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As the coronavirus continues its relentless march across the world, newsrooms have been working overtime to keep the communities updated.
Amid the welter of information swirling about on social media, professional newsrooms, which have long invested in building expertise, have been meeting the public’s hunger for objective reporting. These have also helped inoculate communities against that other virus that is on the rampage — fake news — which is sowing anxiety and confusion and undermining the public’s trust in information.
Some reporters have succumbed to the virus while on the job, and newsrooms have had to evacuate hurriedly but still try to keep their platforms updated and the presses rolling. But here’s the heartbreaking news: Among the victims in the intensive care unit, gasping for breath, are some of the media organisations themselves.
Several might not meet their financial commitments, or even pay salaries, in the months ahead. Advertising has plunged by 30-80 per cent, according to a recent survey by the World Association of News Publishers. Revenues from media-related events, a new and growing source of funds, have dried up due to social distancing.
Many newsrooms have made content on the pandemic freely available, as a public service, constraining the growth of revenues from subscriptions.
The upshot of this is both ironic and tragic: As audiences increasingly turn to established titles, newsrooms are seeing their resources gutted, and some are being shut. This has heightened concerns about the emergence of “news deserts”— communities with no access to local government and community news. There are also “ghost newsrooms” Profitable titles are snapped up by investors, who slash their reporting to boost margins, resulting in lack of local, original or independent content.
The implications of these developments for society are grave at a time when communities are most in need of critical information. This has led the World Health Organization to warn of a coming “infodemic”, with misinformation spreading and undermining public trust.
The financial struggles faced by newsrooms is hardly news. Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash pointed to this in a keynote address at the St Gallen Symposium in Switzerland in May 2017. He said: “For at least two centuries, we have had a public good — news, the information we need for democracy — delivered by private means. … People would pay for a newspaper and (there was also) advertising revenue.
“The internet has just knocked away both these pillars. So the newspapers produce the information, Facebook and Google get the profit.”
Covid-19 has mercilessly compounded this challenge and hastened the shift to digital and the plunge in advertising.
Among the proposed remedies are declaring the media an essential service; granting financial assistance; giving tax incentives for advertisers and subscribers; stepping up government advertising; and making Big Tech pay.
But while this might see media groups through the crisis, they are not without risks — not least of which is damage to the credibility of the media if it becomes overly dependent on state funding. To safeguard against this, there is a need for new business models.
Various experiments are under way. While some big players are growing subscription revenues, others have been bought by wealthy business leaders, who have boosted them by investing in journalism and technology. Some media groups have been given state mandate with funding for public service broadcasts and journalism, yet others have opted to be public trusts or not-for-profit companies, to provide public service journalism.
Which of these models works best remains unclear. But this much is certain: The coronavirus pandemic might have begun as a public health crisis, but some wrenching economic, social and political changes could follow soon.
People and communities will need to make sense of developments unfolding around them and figure out the way forward. To do so, citizens and voters will need news organisations they consider credible, reliable and trusted.
Warren Fernandez, editor-in-chief of ‘The Straits Times’, is president of the World Editors Forum.
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