SA needs plan to save quality journalism

At last social media giants, especially Facebook, Google and Twitter, are feeling the heat. The twin charge they face is lack of accountability and devouring the news media industry’s breakfast and lunch over the past decade.

A week ago US legislators summoned the heads of Twitter, Facebook and Google to explain their role in the manipulation of US elections in 2016 by Russian operatives. Separately, but related, former senior aides to then US presidential candidate Donald Trump are falling one by one as part of the probe into Russian meddling.

This pressure is unlikely to ease. As the mid-term elections approach, Americans would want assurance that there is no interference of any kind, especially given the TrumpVladimir Putin rapprochement.

The social media behemoths are resentful of what they see as encroachment by legislators and regulators. Instead, they have tightened their policies and standards as part of selfregulation. Reluctantly, they have also contracted fact checkers and internal content review panels to keep regulators at bay, slapping the wrists of those who post hate speech and violent images.

Until the Russian debacle, these companies did not bother to entertain complaints against them. Until recently, their wellrehearsed defence has been that they provide communication channels, not content. Yet over the past decade their users have grown to rely on these platforms for news, information and debates. True, they don’t produce content, but they peddle content produced by news journalists. Using clever algorithms, they direct advertisers to certain users, something newspapers are illequipped to do.

The single biggest casualty has been quality journalism, which is a costly but important part of sustaining progressive democracies. After the advent of the internet, which prioritised speed over accuracy and depth of journalism, Google and Facebook have been the biggest culprits in destroying journalism jobs and weakening the quality of journalism.

As well as occasionally spreading fake news, these firms have also stolen advertising revenue traditionally spent on news outlets — the real producers of quality news, opinions and analysis.

The news industry has done a lot to adapt to the digital age. Instead of denouncing it, the industry has sought to embrace digital technology. Of the few surviving news organisations, which are existing on skeletal staff compared with two decades ago, only a few do so without digital offerings.

Still, cutting costs of quality journalism — such as having fewer qualified journalists and copy editors — has not solved the revenue problem. The advertising revenue has left for good, it seems, thanks to Facebook and Google. As part of plugging the revenue hole, some news outlets such as the Financial Times have erected paywalls around their content. Others have gone completely digital, abolishing the physical printed copy.

Others are turning to readers to fund their journalism. After reading a Guardian article, its readers are often confronted with this request: “The Guardian is editorially independent — our journalism is free from the influence of billionaire owners or politicians. No-one edits our editor. No-one steers our opinion. And unlike many others, we haven’t put up a paywall as we want to keep our journalism open and accessible.

“But the revenue we get from advertising is falling, so we increasingly need our readers to fund our independent, investigative reporting. Support The Guardian from as little as $1.”

The Guardian is in a unique position in that it is owned by the Scott Trust, which has tolerated steep losses over the years. Other newspapers cannot afford this luxury. Instead, they have turned to billionaires such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who now owns the Washington Post. Earlier this week Time magazine was sold to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his wife for $190m.

In the UK, national and local newspapers together made about £5bn a year in advertising revenue in 2005, with the internet accounting for £1.4 bn in ad spend, according to that country’s Advertising Association. Last year, the British advertising market totalled £22.2bn, while newspapers’ share had declined to £1bn and their websites had dropped 13% to £887m, according to the same source.

The Press Gazette, which covers that country’s media industry, estimates conservatively that at least £1bn of advertising revenue went to Facebook and £5bn to Google last year. It says there has been a net loss of at least 228 local newspapers since 2005.

The picture is unlikely to be vastly different in SA, which, unlike other African countries, depends on advertising revenue for survival.

Last April the Press Gazette launched a campaign to highlight the damage the duopoly of Google and Facebook is doing to quality journalism. The campaign is gaining traction and has opened a conversation with these companies about compensating content producers. SA needs a similar conversation with both the duopoly and advertisers.

A conscious setting aside by advertisers of a percentage of digital spend to news producers would be a progressive and important first step towards saving quality journalism.

GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK HAVE BEEN THE BIGGEST CULPRITS IN DESTROYING JOURNALISM JOBS AND WEAKENING … QUALITY