The Painful State of Media

Introduction

During Covid-19 I am reading and viewing lot of news. Today news is very much democratized and not limited to news print, TV or radio but thanks to internet, we have Websites, YouTube, Social Media, Twitter and apps from where we can get up to the second state of what is going around the world. During this time one would think these are the best times for media organizations, with so much need for news and information nothing can be better times for news outlets. While this can be true for a handful of outputs for the larger media industry these are very difficult times.

Background

For a long time the established names in the business have been struggling with many challenges, first being the internet. In last 2 decades internet has made print media like newspapers redundant for many people. Then came news aggregators and twitter, these while helped gave some degree of visibility to many types of news at a single place, but they also have taken away the traffic from news websites taking away the critical ad revenue and the user engagement that the news media badly needs. Also in the era of twitter, social media and google, the attention span of people has also decreased.

Current State

The importance of investigative, impartial and analytical journalism has been taken over by catchy headlines, biased narratives and flashy news analysis, rather than bringing the real news. While blogs, social media and new media has decreased the barrier to entry to journalism, but it has also created its own challenges. Today more mediums are competing for the dwindling advertisement revenue and in the hoard to get more TRP, to more masses the news has become more opinionated and lack balance. The news does not look like a presentation of fact but rather a jumble of opinions and also with so many mediums for distribution of news, it has also become very much segmented.

Press Freedom & Lack of Credibility

The major blow that has wrecked havoc on news and media has been the growing wave of intolerance in many countries towards criticism. The with advent of whats app and social media the dissemination of fake news has been quite rampant. Today in the information deluge. In many countries in the name of combating fake news are trying to stifle the free flow of information and in their lust for absolute control, news media is the first victim. As the world becomes more autocratic, the news media are in constant pressure to show the ruling elite in good light. This has only squeezed the last echelons of Independent journalism and Covid-19 has put them in life support. Already persecution, threats and assassinations were a grave threat earlier but with the implementation of press control and emergency measures, the scrutiny and the constant threat of infection only has added to the miseries of the journalistic community.

Dwindling Revenue

With advertisement revenue drying, print media not being published, around the world either the media outlets are scaling down or closing their doors or creating paywalls or asking for help from readers. Traditionally I have resented paywalls as I was from the internet generation which is used to getting all information free.

Now if we do not pay then we are the product, and hence the one providing qualitative and analytical journalism I see are creating paywalls. The media houses there biased or have converted to government mouthpiece are better off. Covid-19 though is the lowest point for the whole industry as with many industries, here also generation of revenue is the biggest challenge.

Silver lining

While many media outlets are creating pay walls and restoring to drastic measures to stay afloat, there is hope that as more people are locked in home and using internet more, in the internet age new media will raise to the occasion and in the era of fake news will take the mantle of free journalism forward.

Finally

I feel each one of us educated people not only should become consumers of news but also should learn how to disseminate information, learn to be unbiased and become citizen journalists. In this effort I feel internet plays a key role and there is growing need of making journalism a part of knowledge discovery as in the past Wikipedia has become the key body of resource for information.