The Challenges for Journalists

The renowned poet journalist of The Washington Post?and?Huffington Post John B Lane wrote, “The purpose of both poetry and journalism is to provide an account of that which is true.”?Rene Descartes, the original genius to create and reveal knowledge, enunciated the concept of distilled truth empowered information exchange “I think, therefore I am.” Best journalists know the art of reporting the distilled truth. We are in the era of Industry 4.0 and Web 2.0 where everything is undergoing intrinsic structural adjustments. The professional journalists face several challenges as such changes woof and warp their profession. The major challenges are in ownership of media. political polarization, format competition, technology, disinformation, news maker temptation leading to God syndrome and monetized conflict of interest.

Modern society deserves immediate, accurate, and objective news. Journalism imbibes in constant mix of courage, fairness and integrity. It is sustained by proper written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills. As time passes the profession needs rich augmentation in technology, analytics, steadfast confidence and persistence. Seven overlapping classes of journalism prowls in the arena by way of investigative, political, crime, business, sports, science and spiritual journalism, though further granularity and super specialization may be discernible.

In the Industry 4.0 society, availability of information is central to better decision making by voters, consumers, and investors. Mass information is provided by the mainstream media, including newspapers, television, radio and also social media, which collect information for the society and individual. A crucial question evolves, how the media should be optimally organized.

Pigouvian theory is advocated in the public interest in which governments maximize the welfare of information consumers. Government ownership of the media is then desirable for three reasons. First, information is a public good, second, the provision, as well as dissemination of information is subject to strong increasing returns and third, state media ownership exposes the public to less biased, more complete and accurate information than it could obtain with private ownership. This is advocated by BBC.

In contrast, the public choice theory holds that a government-owned media outlet would distort and manipulate information to entrench the incumbent politicians, preclude voters and consumers from making informed decisions, and ultimately undermine both democracy and markets. Inspired by this theory another extreme is ruling the media scene now. The New York Post is owned by News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns Fox News, the London Times, The Wall Street Journal and many major media properties in Australia. Michael Bloomberg owns 88% of Bloomberg LP. Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family, a Hong Kong based group of investors holds the majority stake in Forbes Media company. In India, leaving aside Prashar Bharti, most media houses are privately owned by corporate tycoons like Ambani, Adani, Goenka or Panda. Gone are the days of corporate houses with committed presh freedom and journalistic independence by way of Ramnath Goenka (Indian Express), S Kasturi Ranga Iyengar (The Hindu), or K Varghese Mappillai (Malayalam Manorama). Private Corporates seek favour from Government of the day and journalists have no option than to toe the line of their owners. This challenge looks formidable and has destructive power to kill the ethics of journalism. The profession is looking askance without a sustainable answer.

Recent 44 billion US $ acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk is a study by itself. Twitter as a microblogging site has potential to direct and influence public opinion and attention. Elon Musk has sacked almost half of the employees and the CEO of Twitter. He intends to realise his money by putting the beneficiaries behind Pay-Wall as ad-revenues look insufficient. He is restructuring this social media by having people and systems to influence elections of countries where Elon Musk companies have manufacturing or marketing interests. This ownership change of a social media has created a sort off global holocaust in HR policies for micro-journalism, managers and adjuncts.

Political Polarization looks at the ways people get information about government and politics in three different settings: the news media, social media and the way people talk about politics with friends and family. In all three areas, journalists are polarised calling each other derogatory names. These cleavages often lead to legal interventions. It is virtually impossible to live in an ideological bubble. Most rely on an array of outlets with varying audience profiles for political news. Many unbiased citizens hear dissenting political views in their everyday lives for same event as if truth has political versions. This challenge is a corollary of ownership challenge coupled with lack of political statesmanship to accommodate dissent.

The news media can be broadly divided into five formats:?Print Newspaper, Magazines, Electronic TV, Radio and social media with Online news portals and websites. Different media deliver the news differently, though the core information and basic journalistic values remain unchanged. When Broad sheet created tabloid version for readers’ convenience, journalists found coping stress. Pod cast created a deferred news reading format. Format competition is synchronous with life style of information consumers and technology absorption in society. But journalists find it challenging to change their mental format.

Changing technology influences journalism in at least four broad areas: how journalists do their work; the content of news; the structure or organization of the newsroom; and the relationships between or among news organizations, journalists and their constituencies among masses. Internet, Social Media and digital video are the most visible examples of technologies that are transforming journalism. As if that was not enough, now there is invasion of virtual reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Internet of Things. Journalists are not updated to deal with the aggression of Singularity into their profession. This is now a fundamental and growing challenge to the profession.

Journalists should use technology responsibly to guard against counter productivity. There should be deliberate efforts aimed at guarding against online attacks such as disinformation and misinformation, false news and hate speech. It is not easy to ensure reporting events and stories based on truth and objectivity given the malice of ownership pressure, political polarisation and craze for sensationalism.

Disinformation refers to orchestrated attempts to confuse or manipulate people through delivering dishonest information to them. This is coupled with parallel and intersecting communications strategies and vices like hacking or compromising of persons. Disinformation is lethal because it is organised, well-resourced and reinforced by technology mostly making it viral. Misinformation refers to misleading information created or disseminated without manipulative or malicious intent

The distributors of disinformation cash on the vulnerability or blind faith potential of target groups who become rabid amplifiers and multipliers. Public is animated into becoming conduits of political or corporate messages by exploiting gullible propensities to share information for a variety of reasons. Fake news is mostly free, people who cannot afford to pay for quality journalism, or who lack access to independent public service news media, are vulnerable to both disinformation and misinformation. The spread of disinformation and misinformation is made possible largely through social media but even mainstream media has joined the bandwagon sensing the advantages ingrained to serve agenda of people who usually pay for this machination. Regulation or self-regulation of media is a myth at this point of time. If at all there are some regulations, they are not system driven. Rather they follow the principle, show me the person, I tell you the rules and punishment. Within this fast-evolving ecology of misinformation, disinformation and fake news, there is a very significant role for journalists and news media but for which credibility of entire 4th pillar of democracy will vanish. In fact, the perception is already disastrous and there should not be further bottom after the rock bottom.

Journalists often develop a God syndrome not as honest news reporters but as news makers. They have potential to do so. Gulzar had written a book “New Delhi Times”in 1986 which was made into a movie by Shashi Kappor (Journalist) and Sharmila Tagore (Lawyer) with Om Puri as the manipulator. Hollywood is stuffed with movies with journalism challenges as main theme. For example, “All the President’s Men”, a movie of US President Richard Nixon era. It is a first-hand account of how two heroic young reporters investigated what was initially dismissed as a humdrum burglary at a building in Washington DC. The name of the building – Watergate has become journalistic legend with Woodward and Bernstein. Where are such talents with patience, skill and endurance. Managing the visibility of the profession is a challenge.

Legacy media like broadcasters and newspapers are becoming relatively less important as distributors of news when they are important producers of news. They are under growing pressure to develop new digital business models as their existing sources of revenue decline or stagnate. In the stampede they get ill trained decision makers or owners with funny revenue models. In the process serious conflict of interest crop up. Some in their own profession shout, “Save journalism from such journalists”.

Let it go; it goes its own way

Passing ethos of time

Can also make hay. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~As journalists say.

NB: This is part of an article requisitioned by the All India Secretary of Journalist Association Mr Sugyan Choudhury for publication in their conference issue on 16.11.2022.