google. (It must be tricky for Washington Post reporters to carry out investigations into Amazon, even if they claim there is nothing to stop them doing this.)
- Only take money for projects that make sense in the context of your strategy. Every news organisation is different: audiences, business environments, missions and needs vary. Instead of jumping onto a bandwagon and allowing yourself to be seduced by “bright shiny things”, think carefully about the funding offer. Does it fit your particular needs? Does it allow you to make further progress along your chosen path? Or is it just something fun to do? There’s nothing wrong with fun, but if the funding runs out you might find yourself saddled with a set of experts you no longer need, and that you neglected other more relevant areas in the meantime.
- Make sure donors don’t interfere with your research and content. Think about the terms of engagement beforehand. Read the small print. Establish independent oversight bodies where necessary. This is particularly important for academic institutions.
- Think about the impact on your reputation. It’s better to have a communication strategy already in place before making any grand announcements. TU Munich, one of Germany’s most prestigious universities, recently had a hard time fending off criticism after it accepted a sizeable Facebook grant for research into the ethics of Artificial Intelligence.
- If you can, do without it. Independence is wonderful and essential to enable journalism to fulfil its role in a democratic society. Though there’s no such thing as complete independence, it’s best to avoid entering into a role that entails additional dependency.
Tips for donors
- Ideally, don’t tie your funding to content. Respect the need for independent journalism and research as a public good and don’t do anything that risks compromising this.
- Don’t make funding contingent on political goals – and if you do, be transparent about it. People will always suspect a hidden political agenda and you will soon come unstuck if you pay lip-service to neutrality and non-interference but fail to respect these principles in practice.
- Don’t ever threaten to withdraw funding. Be aware that you are engaging in a highly asymmetrical relationship, so treat your partners with respect. Take care not to increase their level of dependency.
- Listen to recipients. Find out what they really need. Don’t tell them what they should need or talk them into projects they don’t have the capacity to run.
- Subject potential recipients to proper scrutiny. It’s embarrassing if you have to withdraw funding because you haven’t done your homework, for example by failing to check out a recipient’s political allegiances – as happened when Google announced it had decided to award a grant to a Hungarian news website, then pulled the grant after critics pointed out that the outlet had been guilty of spreading right-wing propaganda.
- Predictability and transparency are key. Organisations need long-term commitments to be able to plan ahead and help their employees feel secure. They need to know where they are at.
- Don’t let your support look like pin money if you really want to make a difference. (Unless all you want is to offer a bit of pin money…)
- Pay your taxes. The American approach to giving puts the emphasis on the discretion of the individual donor. They decide what their money is used for. The European approach works through the tax system and involves redistribution via democratic processes, with representatives of society deciding on priorities. If you try to circumvent the democratic process, you will be seen as considering yourself to be above the law.
The platform companies often try to depict their engagement in the media industry as a way of “giving back”. This is a very transactional way of framing it. Journalism has a critical role to play in democracies. Ideally it makes sure that all interests are heard, holds power to account and gives citizens all the information they need. This is vital for stability in free societies. A better way of viewing big tech’s engagement in the media is as a “shared responsibility”, in which those who have more are happy to do more of the sharing.
Disclosure: The author used to be the Managing Editor of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which doesn’t accept Google funding. She now runs the Leadership Programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. While the Institute benefits from sizeable grants made by platform companies (including Google), the Leadership Programmes are customer-funded and so compete with “free”, Google-funded educational programmes. She has also written a media column for NewsMavens, which is funded by the Google News Initiative.
This text was published by European Journalism Observatory on April 29, 2019
Journalism’s Risky Tech Attraction
There is nothing wrong with using technology to solve problems, including those created by technology, or to give a company a competitive edge. But not even the most advanced tech will save the media industry if there is no regard for the people – journalists and audiences – who are asked to use it.
OXFORD – Technology was supposed to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Connect everyone to the Internet, it was once assumed, and democracy would follow. Collect enough data, and all of our questions would be answered. Put everything online, and algorithms would do the rest. The world would practically run itself.
