State Media Rushing Into Coverage Void Left By Dying Newspapers 250
derekmead writes "As newspaper budgets shrink, state-sponsored media outlets like RT, China Daily, and Al Jazeera have grown, hired more writers and offered more (free) coverage. Mark Mackinnon, writing for The Globe and Mail, explains the issue well: 'Throughout the recent crisis in Syria, and before that in Libya and Egypt, Xinhua and RT News have thrown unprecedented money and resources at reporting from the scene, even as Western media scale back on their own efforts. It's not too far-fetched to imagine a near future where it's Xinhua or RT, rather than the Associated Press or BBC, that have the only correspondents on the scene of an international crisis, meaning the world will only get Beijing or Moscow's version of what's happening.' But quality coverage still requires money, which means finding funding from somewhere. You see the effects of this every day: If your revenue is based mostly off of pay-per-click banner ads, a lowest-common denominator post, like a cheap roundup of cat pictures, is quite possibly going to pull in way more views for less money than a nuanced, deeply reported, and expensive dispatch from Syria. And, yeah, ads can be a bummer, especially when they're executed poorly, and paywalls aren't great. But when the alternatives are either fluffy, thin reporting; or worse, blatantly biased coverage sponsored by governments, we have to find a palatable way to fund good reporting."
Playing the Devil's advocate here... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am sorry, but I don't need instantaneous, round the globe coverage with whatever the hell happens in some God-forsaken corner of the world. it's a perk I'm passively receiving and if I get such news, then that's fine. If not, I'm not gonna curl in a corner, frightened of the unknown.
There were times when people found that their king died weeks after the dude passed away, and their life was not impacted. Granted, we can do better nowadays but still, I couldn't care less about some fanatic blowing himself up in some Syria busy market. Local news - that's what I'm interested in, followed by news from my country. Everything else (save from something HUGE like the Japan Earthquake) is optional.
Yes I know, the Syria whatever-the-fuck-happens-there could theoretically very slightly affect me through the butterfly effect but really... not worth my immediate interest. Give me the high level overview: Syria dudes are still beating each other; China launched some satellite; USA still has crushing debt and Greece goes down the drain. Have a nice day!
Wikipedia - current events (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently found this [wikimedia.org] to be good source of main world information, especially if you read it 2-3 days delayed. Clean short description of what is happening in the world. Without ads.
Re:The BBC isn't state sponsored media? I must be (Score:2, Interesting)
I really wouldn't trust AP as an unbiased news source just because they are privatized. At this point, in the US, privatized basically means "an excuse to hand out government contracts." That's mainly just a bitch against the right-wing, though, my main point was this article in which the AP version differed from other version, in favor of US interests. [reason.com]
Re:RT is not more biased than BBC (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm, yeah, it is.
It's really very funny to watch the huge amounts of spin they put on everything. I was watching the RT coverage of OWS last year, in which they hyped it up as the beginning of the new American Spring, which would sweep the country and take down the institutions of oppressive American government inside a few weeks.
US biased news at the time was doing its best to ignore it or hype up any hints of violence they could find, while playing down any message that protestors might have.
The BBC were reporting that some amount of people were protesting about financial stuff and that the movement seemed very decentralised and pretty peaceful.
Guess which source I trust a little more than the others?
Newsworthiness (Score:5, Interesting)
Most "news" is total crap.
In these days of ours, if something is actually newsworthy, then it ends up being documented and discussed in Internet fora, often in excruciating detail under all kinds of useful insights (diversity of bias is a great thing).
Newspapers and conventional media are dying because NOBODY NEEDS THEM ANYMORE; this is the nature of the Free Market—society evolves through variation and selection, but of course, people are trying to inhibit this most fundamental process by turning to the steel boot of would-be central planners, in order to pretend otherwise at everyone else's expense; when in doubt, bring out the violent coercion.
Now, don't be confused. There is no doubt still value in expert analysis—value worth paying for (in the traditional sense). However, most of what we call "news" is not in that category. The death of newspapers is a good thing; oh, certainly, there will be some unpleasantness during the evolutionary transition (especially when central planners prolong the agony), but the result will be a society having adapted a more efficient form.
Re:The BBC isn't state sponsored media? I must be (Score:5, Interesting)
The TV license is a tax and the broadcast finances and license fee rises are negotiated with the UK Government every ten years. Think the Government and the British state don't have a large measure of control? Think again
The notion that the TV license isn't a tax and the BBC isn't state-controlled is a delusion.
