I am no journalist myself, but, as one who has been for a long time daily following journalistic trends, I have been able to identify five core values of journalism. These values are accuracy, which means looking for the facts that go to reveal the truth, the principle of independence, impartiality entailing that there is more than one side in each story and that the journalist should account for this. The fourth value has to do with the question of humanity, meaning that journalists must be aware of the consequences of their work on people since journalism is part of a humanitarian process, while the fifth value concerns the issue of accountability, meaning that journalists are ready to engage with the audience and admit their mistakes.
No, journalism is not a dying field. Yes, the physical print newspaper might be "dying" but the digital newspaper is not going away anytime soon. Instead of digitizing traditional media, new and innovative forms of journalism are set to emerge, based on the possibilities of a networked society. Forget the old rules – the digital era demands a different approach. With the emergence of the internet impacting traditional media companies since the 1990s, and with more and more fake and biased news appearing in social media news feeds, today’s media sector may be deemed to be in crisis. Fake news is cheap to produce and genuine journalism is expensive.
The rise of digital media has empowered people locally and elsewhere but also enabled the spread of disinformation and demagoguery and undermined the funding of professional journalism as we know it. The move from a media environment defined by established broadcasting stations and leading newspapers to a digital, mobile and platform-dominated environment is the most fundamental change in how we communicate since the development of the printing press, and we are only 30 years into a period we can trace back to Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web in 1989. Replacing shrinking traditional subscription and advertising revenues will be a huge challenge. We will be having media and journalism in a digital world enabled by intelligent, next-generation networks. The future of journalism could see the emergence of more and more personalised content, intelligent algorithms and robot journalists – as well as the opportunity to “experience” that news thanks to immersive VR and AR technologies. In short, AI journalism.
So what can be the implications of such a fundamental change for journalism and by extension politics? Even 30 years after the invention of the World Wide Web, the majority of professional journalism is still funded by newspapers. And locally, substantial revenues still come from print, digital revenues are in many cases growing only slowly, and, where they exist, public service media are under considerable pressure.
Most of these existing forms of funding for professional journalism will decline as we continue to move to a more digital media environment where online platforms capture most of the advertising, leading to further job cuts in newsrooms. The risk here is not simply retrenchment and less coverage of many important issues, with a risk of decreasing readership, but also a less robust business of journalism more vulnerable to media capture by the state or politically-motivated owners, and to pressure from advertisers.
It is clear that cost-cutting, increased pressure to produce more stories across more channels and around the clock news cycle has led to a large volume of more superficial journalism. At the same time, digital media have also allowed different marginalised voices to be heard and offer access to a far wider range of different sources and points of view.
And as journalists have embraced digital media and evolved various new formats, the best journalism around us today is in some ways better than ever – more independent of elite sources, more accessible, more timely, more informative, more interactive, more engaged with its audience.
The role of journalistic revelations in many different cases, including the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, in confronting corruption among public officials and in fuelling public debate around platform companies’ power and privacy practices, underline the continued relevance of investigative reporting.
So where are we heading with digital media and journalism? Emerging trends will not play out the same in every country. They will clearly differ depending on cultural, economic, political and social contexts. And with the continuing development of artificial intelligence, voice-operated systems and the integration of connected, digital media in more and more everyday objects, we are equally clearly only in the early phases of this fundamental change.
As we move forward, independent professional journalism will be more important than ever in helping people understand the major challenges and opportunities facing us, from day-to-day local events to global issues. But as the business of news changes, journalism also risks becoming less robust, and ultimately incapable of helping the public make sense of our times or holding power to account.
This challenge is only compounded by increasingly open political hostility towards independent professional journalism, in the worst cases a veritable war on journalism. In the absence of independent professional reporting providing accurate information, analysis and interpretation, the public will increasingly rely on self-interested sources and rumours circulating online and offline, a shift that will hurt both the political process, civil society and private enterprise.
At its best, independent professional journalism is essential for both the public good, politics and private enterprise – and as it adapts to the digital media people all over the world are embracing, it can help ensure that this communications revolution results not in chaos, but in change for the better. Journalism can never be silent. It is what maintains democracy and is the force for progressive social change.
Dr Mark Said is an advocate