Instead, we now know that digital technology can be used to undermine democracy; that it raises more questions than it answers; and that a world that runs itself seems more like an Orwellian nightmare scenario than a noble goal. But while technology isn’t the solution, it isn’t really the problem either; our single-minded focus on it is.
Consider the experience of the media industry, where the digital revolution has wreaked havoc on prevailing business models over the last decade. Publishers and editors responded by putting all their faith in technology: tracking all manner of metrics, embracing data journalism, hiring video teams, and opening podcast studios.
More recently, media organizations have shifted their attention toward artificial-intelligence solutions that track audience preferences, automatically produce desired content and translations, alert journalists to breaking news, and much more. In the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s latest annual report on media trends, 78% of respondents in a non-representative survey of international media leaders said that they planned to invest more in AI this year.
But the final frontier in the quest to save journalism, many believe, is the blockchain – the distributed ledger technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. That remains to be seen: the first attempt to leverage the blockchain to free journalists from ad-driven business models, by Civil Media Company, had a bumpy start.
There is nothing wrong with using technology to solve problems, including those created by technology, or to give a company a competitive edge. That is what The Washington Post, for example, has been doing in the six years since Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos purchased it (at a time when it was hemorrhaging money and shedding jobs).
But not even the most advanced tech will save the media industry, or anybody else, if there is no regard for the people using it. And that does not mean just audiences. After years of chasing the latest tech trends, the media industry is increasingly confronting burnout among existing management and staff, and a shrinking pool of new talent.
According to the Reuters Institute report, some 60% of media leaders are concerned about burnout on their teams, and 75% now worry about retaining and attracting staff. Another report, Lucy Kueng’s Going Digital. A Roadmap for Organizational Transformation, shows that middle managers, in particular, have been exiting the industry.
This should not be surprising. Journalists have always faced pressure in managing the churn of time-sensitive, demanding, and constantly changing news situations. But, in the past, they could at least count on the news organizations that employed them to offer stability and consistency. Now, they must also navigate relentless, tech-driven organizational change – often poorly explained and hastily introduced. The level of uncertainty can drive away even the most loyal staff.
To be sure, change is unavoidable; the digital age demands constant adaptation. But making needed adjustments without destroying morale requires implementing a people-oriented approach. This is not a straightforward process. For tech solutions, managers can attend shiny digital conferences, take some sales team’s advice, sign a contract, and dump the new tools on their newsrooms. With people, they have to listen carefully, acquire an in-depth understanding of the problem, and then devise their own strategy.
A good place to start is leadership. In any industry, the key responsibilities of an organization’s leaders include making their employees feel secure and appreciated. That means paying attention to employees’ needs and fostering an organizational culture that provides them with a sense of belonging and purpose.
A similar approach must be applied to audiences. Not even the most accurate metrics can provide the needed guidance, if nobody understands what they actually mean, why they were chosen, or what their psychological impact would be (on audiences or staff). While data can deliver useful insights about audience preferences, listening to people can lead to very different impressions and conclusions.
For example, the data might show that more content means more page views; but if audiences long for fewer distractions and higher-quality reporting, flooding the market with robot-produced content will not satisfy them. Likewise, users might click on a larger share of articles if algorithms are used to personalize their experience; but if users become bored by the same topics and perspectives, personalization will not help.
Tech-based solutions are a means, not an end. That is why The New York Times, for example, is leveraging its digital success to invest more in journalism. Last year, the company added 120 newsroom employees, bringing the total number of journalists there to an historic high of 1,600.
For organizations without the clout – and digital revenue – of the Times, a people-oriented approach may also be needed to secure investment. With the limits of the ad-driven business model becoming increasingly apparent, many media leaders – close to one-third, according to the Reuters Institute survey – believe that in the future foundations and non-profits will play a central role in supporting the media.
