The business of news

More than 10 years ago, after I decided to give up my dream-job I always wanted to have - journalism - I was deeply disappointed by the business of news as such. Under the pressure to become a profitable industry, journalism degenerated in a business-driven enterprise, where economic interests were dictating the angle of news and even the coverage or not of certain sensitive information for the owners. For me, as a young dreamer, such an approach was inacceptable and thus, I decided to give up the dream.

Fortunately for me, the online medium was developing rapidly and shortly enough I've found my perfect environment to share my ideas and interests, without the pressure of the profit and enjoying the professional independence I was so hungry for before. I was my own boss, spending as much time as I wanted to document a news and writing fully about issues that I was interested in. But it was no profit involved and, at least in the case of foreign affairs reporting, I decided to avoid completely to associate any financial implications to it.

Blogging was starting to develop, and more and more people were entering this environment to share their opinions and ideas. As in the case of any beginnings, there were some funny episodes, and not all the content aired was professional. Especially if you start as a lone blogger, taking into consideration the ethical standards and the golden rule of 3 sources seems to be not necessarily a main concern for the writers. Sharing was more important and if in the case of travel and leisure news, checking the facts is easier and doesn't require too much time, for foreign and home news, creating a reliable news report is always a matter of time. The longer, the better, as in the case of the good wines.

A new category of journalism was developing: citizen journalism. With the new wave of social media and high-tech tools, anyone was able to report and create the news. The most important thing was to report and share it with the world instantly, before the crew of the classical media outlets were able to reach the premises. In war areas - with limited access and sometimes without any presence of foreign journalists - or when spontaneous riots started, the rapid share of information might be the unique available reporting. But even in such cases, the documented reporting should use those snaps of information in order to create reliable news features and check directly with the authorities about various facts. Citizen journalism doesn't have the access or the desire to do this, but can provide an important piece of information, although not the full information itself.

Observing all those developments made me happy. I was jealous of all the resources available at the time dreaming about how my hard start in the field of news reporting would have been. But I was experienced enough to notice the risks as well, but was almost convinced - contrary to the pessimistic thoughts from The Net Delusion - that the good guys - aka the good journalism will always win. After all, it was the first time in history when there were enormous possibilities to do good and keep doing your job.

But the search engines and the Internet networks such as Facebook, were silently pursuing another revolution: that of the algorithms, according to which some content is more visible that the other, often promoted in exchange of minimal fees. When the amount of information produced is overwhelming, there should be a certain order to organise it, based on categories, key-words or other relevant mathematical - cold - rules. The SEO and search for visibility weren't necessarily promoting the best, but the most read news, where the visibility of a site was calculated up to the well chosen words used, based on the most searched words and expressions. It doesn't mean that this excludes the quality content to be found and read, but it requires a lot of extra work, not necessarily of journalistic nature and very often, when faced with the choice between checking facts and figures and becoming a SEO-Samurai, you rather prefer to publish an impeccable piece of news. Again, the risk might be that no one will see your story.

The phenomenon of the 'fake news' so popular during the last American elections isn't new. It is at least 8 years old when during the presidential elections in the same USA were bombarded with information about the unclear ethnic and citizenship origin of pres. Obama. I am not taking any stance for or against him, I just notice facts. The method was used in the next elections and the fact that right now it is a matter of concern is the result of the high standards the web techniques themselves reached. The fact that president elect Trump complains of being himself a victim of 'fake news' is pretty ironic, as in the last years and months, he was the main beneficiary of such campaigns. Practically, nowadays, everyone with a basic SEO knowledge and some $$ in the pocket can play with the news and support its own version of truth. The more resourceful financially and logistically, the better for a definitive version of it, even for a couple of hours or even days. Most probably, many people will prefer to keep in mind the first variant offered, without bothering to check the further developments. It is normal too, as time is limited and our attention nowadays is extremely split.

What is to be done? It is the end of journalism as we know it and the beginning of the informational chaos? The media landscape obviously changed and challenged. The business of news were never a good profitable one, unless people used blackmail and yellow media - which was all so popular at the beginning of the news too. The 'fake' news will continue to exist alongside serious information for now on and people will keep reading it, with the same appetite as they read gossip magazines. It is not a matter of human nature, but of readability and curiosity. 

However, people in the business of news do have serious obligations. First, they need to keep respecting their standards and regardless of the pressure and the stakes, to continue offering verified quality information. Second, it is important to educate both public and producers of news discernment, through online classes, books and media reports. To share experiences about how to separate 'real' from 'fake', about how to write and read responsibly. After all, there are so many people able to distinguish between a real luxury brand and a fake, because they got the proper education to do it. And if they choose to buy the fake one, they do it responsibly, aware of their choices. It is a difficult but not impossible task.

The past, present and future of News Media

What is the future of the news in the era of instant communications? What is the future of journalists in general? Too much available information does not mean an informed public and highly professional journalists and books about media and its news industry are always welcomed, for their efforts to go beyond the daily informational shots.

Through a historical investigation into the domain, done by authors with journalistic experience themselves, The News Media - to be released this September - aims at offering a view into the future. With the fast forward development of communications in general, the curiosity is legitimate and especially for the journalists themselves, it requires at least some minimal forecasts. 

With an almost exclusive focus on the US media history - although other countries are incidentally mentioned - it presents the struggle of the media to get recognition and access to information from the etablished authorities and a fair overview of the current state-of-arts of the digital information era, this book is a reliable source of information for political science and journalism students. It can interest as well anyone curious to get a short update about the history of journalism. the chapters are structured based on short snapshots of information, which make the lecture easy and focused. 

