How can we strengthen the viability of media and help professional journalism survive in the face of intensifying economic pressures?
IPDC’s 40th anniversary celebration invited five experts from five continents to share their viewpoints. They discussed challenges to media business models, the problem of media capture, threats by authorities and opportunities of co-operation with Internet companies.
IPDC is the acronym of UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication, which is concerned at the grave challenges facing media viability, which have been intensified by COVID-induced economic crisis worldwide.
Innovation for survival
For independent news media, the ideal of being self-sustaining goes hand in hand with ensuring regular publication and maintaining journalistic integrity.
Innovation towards this goal is a passion for Ms Mijal Lastrebner, a co-founder and managing director of Sembra Media, a non-profit organization helping independent digital media in the Spanish world to develop sustainable business models.
"Real powerful innovations start with cohesion, meaning articulating the business model with a deep understanding of direct and indirect beneficiaries of the media service," she said.
In addition to honing the value proposition, Lastrebner emphasized the need to articulate actual market opportunities, and identify areas for tech and content innovation as well as management innovation. A study conducted by her organization shows that in Latin America, media that have at least one person to manage the sales have an annual income surpassing 100 000 dollars, while those who don't have any such employee could not surpass 4000 dollars in terms of the annual income.
"Innovation is even more vital when the countries' economy is weak", she further noted, urging that innovation should be the priority for media in developing countries that are facing both the pandemic and enormous economic challenges.
Channeling revenues to media development
Zukiswa Potye is the Chief Executive Officer of Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA), a statutory organization based in South Africa. Her agency has been channeling direct and indirect grants to grassroots media research and development projects for 17 years, funding about 160 community broadcasters and 100 publishers in South Africa. Some two-thirds of funds have come from a levy from commercial broadcasters in South Africa, but this is insufficient to support the needs of small commercial and community media in the context of the global economic meltdown. MDDA is now working at looking for resources beyond the borders of South Africa and to "go and knock on" the doors of foreign donors.
Another system linked to regulatory steps is being discussed in Australia, where the country’s competition commission has called for negotiations about compensation for use of media content by Internet companies.
Prof Peter Greste, Australian journalist and UNESCO Chair in Journalism and Communication explained that the step is highly contested, but that the idea is a model code whereby the news organizations have the right to negotiate with the Internet companies. "There is the plan to make this law by the end of the year under the scheme, so that if any news organization wants to negotiate with the tech companies, it's free to do so. If they're not able to reach an agreement between themselves about the terms of copyright sales then an independent adjudicator appointed by the government will settle the matter", he said.
Improve the Media Ecosystem
The voice of Internet companies was also heard in the panel discussion. "We definitely don't see ourselves (Google and media) as rivals", Madhav Chinnappa, Director of News Ecosystem said. "Google sees itself and media organizations as a part of the [same] overall ecosystem".
He elaborated on Google's will and action to build a "sustainable, diverse and innovative ecosystem of quality journalism" in three perspectives: the company's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally useful, its revenue share-based advertising business which allows publishers to make money, and its belief that quality news is fundamental to making informed citizens and thus a stronger and better democracy.
According to Chinnappa, the Google News Initiative has created what is called the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund by which Google has helped over 5600 local newsrooms all over the globe with funding of about four million dollars. Projects like "Google News Showcase" have also innovated methods for curating news content in the search engine, helping publishers to monetize their content as well as offer audiences a richer news experience. "We're in an ecosystem where there are many dependencies upon each other", he emphasized. "Without media viability, we don't think the ecosystem will thrive."
Importance of independence
Under increasing economic pressure, media organisations could compromise their editorial integrity and thus be unable to keep an independent voice. The risks of this scenario of "media capture" were assessed by Christophe Deloire, Secretary-General of Reporters without Borders (RSF).
He warned that media capture can go beyond public funding because it can also from private donors. An underlying issue, he stated, is "the capture of the public space itself", meaning that the ecosystem is organized more and more by business platforms rather than the democratic parliaments.
"It's the public space and the organization of public deliberation which go well beyond journalism that is becoming subject to a business logic," he said. To hold the integrity of media content in better check, RSF is working on an initiative to set up a set of third-party criteria called "media trust indicators" to provide public audiences, advertisers, investors, donors and authorities with evaluations of the credibility status of media.
Deloire emphasized that the only rule of these reliability indicators should be "the compliance with ethical rules of journalists and nothing else". This could help ensure that funds to media are granted independently of the editorial lines of particular news outlets.
The session was moderated by France 24’s Georja Calvin-Smith and can be viewed below: