"Threat to humanity" posed by new media

Scofflaw

There's a conference on media diversity on today. This is an extract from a speech by Alan Crosbie of Thomas Crosbie Media (SBP etc):

We need to address the threat to humanity posed bythe tsunami of unverifiable data, opinion, libel and vulgar abuse in new media. I know all the stuff about it being a tool of freedom and democracy,and I also know it has the capacity to destroy civil society and cause unimaginable suffering. Governments have a regulatory function in this regard, and they're walking away from it because they're afraid of appearing to be repressive.

In Ireland, the major newspaper institutions need tostart to imagine a radically different future. If the public service contribution of the Irish Examiner , IrishT imes, Irish Independent was to be recognised infinancial terms, readers would be served as they are now, but none of the three major newspapers would walk into the wall posed by debt and advertisingerosion caused by recession.

So, a call for more regulation of new media on the one hand, and a call for public funding of old media on the other. Something of an admission that old media have simply not got their business model to work online.

But could people refrain from the predictable knee-jerk comments and think about what he's saying?

repressively,
Scofflaw

RedXIV

I'm trying to figure out how it can destroy civil society and cause imaginable suffering?

I realise people use it as a platform for hacking etc but other than that, how is it destroying civil society?

Is it possible that he's simply afraid of this? or that the government is afraid of not having control of the media?

Brussels Sprout

Wow. Just imagine it. We the taxpayers could end up footing the bill to keep the Sunday Independent going to that they can continue with their valuable public service contribution, which, as far as I can make out, consists of: running down left wing parties, glamourising talentless Dublin celebrities, re-inflating the property market, bashing the public sector, eulogising property developers, promoting Fianna Fail and showing unashamed nepotism and cronyism in the recruitment of its journalists. Where do we sign up?

Scofflaw

RedXIV wrote: »

I'm trying to figure out how it can destroy civil society and cause imaginable suffering?

I realise people use it as a platform for hacking etc but other than that, how is it destroying civil society?

Is it possible that he's simply afraid of this? or that the government is afraid of not having control of the media?

I'm not sure, to be honest. I presume it relates back to this point:

Because I'm the fifth generation of a newspaper family proud of what we do, I can stand up, put my hands up and say 'Sorry. We got that wrong.' More to the point, I must stand up when we get things wrong in any of our papers or radio stations, because I - we - take terribly seriously the reality that people make life and death decisions based on the information we deliver. And reputations are gained or lost, based on the information we deliver. It matters. It must have a provenance. It must stand up in court, although I'd obviously be happier if we never end up in court.

I'd be happier if I felt there was rather more effort by newspapers to check facts, but I'd have to acknowledge his contention that new media makes little or no effort to do so. And that's a pity, because it's in a better position to do so.

cordially,
Scofflaw

woodoo

'We need to address the threat to humanity posed bythe tsunami of unverifiable data, opinion, libel and vulgar abuse in new media'.

Some of our print newspapers don't seem to pay to much attention to verifying their stories either. Plenty of spin going on to to stir up the readers and to provoke a response. I have no problem naming who i think is the worst culprit for that in this country - Independent and Sunday Independent newspapers. I wouldn't be happy to see my taxes going to help them. I would expect much higher standards.

On the other side of the argument re twitter, facebook, etc. I think something needs to be done in relation to the bullying on these sites. Perhaps a department of the Gardai could be set up to keep an eye on things. After all if you aren't prepared to stand over everything you say they maybe you shouldn't be saying it at all.

Scofflaw

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

Wow. Just imagine it. We the taxpayers could end up footing the bill to keep the Sunday Independent going to that they can continue with their valuable public service contribution, which, as far as I can make out, consists of: running down left wing parties, glamourising talentless Dublin celebrities, re-inflating the property market, bashing the public sector, eulogising property developers, promoting Fianna Fail and showing unashamed nepotism and cronyism in the recruitment of its journalists. Where do we sign up?

