Mike Minehan
The news is changing. Newspaper circulations are declining, and television audiences are turning off. The average age of newspaper readers in the USA is now 53 years old (Carnegie Corporation Report by Merrill Brown, 2006, http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/10/news/index5.html).
Large audiences still access news from TV, but overall, the TV audience is also shrinking. In the US spring of 2007, 2.4 million viewers disappeared off the ratings radar of the main television broadcast networks in the USA – the equivalent of half the population of the state of Colorado. In Britain, viewers watched an average of 20 minutes less TV per week in the first half of 2007. The decline among younger viewers is more noticeable. This is down by one and one-half hours per week (Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June, 2007, p27).
Internet portal sites, handheld devices, blogs and instant messaging, now provide ways of accessing and processing information that challenge the historic function of the news business and raise fundamental questions about the future of the news field. Meanwhile, new forms of newsgathering and distribution, grassroots or citizen journalism and blogging sites are changing the very nature of who produces news (Brown, Merrill, http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/10/news/index5.html).
It is arguable that the web site Baghdad Burning at www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com written by an Iraqi woman who was living in Baghdad before she and her family fled, told us more about the war in Iraq than any western journalist embedded with American forces.
New internet developments include citizen news, in which internet users participate in the reporting process. One such successful site is South Korea’s OhMyNews, whose motto is “every citizen is a reporter”. Most of the copy is written by internet users, although professional editors and journalists are also employed. Launched in 2000, OhMy News became so widely read that it has even been credited with influencing South Korea’s 2002 presidential elections (Sydney Morning Herald The Guide, 23 April, 2007, p8).
Another internet news project is NewAssignment.Net, launched by Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University. NewAssignment relies on the public to research and write entire stories with the help of professional editors and journalists. The mix of amateur and professionals, referred to as a hybrid or ‘pro-am’ model, can work both ways – the editors may hand out assignments via the website that the public can pick up, or the public can suggest stories that the editors and journalists may cover (Sydney Morning Herald The Guide, 23 April, 2007, p8).
The content of news is also changing. Celebrity journalism is on the increase. And more and more governments are attempting to censor, or influence the news.
A major study of press freedom released in 2007 by Freedom House revealed that press freedom is suffering a continual global decline, with particularly troubling trends evident in Asia, the former Soviet Union and Latin America. This study also warned of a growing effort to place restrictions on internet freedom by censoring, harassing, or shutting down sites that provide alternate sources of political commentary (www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=494).
Venezuela suffered the largest single decline in media independence. Other countries which registered major declines were Thailand, the Philippines, Russia, Argentina, Ethiopia and Uganda.
In terms of population, only 18 percent of the world’s inhabitants live in countries that enjoy a free press, while 43 percent have a press which repressive governments use as a tool for deception and discrimination.
An interesting case study is Russia, where increasing numbers of journalists are being murdered The journalist killed in Moscow in 2006, Ana Politkovskaya, was preparing an article on the use of torture by both sides in the Chechynan conflict. Twelve journalists have been shot and killed since President Putin came to power in 2000, and most killings remain unsolved (Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Oct., 2006, p8).
The web sites www.rsf.org, www.cpj.org and www.freemedia.at provide reports on countries in which journalists are at risk, and also provide profiles of journalists who have been killed or intimidated. The websites www.freedomhouse.org and www.amnesty.org provide global perspectives and analyses of the way in which many countries restrict freedom of speech and personal freedom.
Quality news still exists. Sources such as the New York Times, The Washington Post and the Guardian compete for quality and reputation. However, major news organisations such as News Ltd are a cautionary tale about the power of media owners to side with Presidents and Prime Ministers for their own – rather than public – interests. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has been criticised as a mouthpiece for US Republican points of view, particularly in its support for the Iraq war (see Robert Greenwald’s DVD, Outfoxed, 2004). On 7 September, 2007, one of the most strident supporters of the Iraq War, and the most loyal foot soldier in the Fox counterattack against anti-war dissidents, Bill O’Reilly, finally admitted on his Fox News O’Reilly Factor that the war against terrorism in Iraq wasn’t working. However, O’Reilly blamed the Iraqi government, not the Bush administration’s foreign or military policy, for this failure.
News is the oxygen of democracy and constant vigilance is necessary to ensure that partisan interests do not predominate. Also, it is too easy to for tabloid news to take over. Sensationalism is seductive, but our basic rights depend upon a free press. The dynamic between executive government and the media is an uneasy one, even in democracies, and the boundaries between both need to be carefully and jealously guarded.
The issue of a free press is not an academic issue. In more and more countries around the world, the right to access uncensored news is a matter of life or death.
However, the internet is empowering citizen journalism. The individual finally has his or her own platform for global communication. The news is changing and the consumers are making themselves heard. |
