The Cairncross Review and that awkward conversation about ‘high-quality journalism’
We can’t talk about the future of ‘high-quality journalism’ without talking about high-quality journalism — and what that is depends on who you ask
The Cairncross Review is the government’s investigation into ‘how to sustain the production and distribution of high-quality journalism in a changing market’. During the call for evidence, experts were asked for their views on everything from the current state of the market and threats to financial sustainability, to the role of tech giants, data and digital ads. And, crucially, how we will know we have been successful.
I’ve already highlighted that environmental doom is just one of the elephants in the newsroom that might stop Cairncross reaching its goal. And just this month, a tech-giant elephant arrived, in that #Budget2018 has pinched the easiest-sounding policy intervention suggested in submissions to Cairncross, that of a ‘digital services tax’. Without any plans to make the money available to media companies.
But possibly what will see Cairncross beaten is if it fails to define what is meant by ‘high-quality journalism’.
The scope of the review assures us that “robust high quality (sic) journalism is important for public debate, scrutiny, and ultimately for democratic political discourse”. A qualifier in the consultation outline explains that “the review will pay particular attention to the press”, while the call for evidence documentation adds that it wants a secure a sustainable future “particularly for news”.
So what is it?
“There is a diverse range of understandings of the term ‘high-quality journalism’ across the industry, the public and academia, and some implicit or explicit definitions of the term are completely incompatible with others,” explains Peter Anderson, author of the 2007 book The Future of Journalism in the Advanced Democracies, now-emeritus professor at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK’s North West, but someone who’s spent his life grappling with the term.
“It is therefore important to be very specific as to which definition(s) of the term are being used and why. At root, how you define high-quality journalism depends on what you want journalism to do.
“If you want it to perform the key informational functions necessary to enable meaningful democracy to operate then you are going to need journalism to do three basic things exceptionally well.
“First, it must provide the key facts on issues that significantly impact the lives of citizens within that democracy in an accessible form.
“Second, it must locate those facts within their relevant contexts to enable the audience to better understand them.
“Third, the significance of those facts and their various possible implications must be adequately explained to the audience by journalists with appropriate expertise in the subject matter being covered.
“This may well be the best understanding of high quality journalism for something like Cairncross to use.”
Like any good academic, Professor Anderson admits his is only one view informed by his own understanding of our industry’s purpose. Of course, there are more, many of which have been collated and analysed by Finnish media entrepreneur Johanna Vehkoo in the highly accessible hunt for ‘quality journalism’ she conducted for the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute.
“Trying to define what quality journalism means is a bit like unwittingly taking part in the age-old debate about what is art and what is not,” she warns.
Journalism… or news?
In its own struggle to define its terms, the Mediatique report produced for Cairncross estimates that “legacy newsbrands are responsible for around 50 per cent of all original news journalism in the UK, bigger than broadcasting and online put together”. It latterly describes the same figure as “50 per cent of all frontline journalism costs” — either way — equating that to a £925 million investment by newsbrands.
The report’s explanatory notes reveal that there “are no standard data sources on editorial investment” and so Mediatique uses its own metric, originally devised for Ofcom when assisting on the Leveson Inquiry. It “defined editorial costs as being all those associated with the production and direct distribution of news”.
That 50 per cent, or £925 million, therefore represents what it estimates was spent on editorial by newspapers in print in 2017. A further £250 million “spent by newsbrands on their digital variants, BBC Online and direct costs of digital natives (on their UK propositions)” is not broken down in more detail, leaving the pedant unable to reach a figure for how much legacy brands spent in total on print and online news.
Nowhere does the report establish whether such sums spent on ‘original news journalism’ or ‘frontline journalism’ are doing what they set out to do, not least because they didn’t set out what they set out to do.
A look at the news stands and a quick Google search, which surfaces the Telegraph for me, reveal legacy newsbrands clearly investing in ‘news’ content that doesn’t seem to meet Professor Anderson’s definition of facts that impact your life, in context, with adequate explanation.
That said, if chatting about Bake Off helps you get through the working day with your awful colleagues, can it not be said to be helping our democracy function?