But persuading foundations and philanthropists to open their hearts and wallets will require human connection and engagement, not algorithms or AI-enabled software. Potential funders need to be convinced that journalism is as noble a cause as, say, cancer research.
Technology alone cannot encourage democracy, help answer important questions, and facilitate effective leadership by boosting accountability. But, to some extent, high-quality, responsible journalism can. If it is to fulfill that purpose, however, news organizations must not allow themselves to be swept up by every new tech trend. If they treat technology as more than a tool for implementing people-centered strategies, the people they need – both staff and audiences – will continue to vote with their feet.
This column was published by Project Syndicate on March 14, 2019
Don’t stop gender diversity in the news media before it has even started
A new report by the Women’s Media Center on gender diversity tells a discouraging story — across all media types — online, print and broadcast — men get roughly 60 percent of the bylines and women only 40 percent.
With some news, one would prefer it was misinformation. But the new Status of Women in the US Media 2019 report by the Women’s Media Center is based on real numbers, and it tells a discouraging story. Even though women outnumber men in journalism schools and colleges, the traditional gender pattern in American media prevails.
Across all media types — online, print and broadcast — men get roughly 60 percent of the bylines and women only 40 percent. Apart from some laudable exceptions, a generational shift is nowhere in sight. Men dominate almost all subject areas, and the situation at the news agencies AP and Reuters is particularly bad. But even more alarming could be the fact that when the American Society of News Editors sent out its annual diversity survey last year, only 17 percent of 1,700 media organizations responded — an historic low. Apparently the bulk of newsrooms couldn’t care less.
This is disturbing news. It indicates that the media has become tired of the gender debate already. In an industry where attention spans are short and the quest for breaking news is relentless, gender equality has lost its way even before the policies that were developed to battle it have been implemented and shown results.
Diversity is a huge issue in newsrooms, especially from a European perspective. Having conducted many interviews with newsroom leaders and heads of journalism schools for an ongoing research project on talent and diversity in three countries — Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden — there is every reason to believe that diversity is fairly high up on their agendas. It also scored prominently in the Reuters Institute’s annual “Trends and Predictions” survey, emphasised by 56 percent of the international media leaders in the sample, up ten percentage points from last year.
But it is not gender diversity that editors-in-chief are worrying about. These days they are much more concerned about the diversity of political viewpoints and social backgrounds of their staff. There is nothing wrong with that.
To the contrary, in increasingly polarized societies it is vitally important that journalists reflect the whole picture, not just a particular segment of it. Except this quest for inclusive newsrooms might come at the expense of the 50 percent of society that haven’t been equally represented in news coverage for decades — women.
Strangely many newsroom leaders also describe that the profession that has become increasingly feminized. Journalism schools churn out female job applicants in abundance, and they are often better qualified than their male counterparts. There is a significant pipeline of female talent particularly in the digital sphere, and ever-increasing numbers of women are populating newsrooms. But that doesn’t mean they are getting the bylines or the bucks. As the American data shows, women are still much less likely to hold prestigious, high-visibility jobs in this field and the gender wage gap is prevalent almost everywhere.
Media leaders need to know that before abandoning all efforts to support women, it is vital to get the statistics right. This is why counting bylines, measuring on-air time or comparing salaries are much more telling indicators of gender equity than plain numbers. It makes a huge difference in journalism when more voices are heard. And it makes a huge difference in society, too.
This text was published by NewsMavens on 1st March 2019
The rise of the urban class – What the death of local journalism means for society
The rift between big metropolitan areas and the countryside has grown. Now the urban class is pitted against everything from deep suburbia to the last provincial backwater — and journalism has something to do with it.
The political divide used to be between the haves and the have-barely-enoughs. For more than a century, social class was the best predictor of voting behaviour. Of course, there have been other indicators which social scientists have successfully used to determine political alignments: religion, gender and age, ethnic origin or level of formal education. However, the phenomenon of right-wing populism isn’t easily explained along these lines.