Yes - the idea of subsidising Irish newspapers is pretty repugnant. It's also a heck of an admission that it's necessary.

cordially,
Scofflaw

RedXIV

newspaper guy wrote: »

Because I'm the fifth generation of a newspaper family proud of what we do

Surely this is going to impact on his analysis of what should and shouldn't be done in regards the media? Its hard to think of a way he could be more biased towards old media.

However, I'm not 100% sure I would agree with the fact that it's easier to check everything online. The sheer volume of information passing through the internet suggests that trying to verify the facts everytime would be futile. Take for example, Boards.ie if you will. It's just one site of thousands similar (none of which can match of course ) and it has an ARMY of mods...and while its a rare occasion, stuff that probably shouldn't appear here, does.

I'm not complaining about it, but I just think it's an awful lot easier to keep an eye on a paper than a site

I think a tax system like some of the progressive Scandinavian countries have for their media would work well here. One that essentially recognises the important public service contribution that properly researched and verified private sector print and media journalism makes, and rewards it with financial incentives like tax breaks to allow it to offset its higher costs. This gives it an advantage against poorer quality media who have to operate at the usual tax rates for their lack of public service through quality journalism.

Technology and the rise of the internet means that communication and information are going to stay cheap and open into the future, thats inevitable, but real investigative research and properly verified journalism is something that should be valued and incentivised in a culture where unverified and often, unverifiable info purporting to be the truth is only a key press away.

With tax breaks, quality journalism could keep its head above water in an industry dominated by low-cost, cut and paste tabloid trash and still compete with the rags that can sell themselves for 80cent or whatever. I think that's in the long term public interest, because otherwise all we'll have is a race to the bottom and more and more red top trash titles flooding the market.

Scofflaw

RedXIV wrote: »

Surely this is going to impact on his analysis of what should and shouldn't be done in regards the media? Its hard to think of a way he could be more biased towards old media.

However, I'm not 100% sure I would agree with the fact that it's easier to check everything online. The sheer volume of information passing through the internet suggests that trying to verify the facts everytime would be futile. Take for example, Boards.ie if you will. It's just one site of thousands similar (none of which can match of course ) and it has an ARMY of mods...and while its a rare occasion, stuff that probably shouldn't appear here, does.

I'm not complaining about it, but I just think it's an awful lot easier to keep an eye on a paper than a site

I'd agree, but I thin there's two different points in that. I consider it easy to check facts online - a little bit of time with Google will often lead you to somewhere where you can verify any facts quoted in public - and the great value of the net is that you can then actually reference your facts through a direct link, which wasn't ever meaningfully possible in old media.

On the other hand, in terms of someone else - other than the author of a piece/post themselves - checking that the quoted "facts" bear a vague resemblance to reality, that's certainly the case.

I think that if old media wanted to have my tax money, I would expect a vastly improved level of fact checking. To be honest, I wouldn't really consider any of the existing media in such a role because of their, er, prior convictions.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Ellis Dee

Whenever I see phrases like "threat to humanity", my over-the-topness meter immediately begins bleeping furiously. That phrase has been used since at least the occasion on which some or other medieval pope said it about the new-fangled weapon the crossbow.

However, I read the article and must conclude that Mr. Crosbie has a sort of a point, although, as we say here in Finland, it is clear that he has "oma lehmä ojassa" (his own cow in the ditch, i.e. an axe to grind). See this website: http://www.tcm.ie/

Now a look at some of his arguments:

In fact, what's important is the information itself,not what carries it.If we want to achieve variety of opinion and action in a society, then that society needs lots of different streams of information. That's important.But, just as important is the provenance of that information, the quality mark, where it comes from and how it stands up to scrutiny.Right now, in this country and almost everywhere else in the world, people have more information coming at them than at any time in history.Someone told me recently that one edition of any of the major Sunday newspapers for example the Sunday Business Post would have more information in it than a scholar in the middle ages would have encountered in the entire course of his life.