Re:Playing the Devil's advocate here... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah. When your politicians go to war on false premises. That the western media lied and continue to lie about. Sure, Bush, Cheney, and Powell went down in disgrace. What about Fox, CNN, MSNBC? What about the Grey Lady's complicity? Have any reporters even apologized?
Instead, the traditional media decided to blame Bush and build up Obama. They refused to vet him; when Hillary tried in the primaries, she even got called racist.
Everyone knows, and everyone has always known, that the vaunted Western media isn't worth listening to. "The bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict and laziness," said Jon Stewart. And let's not forget the political correctness.
If the traditional Western media wants to be absolutely worthless, then I guess we're stuck with Xinhua, RT, and bloggers like Breitbart.
Re:RT is not more biased than BBC (Score:4, Interesting)
You see it as biased because you treat US media spin as the norm.
What ideas do the /. crowd have for fixing this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I, personally, see this trend as a major problem for democratic processes. If we can't really know what's going on, we can't vote sensibly on it. While this is a problem with mainstream media, anyway, the existing problem is a lot less severe than would be an unabashedly (or covertly) state-sponsored news media--and despite what we might think, people will undoubtedly believe such tripe, much as most people "buy into" the less-than-objective news we currently get.
So, I'm asking the brilliant minds of Slashdot what a better solution might be. I mean this as a serious question, so please no trolls, flames, etc.
For the sake of completeness/initiating the conversation/clarity: /. does. Possibly some "real" reporters will get in on it, but I don't know how they'll make a living. Otherwise, this means that everyone is doing journalism in a mostly (or strictly) amateur capacity, which will (typically) produce low-quality stories and lack journalistic legal protection in those countries that provide such. Also, it's likely to be dangerous for those who don't know what they're doing. This still won't address the issue of how much it costs to report important, non-easy news stories, but the lack of ad-driven funding could provide for a more "serious" tenor to the content (by way of not catering to popular-but-vapid content).
Options we have so far (which seem to be increasingly inadequate):
1) Traditional media. It's dying. I think we can all point to a handful of compelling reasons why it'll continue to die.
2) Paywalls. Nobody likes them, and they're arguably little better than unabashed state media, since one has to pay for a lot of them in order to sort out what's nonobjective. (If someone knows a fix for this, let's hear it!)
3) Free (as in beer) news--ad-sponsored. It lacks funding required to do a lot of "real" investigative reporting, and as such, it isn't likely to send a reporter across the world to report on the latest war in which our soldiers are fighting. (Let's put the topic of what wars they should be fighting aside, for the moment.) Also, I'm sick of seeing "lowest common denominator" content--no matter how cute those cats are.
4) Purely user-contributed news--similar to an "open-source" approach. Also suffers from "lowest common denominator," but can have some amount of filtering, much like
5) Other?
One final thought: how can we prevent whatever we end up with from becoming just as bad/useless/corrupt/biased as current and trending options?
I look forward to reading your thoughts. I don't know how we might go about implementing any wonderful ideas we come up with, so if anyone cares to tackle that "porcupine," I'm all for it. Otherwise, it's a fun mental exercise, and might inspire some reader who actually has a say in such matters.
Re:What ideas do the /. crowd have for fixing this (Score:4, Interesting)
5) Other: BBC -like,
that is a public news service, funded by the taxation or a license. Yes, it is not fully free from the government control, but it is still better than commercial services which seem to be levitating to more entertainment (cats) and to less expensive reporting (Syria).
Re:Al Jazeera - mischaracterized yet again (Score:5, Interesting)
On few other websites than Al Jazeera's will one find opinion pieces on the Middle East by an American Jew, a Palestinean expatriate and a former CIA director side by side.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Giving control of the media to the state (Score:4, Interesting)
What could possibly go wrong. /s
I think state media is fine if it exists in competition with private media. But the supposed separation between the journalists and the people writing checks is at best a wire mesh door. It might stop overt manipulation but you're not going to get a state media that is highly critical of it's primary backers in government.
You might get the state media to attack one party in political systems that have more then one party. But they'll be consistently loyal to a given political faction. That is their camp in the government and separated from that alliance they wouldn't be able to attack either party.