Today’s populists come from the poor and rich in equal measure. Which is why parties like the German AFD attract disgruntled university professors and social security recipients alike. And even though the narrative of the alienated white working-class male was stretched to exhaustion when explaining Donald Trump or Brexit, the numbers revealed a different picture. Trump was supported by workers and millionaires just as much as Brexit was.
The big divide these days is of another nature, and it has only a little to do with pocket books. Heat maps about political preferences reveal a rift between the big metropolitan areas and the countryside. The urban class is pitted against everything from deep suburbia to the last provincial backwater, and journalism has something to do with it.
Of course, this city-country dichotomy is no new development. Big urban areas have always attracted those who were willing to put up with diversity and risk for educational or economic gain. They tended to be more tolerant of those who were different and voted more often for parties with progressive agendas. But developments in the media have amplified the divide.
When newsrooms were doing some soul searching in the aftermath of the Trump election, the Brexit vote and other populist-flavored surprise outcomes, they often realized that they had missed out on important developments in their own countries: a growing dissatisfaction among populations they hadn’t made an effort to understand.
Yes, reporters were sent to small towns and provinces to depict “the typical Trump voter”, for example. But the research trips were very often conducted like visits to the zoo. And the stories that came out of them catered to the expectations of the educated, urban readership because the journalists who wrote them were typically of the urban class. They were either raised and educated in the metropolitan areas to begin with, or had fled rural environments in disgust.
“Our journalists don’t understand the countryside” — said more than one editor when discussing the talent pipeline in the profession. The lack of journalists with rural backgrounds is more of a concern to many of them than the lack of gender or ethnic diversity among their staff. And these editors know the major reason for this: the decline of local and regional newspapers.
“These papers used to be training grounds for young journalists”, said one editor of a Swedish news organization. Talent from the rural areas would eventually seep into the national news outlets, and help set agendas. With many of the small newspapers closing down, this stream has dried out.
These days young people from urban middle class households are the most likely ones to make it into the newsrooms of first rate publications. Consequently, they shape the media’s view of the world. And this view informs political debates.
The diminishing trust in media now reveals that the picture they are presenting is incomplete, and some newsrooms have drawn conclusions from this. For example, the Swedish public broadcaster SVT – after less than satisfactory election coverage – made a point of sending plenty of reporters to the countryside during the next campaign and found it did a much better job capturing the public sentiment.
To be sure, better journalism doesn’t necessarily prevent populism and the rise of autocratic leaders. But quality journalism is an essential ingredient of democracy. Its mission is to inform public debates and portray the world – all of the world, not just parts of it. Diversity in newsrooms is a pre-condition for it.
This commentary was published in News Mavens on 1st February 2019
London Calling Brexit: A view from the outside in
Looking at the Brexit mess from outside of the UK, it doesn’t take much for observers to conclude at least one thing: the British don’t understand the EU. Leavers display a downright hostility through their portrayal of the EU as some bureaucratic, money gobbling behemoth, determined to cripple Britain’s autonomy, but this completely misses the point. It should be common knowledge, at least in elite circles, that the bloc was conceived after two atrocious wars primarily to prevent people from shooting at each other again. Then again, it is safe to say that the lack of insights is mutual: most European citizens have been baffled by the UK and Brexit. But what is even worse is that many inhabitants of the ‘London bubble’ around Westminster and Whitehall don’t seem to understand the rest of the UK either.
Having moved to the Southeast of England from Germany a little more than a year ago, following the Brexit debates has been fascinating. They reveal a country, and especially an elite, that on the one hand is proud of its heritage as a former world superpower, but on the other is often ignorant of so much that happens outside central London, and even less on the other side of the English Channel. In a media environment firmly rooted in the UK’s capital, it is as easy, if not sometimes easier, to stay informed about what happens in India, China or Australia, than about what the challenges are in Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, or Cardiff.
By contrast, Germany benefits from a very different system with its federalism and strong regions, many of them with a strong industrial core and sizeable media organisations. The German capital, Berlin, does not dominate German politics like London does. But Germany is also different because it was forced to confront its devastating past. For West Germany to survive morally and economically, it was essential to forge alliances with former enemies to move towards a peaceful European future; a future our children will hopefully enjoy for decades to come.
Yes, the EU was created on shared economic interest, but its vision has always been political. The founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 promoted the idea that economic cooperation would foster political comprehension, six years later the Treaty of Rome affirmed that belief. Trade and economic relations have always been underpinned by strong images of political cooperation. The iconic photo of then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand holding hands at a war cemetery in Verdun in 1984 comes to mind. It was just recently mirrored by the embrace of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron at a ceremony marking the centenary of the end of the First World War. In the 1990s, the Eurozone was not primarily invented to spur growth but to take one more step towards political unity after the fall of the iron curtain.
Sadly, too many in the UK’s elite in London don’t look at the EU that way. At least that is what it feels like. Some of London’s elites until recently cultivated the image of a predatory Nazi-Germany. It’s clearer than ever that Britain engaged in European integration mostly to reap some economic benefits, not for political reasons. This means that the narrative of peace and cooperation was completely lost on many in the UK. And when the economic benefits fell through, for them there was not even a shadow left of the real story of the European Union.
Maybe it would have been easier if the story of the UK itself was one of a proud union. But the Brexit debate has revealed that the UK’s own differences were given insufficient thought. The absence of reflection about the Irish question is a sad testimony of this. Had anybody responsible thought about the fragile situation at the Northern Ireland border, the Brexit referendum might not have been conceived so easily. And obviously, there was not much reflection about economic consequences either such as inflation, or of transport connections, fishing rights and many more. The “us British” versus “them Europeans” narrative of British autonomy was sold to economically challenged citizens across the UK without alerting them to the fact that the EU has worked to their advantage. Citizens outside London, desperate for the attention of their policymakers, fell victim to a power play by some privileged Londoners.
Image (cropped) by katy-at-katyblackwood.co.uk, (CC BY-SA 4.0).
So what’s the view from outside the UK’s – and London – bubble? Frankly, many Europeans couldn’t care less about Brexit. That’s what the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the media research specialist Prime Research concluded in their study “Interested but not engaged: How Europe’s Media Cover Brexit”. They found that major European media outlets in eight countries dutifully covered the Brexit process, but regarded it as Britain’s own problem rather than a European challenge. French media were the most outspoken on this, confidently suggesting that the EU might be better off without a nagging neighbour constantly putting its foot on the brake. The Europeans concerned the most have been the Irish, who know that the mess will be theirs to shoulder, once London’s Brexiteers have retreated into their bubble.
Of course, international Brexit reporting has been shaped by the London perspective on things as well. All foreign media have their correspondents stationed in London, with only the more privileged of them entitled to the luxury of extensive travel through other parts of the UK. Consequently, the foreign press spends most of their time with the “he said, she said” type of reporting centring around the negotiations in Westminster, Whitehall and Brussels, as the Reuters Institute study revealed. Very little reporting has revolved around issues like citizen’s rights, around the consequences Brexit might have for ordinary people, with some concern shown only about trade and business relations. European media portray Brexit mostly as a battle between Westminster and Brussels, rather than as a grave policy step affecting real people outside central London and across the UK.
Of course, correspondents usually mirror the local press, and if that press is based in London, then the London view will be what is transported beyond the border. The decline of regional news organisations hasn’t helped. The BBC World Service broadcasts in more than 40 languages, yet between London and the rest of the UK, much seems to be lost in translation.
