Repairing the mirror
Something of value has been lost in the noise of our digital world
What happens if and when there are no news media?
That is the critical question at the heart of an essential public conversation that began in earnest this week with the release of an exhaustive report by Canada’s Public Policy Forum entitled The Shattered Mirror: News, Democracy and Trust in the Digital Age.
There are so many vital and distressing truths about the role of journalism and the business of media documented in this excellent 110-page report — far more information than I can possibly convey in this space.
It is well worth reading for yourself: I expect there will be much public debate in coming months about the report’s findings and its recommendation of a dozen, to my mind, largely sensible, public policy initiatives aimed at ensuring the healthy flow of news and information deemed vital to our Canadian democracy.
As this much-needed public debate ensues, I hope Canadians will consider seriously the public policy principles that form the foundation of this smart report written by PPF president and CEO, and veteran journalist, Ed Greenspon. These are simple values, really: Canada matters, journalists matter, original civic-function news matters, freedom of the press matters, digital innovation matters, financial sustainability matters, diversity of voices matters, platform neutrality matters, a balanced marketplace matters. Most of all, truth matters. And clearly, truth is at risk in our 21st-century media ecosystem in which traditional media is hobbled by a broken business model where revenues that long sustained community journalism now largely flow to the U.S.-based behemoths that shirk journalistic responsibility (Facebook, Google, YouTube) and new digital media overall remain “journalistically under-developed.”
“The digital revolution has made for a more open and diverse news ecosystem – and a meaner and less trustworthy one,” states the report, which provides depressing evidence to make clear that “journalism’s economic model has collapsed profoundly and structurally.”
This collapse has led to severely reduced revenues for Canadian media companies resulting in fewer journalists and news organizations to cover what matters in our communities.
“Anyone who views news as a public good will see that this decline damages civil discourse. Democracy relies on shared information – on all of us having access to news about what is going on in our communities.”
Wisely, the report recognizes a “delicate” balance is required in applying public policy measures to journalism, given its guiding values of independence and freedom of the press. The PPF’s extensive national public consultation process found significant concern about policy measures that could compromise independence. Seemingly, Canadians understand that governments have no place in the newsrooms of our nation.
“Throughout this report, we’ve embraced the proposition that a public-policy response to the economic challenges of the news media is justified only to counter a risk to the health of our democracy,” it concludes. “That is where the public interest lies.”
The report paints a dismal picture of the marketplace for news. Fewer than one in five Canadian households pay for a newspaper; only 9 per cent of Canadians pay anything for online news. That doesn’t mean we are not consuming news.
“Our inquiries suggest that Canadians still seek to be informed — although at the time of their choosing and with little or no cost to themselves.”
But news that matters to communities costs. Investigative reporting that holds public officials to account costs. Beat reporting that makes sense of local politics, education and health care costs. So who pays for news?
This report is not calling for handouts to news organizations, but rather, recommends tax measures that could even the playing field for Canadian media companies competing for advertising revenue against global platforms.
Nor does it suggest turning back the clock to a golden era when every household in Canada had at least one newspaper delivered daily and newspapers were the primary source of our news and information.
It does recognize that something of value has been lost in the cacophony of noise, news and information that comes at us in our digital universe.
“The newsrooms of the traditional media were guided by standards and protocols of inquiry and reportage. The contract with their audiences was that the coverage they provided was, to the best of their abilities, accurate and reliable: conscientiously researched, subject to verification and responsibly reported.”
Contrast that with “agnostic” platforms where fake news has flourished and we are bombarded with “anything but the truth.”
“Genuine journalism must now compete with content that mimics it and dresses deceit in a cloak of credibility, while society must adapt to a world in which fact and falsehood are increasingly difficult to tell apart,” it states. “An information market polluted this way puts the very notion of credibility at risk.”
To serve citizens, to serve democracy, however, it will not be enough to simply preserve the old forms of civic journalism, the reports concludes. “News journalism will have to evolve,” it states. Indeed, that is an important truth. But first, news journalism in Canada must survive. publiced@thestar.ca