Capítulo II: Construcción de la solución
2.8 Modelado del sistema
TRUST IN NEWS MEDIA is seen to have declined in some regions
INCREASED DEPENDENCE ON government and corporate subsidies is linked to disruptions in business models
INCREASED SELF-REGULATORY EFFORTS BY INTERNET
INTERMEDIARIES are promoting media and information literacy, counteracting ‘fake news’ and tackling online abuse
SELF-REGULATORY BODIES, which can support the exercise of professional standards while maintaining editorial independence, have grown in post-conflict and developing countries
BROADCAST LICENSING continues to be driven by political and commercial interests
RISE IN CRITICISM OF THE MEDIA by political figures is encouraging self-censorship and undermining media’s credibility
Trends in
Media independence
RESISTANCE
CAPTURE/SURRENDER
Overview
I
n most regions of the world, media independence is under pressure. The disruption and crisis in business models that have supported print and broadcast media for decades have left traditional media outlets more vulnerable to external influences as they seek to establish new revenue sources.In many regions, austerity measures have led to large-scale budget cuts of public service broadcasters, dislocating employees and limiting innovation in programming.
An indicator of a lack of independence is the level of public trust in the credibility of journalism. Trust in media would seen to be declining, reflecting similar declines of trust in government, business and NGOs.1
Changes in trust, however, have also been dependent upon significant variations, both across media forms and across regions. In the vast majority of countries surveyed, media would seem increasingly associated with feelings of distrust.2 Western Europe and North America, in particular, have evidenced the most significant declines in trust, while
only a few countries in Asia and the Pacific have registered an improvement. Of different media forms, traditional media have shown the steepest decline in terms of trust throughout the world, while online media have gained trust since 2012. Although it is not a new phenomenon, the significant increase in public discussions and awareness of so-called ‘fake news’ following political contents in Europe and North America in 2016, however, has begun to change perceptions of the credibility of online information.3 The evolution of this trend will largely depend on the ability of online media, governments, and citizens to develop appropriate responses to address this growing issue effectively, including media and information literacy, targeted responses to hate speech, and more self-regulation on the part of social media platforms.
This perceptible decline in trust of traditional news media has been accompanied by shifts in journalists’ perceptions of their editorial independence.
This chapter focuses on the key trends that have emerged that may be seen as potentially particularly damaging for media independence.
This includes the continued state ownership and government control of many media institutions, as well as political pressures designed to undermine the credibility of other media outlets.
It also discusses what appears to be a continued weakening of organizations and institutions that have played an important role in enhancing professionalism in the media sector, eroding its role as an independent watchdog. This chapter also focuses on the challenges of ‘media capture‘4 and polarization. Despite the initial optimism that
1 Edelman 2017.
Trends in
Media
Independence
social media would reduce such tendencies by enabling broader citizen participation in media, there are growing signals that social media are similarly susceptible to political capture and polarization, further impacting on the trust that users may have towards information on these platforms.
Across all regions, media regulators continue to impact on the editorial independence of media, and regulation is struggling to evolve to address these new circumstances. Even where regulatory systems themselves may meet all the formal standards for independence, they are often still deeply entwined with political and economic influences and pressures. At the same time, such control of media continues to be challenged by media providers increasingly bypassing regulations for traditional media through the use of the internet.
Furthermore, private media that function outside of government control or with minimum official regulation continue to be dependent on advertising support. In many regions, private media risk dependence on only a few advertisers, opening them up to the potential misuse of advertising as a political tool by the largest advertisers, often governments. In regions that tend to have weak regulatory systems or countries where private media struggles to be economically viable, there can be pervasive corruption of news whereby politicians, companies or other interest groups pay to have certain newspaper articles written or radio talk shows steered to focus on a certain agenda or perspective. Journalists themselves in many countries continue to accept
“brown envelopes”. Some media initiatives are expressly established to do “journalism for sale”, and their content producers do not seem even
5 Levy et al. 2016.
6 Sweeney 2013; Turow 2013; Diakopoulos 2014.
to think of themselves as journalists imparting verifiable news in the public interest.
New technologies have also added new meaning to what constitutes media independence. The collection, selection, aggregation, synthesis and processing of data are now increasingly delegated to forms of automation. While the sharing of social media posts is crucial in elevating the importance of certain news sources or stories, what appears in individual news feeds on platforms such as Facebook or news aggregators such as Google News is the product of other forces as well. This includes algorithmic calculations, which remove professional editorial judgement, in favour of past consumption patterns by the individual user and his/her social network. In 2016, in some parts of the word, a majority of users declared preferring algorithms over editors for selecting the news they wanted to read.5 Despite apparent neutrality, however, algorithms may often compromise editorial integrity, as happens outside of media where the formulae have been found to lead to discrimination against people based on their race, socio-economic situation and geographic location.6 The increasing relevance of big data, and the influence of ‘fake news’ and automation, are fundamentally changing the context of knowledge production, and they are eliciting demands for algorithmic transparency and accountability. On the other hand, this creates a niche for news that is generated and curated by trustworthy, independent, professional journalism, as well as a significant role for fact-checking actors.
Issues of regulation and self-regulation of news information for internet companies are particularly complex given the platform, rather than content producer, status of these actors. Nevertheless, their degree of independence and accountability as regards, inter alia, journalistic content has become a major issue over the period surveyed by this study.