For a rather more thorough articulation from industry, one can turn to the submission made to Cairncross by the ‘digital-first’ regulator of more than 100 news title, IMPRESS.
“Neither journalism in general, nor ‘high-quality journalism’ in particular, are
defined in the Terms of Reference for this Review or in this Call for Evidence,” it says, during a five-page bollocking about defining key terms.
“We suggest that ‘high-quality journalism’ should be understood in line
with international standards, as embodied in the IMPRESS Standards Code,
to mean journalism which strives for accuracy; declares relevant interests;
does not distort the facts; recognises its impact on the lives of others; and holds itself accountable.”
News… or reporting?
A government review comparable to that of Cairncross was performed by the US Federal Communications Commission in 2011 and its findings also challenges those waving the word ‘news’ around at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The review took the simple form of a literature review of the Information Needs of Communities and, on a somewhat cheery note, it found that: “In many ways, today’s media system is better than ever: faster and cheaper distribution networks; fewer barriers to entry; and more ways of consuming information. Americans not only have ways of expressing their opinions, they can help create and cover the news. Choice abounds.
“We face not a broad crisis of ‘the news’ or ‘content’ — but something much more specific: a shortage of local, professional accountability reporting. This is likely to lead to more government waste, more local corruption, worse schools, a less-informed electorate, and other serious problems in communities.”
And it’s here that Cairncross and its Mediatique report holds a clue, where the data it gathered highlights that the UK press, including 1,043 local titles, “has so far responded by… reducing commitment to some categories of content (e.g., court and local council reporting)”.
“Cutting expenditure on journalism, however, risks reducing quality further, leading to slumping readership, online engagement, advertising impacts and revenues,” Mediatique explains. “The industry — perhaps more so at local and regional level than nationally — may be at a pivotal point.”
Journalism… or the media?
Whatever academics, policy wonks or an industry that’s in need of a hero think of ‘journalism’, Edelman’s Trust Barometer is here to tear up your half-baked terms of reference; its panel of more than 20,000 people across 28 nations shows that a lot of people do not trust ‘the media’ — indeed, it is now the least trusted institution in 22 countries.
Further probing, however, reveals something rather more interesting. “What did you assume was meant by the phrase ‘media in general’?”, Edelman annual harmlessly asked its audience…
Yes, in 2018, journalists, influencers, brands, apps, search and social are a gross cocktail in the minds of audiences all over the world.
This may feel like a blow to our learned academics, the noble press and the government, but, when taken apart from platforms, trust in journalists was found by Edelman to be on the up, trust in platforms on the wane.
So newsbrands doing good work may have nothing more than a positioning problem. If you are indistinguishable from a rant by Jeremy Clarkson, now’s the time to stop shouting and arm yourself with some facts.
So what would I suggest to Cairncross?
Many expert suggestions have already been made public and have been handily collated by the Transparency Project. Mediatique also offers a number of ideas, spanning new payment options, better data gathering, collaborating further with tech platform providers, making more use of the BBC’s Local Democracy Scheme, more restructuring and consolidation, more efficiencies, alternative revenue streams, and alternative business models.
But it stresses “the limits of self-help”.
“It may be that only some form of intervention (of a character yet to be determined) may be required. We have not been asked to consider public policy options, as these will be reviewed by Dame Frances Cairncross as part of her review… most now expect to have to attack core journalism more aggressively from now.”
So, since we’re running out of options and awaiting word from Dame Frances, I thought I’d suggest just one more. If legacy publishers really do spend upwards of £1 billion (Mediatique’s print figure, plus an online estimate) on journalism that people need, then funding this would work out at less than £18 per adult per year (ONS 2016, adult population).
Given that the Guardian has got 500,000 members and had 300,000 one-off donors since it started started handing the tin around, as of November 2017, it cannot be beyond the wit of our networked media to create a campaign that repositions journalism, distinct from platforms and other guff, to fund its work.
According to the Reuters Institute many people across the world pay for news online because they have to pay — but this model doesn’t put up barriers to information.
Challenge, of course, being whether academia, industry, government and the public can all get on the same page.