It's amusing hearing countries like China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia being cited as examples of successful state media. These are all countries with spotty histories of tolerating political decent in media. In all three countries journalists have been jailed or killed at intervals for rocking the boat.
So sure, state media is working in those countries but in large part that's because it isn't totally safe to be a journalist in those countries. Russia has gotten a lot better and china is getting better. But there are always lingering allegations of secret police shutting up journalists. Not long ago an outspoken critic of Putin was killed in a mugging. And the notion that it was actually an assassination of a political critic was a popular conspiracy theory. No one besides the muggers really knows what happened. And both China and Saudi Arabia still openly jail journalists that piss off the wrong people in government.
I have no problem with state media. But if it's your primary source for news then you're ultimately having your impression of the world formed by at least one powerful faction in the government if not the ruling faction. Private media is also biased. But it tends to be the bias of the owners which can be a much smaller faction in the society. Further, where private media exists there tends to be a lot of it. And while one source can be biased most of the bias is canceled out if you consume a lot of different media.
Don't forget NewsCorp and Fox News (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition to state funded we should include other agenda-funded media like the Murdoch empire.
Re:The BBC isn't state sponsored media? I must be (Score:5, Interesting)
But where is the money going to come from to hire these “qualified agents”? That’s the issue for me, and I think Derkmead has it right.
Newspapers where a bundled item. You got 1. “qualified agents” (a.k.a. reporters) and 2. A distribution channel.
The Internet does a wonderful job of distribution and aggregating information. Wiki, Google, and it’s ilk do a decent job of promoting and editing important stuff. What it does not do well is original, unbiased research.
But you still need a unbiased reporter on the ground in Syria taking pictures gathering data. This is something the Internet is good a providing. It’s got ADD and has a hard time concentrating on a single issue at depth.
Re:RT is not more biased than BBC (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm glad at least one person on Slashdot gets it. It's not "Fox News Lies!" or "MSNBC Lies!," "RT Lies!," "BBC Lies!," etc. They all have skin in the game and they have a particular mindset and worldview to which they want to cater. You're not going be able to go out there and verify everything they say, so all you can do is try to get as many angles on an issue as you can in order to grasp the reality of the situation.
If you want to know how old the earth is, you don't go out and ask a dozen people off the street to "get as many angles on an issue as you can", you try to find a reliable source. In this case, that means you find a scientist, and if you want a precise answer, you find a geologist. That's because reality isn't a compromise; it either happened or it didn't. You don't go, "some people say the earth is 3 billion years old, some people say it's 6,000 years old, let's meet somewhere in between and call it an even million."
Similarly, if you want to be informed about the world, you find a reliable source. Some of them are simply more reliable than others- NPR has very good news, the Wall Street Journal's reporting is very good (I'm less a fan of their op-ed pages), the Economist provides good news as well. This isn't a question of political slant; these news organizations cover the spectrum (NPR on the left, Economist center-right, Journal on the right). But in each case, the people working as reporters for these organizations are capable of putting their political agendas to the side and reporting on what really happened. The Journal, for instance, is owned by Rupert Murdoch and so they have an op-ed section which works as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party just like Fox News, but they've actually managed to keep their reporting separate from that. I'd argue that getting your news exclusively from any one of these sources would make you more informed than listening to both Fox News (a terrible right-wing channel) and CNN (a terrible left-wing channel) and then trying to triangulate the truth.
Re:NPR (Score:5, Interesting)
NPR is biased.
Now, mind you, I like and listen to NPR. I also think they are factual, and I think that is important. There are some “news” channels that live on manufactured hype and will not let facts get in the way of a good story.
However, NPR does cater to the people who pay the bills – Members like you – white, urban, college educated, professional, liberals. I remember hearing a story last year about a electric company trying to build more coal fired gas plants. NPR focused on the environmental impacts. The Wall Street Journal focused on the economic impacts. Both stories where true but both outlets had used their editorial control to focus on different aspects of the same story.
You can’t be unbiased. What you can do is state what your bias is and report the facts.
Re:The point is journalists don't do that either. (Score:4, Interesting)
“Perfect is the enemy of good”, Voltaire
I am going to have to disagree with you. It is one thing that old media did well. News editors did a decent job of insulating reports from the owners and ad staff and hiring professional staff. It is better to strive to create unbiased data – and acknowledge where there are weaknesses – then to throw in the towel.