On Friday I had an interesting talk with Oliver Money-Kyrle, who is Programmes Director at the International Federation of Journalists. This is the world’s largest organisation of journalists and aims to promote international action to defend press freedom worldwide. The main topic of the conversation was citizen journalism or what Oliver prefers to call a citizen voice. But we also discussed the current crisis in the media, the future of journalism in particular and the media in general and difficulties with ethical and legal limits in journalism.
Oliver on the current media crisis
I believe there are two things we can say about this. The media crisis is a combination two things. Firstly there is the radical transformation of the media which is a natural and inevitable process. I’m thinking about new digital communication systems, the rise of bloggers, blogger sphere if you like, citizen journalism … who are all competing for the public’s attention. All of this is challenging the role of journalists who are really the gatekeepers to information, they had a very privileged position in the past because they knew what was going on and they had all the sources. It was their responsibility to pull the information together and present it in a proper professional and cohesive manner so the public could understand it. But that is all changing now. This natural process has been rapidly accelerated by the financial crisis. A process that may have taken 10 or 20 years is now taking place in the course of say two, three or four years. Media professionals all have their theories but none of them really know how it will end.
Oliver on the future of journalism
The main question is what is going to be the future role of journalists. Is there a demand for journalism? Yes. Is there a way that journalism can be paid for? Yes, I think there is. I think this problem will be solved somehow as there are professional media organisations that actually don’t just want to make money, they also want to provide a service. The reason they want to provide a service is because the public wants and needs a service. So journalism will survive but the question is on which platform: internet, broadcasting, newspaper … During a tour of The Guardian newspaper in London last week, the managing editor talked about the massive boom that has taken place in the media industry over the past 20 or 30 years. The number of people employed has rapidly grown; the size of the daily newspapers has increased… And his perspective was that there will be an inevitable shrinking of the staff back to the level from the 60’s or the 70’s. What you might see is a levelling out but journalism will survive, maybe more focused and in smaller teams.
We had a debate at a conference recently about the commercial value of media entertainment and celebrity gossip vis-á-vis investigative journalism. There is a general sense that both of these are, I wouldn’t say legitimate forms of journalism but rather legitimate forms of media. And they are both demanded by the public. The main difference is that one of them costs an awful lot to produce and therefore media managers who look to cut budgets are much more likely to cut on the investigative journalism side. Doing celebrity gossip on the other hand is a lot cheaper to produce and just as commercially valuable. However, there is still a commercial value in proper investigative journalism and I think people will continue to pay for it.
Oliver on the role of citizen journalism
One of the glimpses we may have had on future journalism was the coverage of the Iranian elections and the demonstrations that took place afterwards. The problem of the main international broadcasters was the lack of people on the ground. All they had was videos and images which had been posted on the internet by demonstrators, activists or general members of the public. There was however no possibility of independently verifying this information or where it was coming from. So what was the role of CNN for example? They would do a review of all the different videos and postings that were out there, by Iranian citizen journalists if you like and try and make sense of it. Based on this review, they produced a package and presented it to the public. You can say they were moderating all the noise that was out there to present a broad picture of what was going on in Iran. But they clearly stated that they didn’t have people on the ground and couldn’t verify the information.
Compared to 30 years ago the local coverage is a lot weaker today because media organisations can’t afford to put people on the ground. There is a role for citizen journalists there, not only because it exists but also because media are increasingly dependent on this sort of information as a way of getting the story. Additionally citizen journalism can sometimes have a corrective impact on media, especially if the mainstream media are taking a quite conservative, neutral, overly balanced line to stories. There is an obsession in media with balance, which sometimes overrides finding the truth. Citizen journalism can and has played a corrective role when mainstream conservative, corporate media failed to get the full side of the story. It forces journalists to get out of their comfortable chairs and rethink what it is they are actually doing and how they are doing it.
The point about citizen journalists is that they are expressing their opinions and their view on the world rather than trying to select a whole range of different views and try and make sense of that. Citizen journalism is all about debating your issues and your own perspective whereas proper journalism is more about moderating that debate. So yes, I do believe there is a role for citizen journalism but you can’t call it journalism, it’s a citizen voice, a public debate, but not journalism. They are not professionals and don’t have to respect certain codes. There are three main ethical requirements in journalism: to tell the truth, to be independent, i.e. not be influenced in how you present that truth, and thirdly to be conscious of the impact you have by publishing certain information. Often the first one can come into conflict with minimising harm. Then it is a debate about the right to privacy and the right of the public to information. There are different levels to deal with this but it’s important to do this within the journalistic community.
Recently there have been debates about trying to introduce standards that citizen journalists or bloggers can sign up to if they want to. This is unfortunately seen as an attack on freedom of expression among some groups. I think if they want to be taken seriously and use the word journalism rather than blogger or public voice, then they have to sign up to ethical standards, absolutely, otherwise they are not journalists. They are expressing their opinion which is all good stuff but they shouldn’t be using the term journalism.
Oliver on the future of the media
A lot of people are struggling with the idea of making online content payable. Rupert Murdoch is quite keen but seems to have gone a bit cold on the idea now because they have to find a way of making it work without losing all their visitors. Talking to The Guardian, they were saying online is free and there is nothing you can do about it, the information is out there. The online news departments are strongly committed to the fact that online information is free. They say you shouldn’t waste your time trying to find ways to charge for it. I think news organisations will try to charge for certain parts of online news but they won’t be able to charge for every bit of information. Certainly for more serious, more analytical articles there may be a way to charge for it.
The newspaper industry won’t disappear but it will probably be slimmed down. It will probably become more serious and it will be divided in different types of media. You will have your serious news magazines that come out weekly or monthly with an analytical content. As for daily newspapers, I think they have to find the right sort of medium. Maybe in 20 years time you’ll have these electronic newspapers just like you have the e-books now. I don’t think the public is ready for that now but who knows what technology will produce. The fact remains that every time a new medium was invented, the old medium survived. Newspapers survived the radio, radio survived television, and television will survive the internet. In the end, I am convinced that journalism in general will survive.