When it comes to the future, the predictions, as expected, are careful. An interesting remark though: 'It is hard to be totally certain about anything related to the future of news. But if there's one thing we can say with same degree of confidence, it is that national (and even international) news organizations and brands will probably be more economically successful than local or regional media outlets'. However, I think that in fact media are getting more localized and focused on micro- rather than on global events, and the audiences tend to be more fragmented and thus setting their own local agendas.

 The domain is vast and the selection is always problematic. This book gives interesting insights into the field, but fails elegantly to open too many perspectives.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher via NetGalley.com

A bad year for journalism

2012 was not a good year for journalism and the supporters of the media freedom and netizens.

Looking in depth at the latest RsF report, it looks as the situation worsened in many respects in comparison with the previous years. According to the declarations of the organizations' officials, it looks as the worst year since 1995.

In comparison with the previous year, 88 journalists were killed, an increased of 33%. 879 were arrested (1044 the previous year), 38 kidnapped (compared with 71 one year before), 73 were forced to flee abroad (77 in 2011). The apparition of netizens meant also a high price in terms of victims: 47 of them were killed this year, especially in Syria and North of Africa.

The most dangerous countries to write are: Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Mexico and Brazil. Using the power of work here could be often faced by the power of guns. The five biggest prisons for journalists are located in Turkey, China, Eritrea, Iran and Syria.

What's next? The journalists will continue to write while the oppressive governments will continue to do their oppressive jobs as long as there will be not enough international pressures to make them stop. This is the never ending story of human evolution, isn't it?

The latest news about the freedom of the media is the hard time of journalists in Italy, where the representatives of a newspaper in Northern Italy were threatened, an occasion for OSCE to urges investigations into threat.

OSCE also asked the Turkish authorities to take the necessary steps in order to curb the permanent threats against the journalists. In a country close to Turkey, not only geographically, in Azerbaidjan, two journalists and a blogger were released one day ago. 

Diplomacy 2.0 - Storyful and Storify

Storyful is presented as the social network whose aim is ‘to create an authentic cooperative and socially useful journalism’. Many of the contributors are not journalists, but their social media activities – specifically Twitter – due to the fact that they are in the middle of the events. It does not mean that what do they air is the absolute truth and thus, the reader has the responsibility of carefully connect the information with other previous or ulterior sources.

Most specifically, Storyful gather the most important news on Twitter and tries to recreate the full picture of an event. Due to the demand of more information among journalists, it offers a paid version addressing the media organizations. Storyful was also partnered with YouTube for increasing the quality of the content offered to their readers.

A similar project was developed by Storify which was launched in2011 which operated similarly with the news from both Twitter and Facebook.

Both websites are easy to use and offer content that at a certain extent is filtered by the professionals which made the selection of Tweets and posts and include them in the big stories.

Advantages and disadvantages

In both cases, the systems are in process and thus it is difficult to make an evaluation and to give a definitive verdict. However, there are many advantages of using both systems, as a way to find out integrated news about the stories of the day. For instance, I watched a lot lately the updates regarding the terrorists attacks in Bulgaria, the situation in Libya and Syria. As a journalist, you can contribute and be included in news package and thus, your information is automatically spread to a diverse audience. The combination of the social media tools offers more authenticity to the media as for instance the cooperation between Storyful and YouTube. Social media tools offered a lot of possibilities for close investigation and authentification of the sources and the authors. It is truth that anyone with an Internet connection could post information but the good nose of the journalist continues to be to check the information at least from threereliable sources. Of course there are many entertainment and sport news that could be considered a waste of time for the foreign policy planners, but think about the effect of the stories about big international events and the effect on various calls for international help in areas affected by international crisis. The truth is in the eyes and responsibility of the authors. 

We and our states

The legal, moral and political problems following September 11 terrorist attacks represented the inspiration of various political and artistic standpoints. Music, literature, arts, pros cons, debates from various perspectives. In the center: how much our freedom is/will be threaten by the legislation allowing the state to enter and access our privacy.

Most part of these statements, in my opinion, are lacking exactly the wider perspective assumed from the very beginning, by not stressing the problem of what is, in fact, the essence and content of this freedom? And, even less, the ways in order to stop or at least diminish the causes provoking this reaction from the part of the states.

The German journalist Heribert Prantl is outlining the German example, but in a very rhetorical way. Page after page, he is gathering more arguments for a public requisitorium of a more intrusive state. With roots back in the past of the German experience in facing the Rote Armee Fraktion and other terrorist threats in the 70s. Ironically enough, but not so logically unexpectedly as Prantl let us believe, one of the promoters of the strict German legislation was the social-democrat Otto Schilly, former Federal Minister of the Interior between 1998 and 2005, during Gerhard Schröder. In the 70s, the same Schilly was defending the Rot Armee Faktion members and, late in the 80s, was one of the founding member of the Green Party.

The rhetoric is continuing, but without a single line of arguments devoted to understanding the whole landscape: the causes of this situation, the alternatives and the options - how, in fact, the state ought to defend its citizens of terrorism, of being innocent victims of fanatics, the possibilities to counter such situations and to play a game with win/win outcome.

It is very easy to outline all these issues and to complain and accuse an invisible and (assumed) mighty power of the state(s), the temptation to control our privacy - doubtful, given the eagerness we, all of us, we are sharing our information and privacies online, via social networking sites, without being requested - the tighter limits to our freedom. As in the case of the Middle East, it is very easy to express an opinion, as a proof of our freedom to think, accuse, evaluate. But, in order to provide a wiser outline of the landscape, more than rhetorics are needed. For example, a critical anaylsis, going beyond the public acclaimed statements. Otherwise, we are getting trapped in the common places of the self-delivered ideas.