No Algorithm Will Liberate The News Media

Michael Hedges May 3, 2021 - Follow on Twitter

Evidence seems insurmountable. The human condition is worsening. Total dystopia is upon us. Screens are filled with disinformation absorbed by the indifferent. We’ve reached the point of no point. Still, shoulder on we must. World Press Freedom Day has come around again.

The UNESCO supported annual commemoration of the importance of freedom of the press comes at an auspicious moment. “The digital revolution has weakened business models of most independent media and damaged their viability,” said the UNESCO statement (April 26). “Local news deserts are becoming ever more common as media outlets close, merge, or downsize in many parts of the Global North and South, and political interest groups take control of struggling media outlets.”

The annual conference this year is centered “information as a public good,” noting the 30th anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration signed in Windhoek, Namibia by African journalists campaigning for a better world. Last week two Spanish reporters were killed in Burkina Faso while working on a documentary for producer Movistar, noted Reuters (April 28). Online news portal Rappler founder/editor Maria Ressa, facing a six-year prison term for publishing criticism of Philippines autocrat president Rodrigo Duterte, received (May 2) the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.

In the days preceding this year’s World Press Freedom Day esteemed advocates offered grim reminders that the bad guys are winning. “Media freedom is an essential pillar of our democracies which is too often taken for granted,” said Council of Europe (CoE) Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric in a statement (April 28). “Respect for freedom of the media is in decline in many countries. In the last years we have witnessed an increase in the number of cases of violence and intimidation against journalists.”

The CoE’s accompanying report from its Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism and the Safety of Journalists is titled “Wanted! Real action for media freedom in Europe.” It focuses on attacks on and intimidation of media workers, judicial harassment and coronavirus pandemic effects. Also mentioned is state capture, the exploitation by state regulatory and economic actors to control independent media outlets. Governments in Turkey, Hungary and Poland were pointed out.

“Concerns around media capture also grew with respect to Poland,” noted the CoE Platform report. “The government renewed discussions around the so-called ‘repolonisation’ and ‘deconcentration’ of the Polish media landscape, concepts which are Trojan horses for expanding the influence of the governing party, PiS (Law and Justice), over the press. Unable to accomplish this goal so far by legislative means, PiS has increasingly turned to the media capture model to bring elements of Poland’s still-vibrant media landscape to heel.”

Public media is under continuing threat, said the CoE Platform report, made critical by financial support reductions and threats of violence from right-wing extremists. Situations where “a powerful economic or political group is permitted to obtain a position of dominance over the audio-visual media and thereby exercise pressure on broadcasters and eventually curtail their editorial freedom undermines the fundamental role of freedom of expression in a democratic society,” said one of the Member State submissions. The impending appointment of the ethically-challenged former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, always dismissive of UK public broadcaster BBC, as media regulator Ofcom chairman by prime minister Boris Johnson was announced prior to the completion of CoE Platform report. “We need a watchdog chair with teeth but not one foaming at the mouth,” offered iNews media columnist Ian Burrell (April 25).

“As we mark World Press Freedom Day media across the globe are fighting threats both existential and immediate,” offered long-standing publishing advocate World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) (April 30). “The dilemma for an industry shrinking by the day and fast running out of money is that the biggest, most unavoidable cost is the journalism that, by its very essence, defines it.” Solutions, wrote WAN-IFRA executive director for press freedom Andrew Heslop, are “viability, diversity, stability and safety.”

“Many of the difficult questions facing the news industry are underpinned by an inability to predict a general economic model that will guarantee a future for quality, professional journalism,” he noted. “Digital ad revenue failed a long time ago to make up anywhere near the shortfall from traditional advertising sources. Experiments with paywalls, subscription models, and shifts away from traditional news products have produced notable localised successes but are no one-size-fits-all panacea.”

Mr. Heslop went on to excoriate the digital realm. “The ever-growing cacophony of social media channels – each account a direct competitor to media in terms of audience, ad share, and influence – has led to media jostling for a position in the digital society that they previously dominated in the physical world. Contributing significantly to this decline in prestige is a pervasive, algorithmically confirmed bias that favours social discord, feeds off polarisation, and services corporate profit.”

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