The Future of Journalism conference (day 2) Plenary speaker was Robert W McChesney, Gutgsell Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
He had some l issues with the points made by the previous day's Emily Bell. His talk was lively and authorative but, while he might have considered Emily as one-eyed over the futrue of journalism, I think he was too.
The Guardian is a non profit organisation - take that and the other
publicly funded media in this country out of the equation and there is
not a whole lot left.
"If
you don't have funding then it is not journalism. I don't know what it
is. The world is filled with young peple who want to do journalism and
there is no lack of talent or enthusiasm but there is a lack of support
and funding. That is where I disagree with Emily Bell."
He also warned there was nothing on the horizon to suggest the labour Market in the US was going to improve and the critical situation US media found itself in was not going to get better.
2. The future from the past?
Professional journalism was mandated in the constitution a
hundred years ago to protect media owners' monopoly powers in their local areas.
This crucial period defined journalism. It replaced
sensationalism and lack of commitment to accuracy, but it had flaws.
Reliance on people in power set up the range of legitimate debate in a
paper; so if a journalist raised an issue outside that they were seen as
ideological.
He have the example of investigative reporting into wars, saying the more certainty you hear about the
reasons for US involvement in a conflict "the more it is likely to be
bullshit pushed by people in power".
James Madison, the fourth ppresident of US, was a believer in free press; his argument
rested on the schools he received he had as a classical scholar - that Athens and Rome became
military empires and it led to their downfall. "Government cannot survive
militarism."
Madison said the people of a country could only
stop leaders from militaristic regimes is if they knew about it through a
free press.
3. The economy, stupid, and other problems
There has been a huge increase in business news, he said, with newspapers employing multiple business writers and carrying sometimes two business sectinos.
"Most of this
journalism is utterly pathetic" [and sucks up spin or extols CEOs] "and
lets the top one per cent of society control debate on the economy."
He said journalism had missed entirely the scandals and housing, economy and other bubbles of the economy in recent
years, showing there is a crisis in the Journalism industry.
He added the lack
of coverage of the growth of inequality was shocking, given the scale of
the problem.
Thomas Jefferson said unless people without property had access to
information democracy would not work.
Voting in the US shows the very
wealthiest vote in presidential elections - 75%. About 20% of the
poorest sections vote.
"Journalism's role is not to reinforce that but to reverse it and draw people into public life.
Professional journalism does not have to be this way. Reporting what is
said accurately is not Journalism. Great journalists do not have
different criteria for political parties. That is where we need to point
towards."
5. Funding
Referring to Emily Bell's "dismissal of public money to support journalism" he described the concept as preposterous - "if all the philanthropists do eveything they can to make it
work it will be a piss in the ocean". It is not enough, he said, adding a young person working
for free trying to coax an ad from a micro company would not
replace the existing model.
ournalism is a public good. If all funding was removed from education
what would you have? Good education for the wealthy, altruistic projects
run by philanthropists, but it would be insufficient.
When advertising came into newspapers 50 -80% of revenue came from
advertising and gave the lie that journalism was a profitable business
but it was never going to be a sustainable model.
Advertising has always
been a mixed blessing and advertisers have much more leverage than ever
if you want their money.
"The pressure to compromise is greater than ever. If you get something
for free online you are not the customer, you are the product. And that
shapes journalism and it does not shape it favourably."
6. Does state funding mean state-controlled press?
In the US, $1bn is spent in total on media in a nation of 310m people. If
it spent per captia on public media as other nations it would be vastly more - eg.
in the UK £25bn. Other countries spend much more on public media. These
countries are not police states, the evidence is overwhelming for
supporting media.
The five or six countries which have the largest public subsidies of journalism are the
countries that are most democratic according to ratings by the Economist - that means the most free press exist in countries which have the most government support; increasing subsidies can lead to more
aggressive press towards the government, not less.
Subsidies can work. America needs subsidies to increase money for public
and community outlets and competing newsrooms in communities.
And, as part of the exercise, he said: "Let's take kids out of college for a year and teach them journalism."
Massive government subsidies were used to indiretly set up free press in the US in the 1700s.
The government spend millions
ensuring the establishing of a Post Office - the
distribution outlet for a newspaper - and subsidising the cost,
especially for local newspapers.
If the US today spent the same on subsidising papers today as it did in the 1840s it would cost $35bn plus.
7. The importance of journalism to a nation
You need institutions to protect journalists; people are beginning to accept this. They see there is no other option
but subsidies - the debate should be how you make it work, not whether
it is right.
The crisis in newspapers is part of the wider US crisis. We are looking
at an ecological crisis too. Our political system is off the rails -
"dollarocracy". Public opinion in the US has not changed much on core
government issue since the 1970. The two political parties, however, have
shifted dramatically and there is a huge gap between what people
believe and what people in power believe.
The corporate crowds is happy
with a journalism free environment.
He warned public broadcasting was in a precarious position and the news media diet of
Americans was appalling. "At a local level it is mind boggling what has
happened."
Working conditions for paid journalists are much worse. The era of the "digital sweatshop" - working for Huffington Post or Yahoo.
The three biggest political scandals in Washington in recent years all
came about through three reporters and all three are now unemployed.
"Volunteer dudes" do not expose corruption, he said, adding: "If I'm not getting paid I'm going to cover the basketball game not spent months investigating corruption."
The future of journalism?
Pew Centre has been researching Baltimore news for the past 25
years to see how many completely original news stories were being done in Baltimore -including tweets - and it is down 70% since 1991. "
There still seems plenty of news and we will always have news but not
much journalism."
Pew looked at what made something news - 86 per cent came from PR or
official sources. It is cheap to do, but it is wrong. Ratio of PR people
to journalists in the US IN 1960 was 1-1 in 1980 2-1 and now 4-1
A crucial part of PR is to influence the news. "We will have a lot of news but it will be largely propaganda and spin - much of it
extraordinary right wing propaganda."
He finished by warning we don't have the luxury to wait twenty years for journalism to be saved
we need it now. "We always talk as scholars about how democracy needs
journalism but you can't have journalism without democracy. It thrives
at it's best in a democratic society."
Pessimism is self fulfilling, he said.
In the US we are in a very different place
to what we have previously experienced. Scholars are often said to be fighting 'last year's war' and that doesn't work any more. We are entering
terra incognita.
The BBC
It is an much better resources version of our NPR but the code of
journalism it has adopted allows people in power far too much power in
what is being discussed.
The solution in the US is that you have to have
more than one form of publicly funded media outlet.
His suggestion to fund digital journalism: Give everyone a vouchers to
give go any news medium of their choice, and those outlets must put everything in the public
domain. Nothing is protected by copyright.
If everyone had a $200
voucher and banded together with others you could hire a reporter to
work for you. "Of course a handful would dominate and it would
crystallise over the years."
Digital makes a mockery of the current model. We can't set up barbed
wire and charge people to get in. Let them pay in advance through a
system that gives them choice.
And he finished by warning: "Investigative journalism in US now boils down to someone leaking
something to a journalist. The people who own our media aren't keen on
pissing off people in power by investigating what they are doing."
It was also the me that knows that leadership is done by example and that elites are expected to get down in the muck with the rest of us when there's hard work to be done. Chelsea Clinton and her fellow silver spoons haven't done that.