This text was published by the London School of Economics and Political Sciences Brexit Blog on 7th January 2019
Why the news media isn’t dead yet – seven reasons for hope
There are plenty of reasons to talk about the media as an industry in crisis. Business models are eroding, political pressures on journalists are increasing, and the need for cultural transformation puts newsrooms under severe strain. However, giving up is no option. So as we approach 2019, let’s focus on the strengths of the industry and hopeful signs on the horizon:
First, the People. Journalism wouldn’t be anything without its journalists. And the profession is full of amazing human beings, who are ready to innovate, adjust, work hard – even die for doing their jobs. If there was just one to single out, it could be brave Maria Ressa, veteran journalist and founder of the news site Rappler in the Philippines, who has been fighting relentlessly to keep up the mission while adjusting to digital change. A role model to all.
Second, Collaborations. It is not those who go alone that prevail. This is the lesson from some fantastic journalism that has been done in the past couple of years. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that published the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers and most recently the Implant Files is an organization of 220 investigative journalists from 83 countries. A cross-border venture like this would have been unthinkable a few years ago in an industry where egos are rampant and competition used to be fierce. The future is in cooperation.
Third, Willingness to Pay. With most consumer products, customers’ willingness to pay is 100 percent, because they have to. Not in the news industry. According to the Digital News Report, the world’s biggest ongoing survey on digital news consumption, in 2018 on average only 14 percent of customers paid for online news. But the good news for publishers is: the situation is improving. Particularly younger audiences are willing to invest in good journalism, the “Spotify and Netflix generation” as the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism puts it. And people are not only paying when they are forced to by a paywall. The Guardian presents an impressive success story, managing its financial turnaround on voluntary contributions as a “third way to pay for quality journalism”.
Fourth, Institutional Support. Democracy cannot exist without independent journalism. The insight, that something needs to be done to strengthen the industry, is spreading among governments and other political institutions. One example is Canada’s recent 595 million Canadian dollar package to support journalism with an array of measures including tax breaks. Among others, the Council of Europe is working on a set of measures to promote a favourable environment for quality journalism in the digital age (disclosure: the author is a member of the respective expert committee).
Fifth, Private Sector Support. When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, many were wondering if this was the end of its independence. Today the Post flourishes as one of the most innovative news organizations in the world. Last words have not been spoken on the engagement of platform companies for journalism, but as news organizations feel (and dread) their dependence on Facebook and Google, the social and search giants have tried to frame it as a two-way-relationship, and backed it up with some money. Both companies have supported journalism innovation (disclosure: the Reuters Institute the author works for and NewsMavens where this text is published have both been beneficiaries). There is plenty of self-interest in this support for sure. It has still enabled innovation. There is also plenty of support coming from foundations and wealthy individuals all over the world. The latest impressive example: Australian Philanthropist Judith Neilson funded a 100 million dollar journalism institute in Sidney.
Sixth, Technology. Technology helps to make journalism better — if it is not used to replace journalists for good. One of the big opportunities for news organizations in the world of data and artificial intelligence is to get to know the needs of their audiences better and build up stronger relationships with them. There will also be more interesting storytelling through data journalism. And robot journalism can do a lot to free up precious time in newsrooms and add value to the news portfolio, as long as it doesn’t add to the distracting blur of information overabundance. As always with technology: It matters how it is used — and humans have to make the decisions about it.
Seventh, Willingness to learn. The most encouraging development for the future of the industry might be this: Never before has the debate about it been as lively and constructive (This is safe to say at least for the past 25 years the author has been engaged in the industry.) Are we serving our audiences as good as we can? How can we improve our products, the composition of our newsrooms, our management skills? Are we doing the right thing in terms of innovation and values? How can we protect reporters from political and physical threats and from psychological harm? Is there anything politics can do? What is quality journalism anyway? In a profession that is adept at asking questions, many of these questions have been discussed in earnest and with passion only lately. Maybe it always takes a crisis to produce hope.
This commentary was published by NewsMavens on 21st December 2018
OXFORD – In most industries, a quality product is easy to identify, thanks to markers like price, brand, and reviews. But in journalism, discerning quality is becoming increasingly complicated, not least because, in the digital age, trusted brands like the BBC or The New York Times, which can be expected to adhere to long-established journalistic standards, are vastly outnumbered by upstart publications, blogs, and community reports.
Not surprisingly, therefore, as claims of “fake news” have proliferated in recent years, trust in news media – established and otherwise – has plummeted. According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, those who regularly consume news do so with significant skepticism. Only about 50% of users trust the media brands they choose to consume; far fewer trust outlets that they do not use. With too many options and too little confidence in media, nearly one-third of people have given up following the news altogether.
But news journalism is not an expendable luxury. It is a critical public good, enabling citizens to make informed decisions, while helping to hold those in power accountable. It can serve that function only if it is a quality product – and people know that. Delivering such a product, however, is no straightforward task.
The first problem is that there is no clear definition of what constitutes quality journalism, which raises the risk that the standard of “quality” will become a tool of censorship. When Adolf Hitler wanted a book burned, he would assert that it did not meet the “standards” of Nazi ideology. Similarly, a government today could cite quality issues to attack critics’ credibility or to justify denying them journalistic credentials.
Some organizations concerned with the future of the media are trying to circumvent this danger by developing trust indicators. Most notably, the Journalism Trust Initiative, led by Reporters Without Borders, is creating voluntary guidelines and a best-practice framework that will evolve into an official certification process. Some organizations champion traffic-light indicators, like those used in food labeling, while others argue for an ISO 9000 system reminiscent of industrial quality management.
But what, exactly, would these systems be certifying? The most logical answer might seem to be media organizations. But even first-class newsrooms produce plenty of second-class content, owing to factors ranging from a lack of available sources to simple human error. This implies that not all content from a given organization can be trusted equally.
Of course, some organizations have a proven track record of following certain procedures to minimize mistakes and respond to errors that do slip through. But these are likely to be the same organizations that already enjoy significant public trust. Whatever trust they have lost in recent years will not be offset by a new label affirming their quality.
As for the publications that would benefit from such a label, they are more likely to be smaller, newer, and thus poorly equipped to deal with the extra layer of bureaucracy that a certification procedure would entail. Organization-level quality certifications could thus hurt new entrants, while helping incumbents.
The alternative to organization-level certification would be to focus on individual pieces of content. But this would be a herculean task in terms of volume; worse, it could create perverse incentives, as journalists chase certifications in much the same way they now may chase awards, sometimes to the detriment of the work. The German reporter Claas Relotius won multiple awards for his brilliant storytelling before it was revealed that the stories he was telling were not true.
In any case, the question remains what exactly constitutes a quality piece of content. Does it simply have to be fact-based? Does it apply only to serious political and business news, or does it include lifestyle, entertainment, or human-interest stories? These questions are complicated further in the digital ecosystem: some blog posts may count as journalism, but that certainly isn’t the case for all of them.
Journalism will never be like, say, the airline industry, where strict standards and procedures apply to every action and product. But, until recently, it didn’t need to be: journalists adhered to codes of professional and ethical conduct, and were overseen by bodies that took action in the event of a breach. Doing it right was the default – even though the concept of “right” has always been open to interpretation.
That is how societies work. An individual does not need a “trust certification” to participate in a family or community (though China’s government would like to change that). The social contract establishes certain behavioral norms with which people generally comply; labels are needed only when trust is broken.
This is the status quo to which journalism must return. That means, first and foremost, individual organizations taking responsibility for the quality of their content and adhering to a set of rules, including oversight and editing, to ensure it. When this cannot be done within the organization itself – say, when a citizen journalist is operating in an anti-democratic environment – external bodies could do the job.
In establishing such systems, lessons could be learned from collaborative reporting projects like the one that covered the Panama Papers, in which researchers enjoyed individual freedom – ensuring a plurality of voices and healthy competition – but had to meet certain standards. As technology advances, automated fact-checking could also be introduced, especially in less-resourced newsrooms.
In an age of unprecedented access to information, true and otherwise, people of all ages must improve their media literacy. But that does not let media organizations off the hook. With the help of an aware and critical audience, they must monitor themselves and one another, as they have done in the past.