----

The key difference between the information the reader of one of those solid Sunday newspapers chews through, and many other sources of information, is that the newspaper stuff has been gathered by trained, professional reporters, filtered by trained, professional editors, considered, in some cases, by lawyers, sub-edited and double-checked before it arrives with the reader.That's simply not true of all of the competing streams of information. Information coming from newspapers has a provenance. Information from radio and TV, although often, I have to say, picked up from the newspapers, also has a provenance. We know where it came from and we know that if it doesn't stand up, someone will be made to pay either financially or through losing some of their individual or corporate reputation. That's not the case with all of new media.The urgent question facing all of us is this:
What importance do we put on the reliability of the data we consume?
What value do we put on information that is professionally and properly gathered and professionally and properly edited, where there'san audit trail producing a provenance as against stuff that just appears and stuff that may be immediate and exciting - stuff that may or may not be good stuff?

All this is well and good and at first glance appears very persuasive, but what he is asking us to accept is actually one hell of a big ask in an Ireland where, not so long ago, Section 31 was used to filter the news that came to us and far too many media persons wholeheartedly went along with it; indeed, the effects of that mind-poisoning are still in evidence today. The Minister who introduced that draconian assault on freedom of expression and information, the know-all Conor Cruise O'Brien, also wore another hat as editor of the Observer, no less. How many other Irish journalists and other media persons today still share his belief that they know better than us what information we should have access to?:rolleyes:

So, sorry, Mr. Crosbie, you'll have to put a lot of salt and other tasty condiments on your little homily before I accept your argument that the old media are wall-to-wall paragons of goodness and honesty that we can trust to produce whatever pap they want to feed us and we'll just relish it. Your blind faith in their credibility is, to put it mildly, naive. I want to be able to look for a second opinion, and a third, and then get lots of background facts to try and figure out who is feeding me, if not downright lies, at least selective half-truths. If the old media want to have a future in the new era, they will have to enter into its spirit and offer interactive channels that people will learn to trust because they can test their veracity for themselves and give plenty of feedback.:)

The answer to the problem of the information deluge is for people to learn that you do not trust anything without checking it, comparing accounts from various sources - and thanks to new media we have a vast array of sources to choose from.;)

Cynically and skeptically,

Ellis Dee

seamus

At the end of the day, newspapers are aggregators. They take stories from various sources, they filter them, edit them and then present them in a certain format.

It would be wrong to claim that such a service is not required and not possible online. Certainly most people are not getting their "news" by watching their twitter feeds and facebook timelines. People don't rely on a post on boards.ie to tell them what's going on in the world.
For each piece of news, there is a story there, somewhere, having been written by someone. Very often a journalist.

I have yet to see any examples of this imaginary unchecked and unregulated threat claimed by Mr Crosbie.

Just in the same way as it's impossible for a single person to have contacts all over the globe phoning them with news, it's impossible for an individual to monitor news sites, twitter feeds, and all the other feeds from all the other sources. At the end of the day, there will always be a demand for a service which cherry-picks all of the best bits and presents them to us.

Basically what I'm saying is that journalism hasn't changed. Media hasn't changed. Only the delivery mechanism is evolving. Like the recording industry's continuing failure to capitalise on changes in their delivery mechanism (and instead vigorously oppose it), the media are facing the exact same challenge. The only difference is that the dominance of their delivery system has remained unchallenged for more than 100 years.

I'm sure there was equal wailing when TV first arrived; complaints that the written word wouldn't be able to compete with images and that the facts and the context would be lost when the viewer saw the images and made up their own interpretation.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

steelcityblues

What about the bully-boy tactics towards one immigrant last week, from one of the traditional newspapers?

From now on, you can use that as ammo against these po-faced old media hacks.

southsiderosie

I have to wonder how we are to interpret the fact that, as they were accepting advertising dollars hand over fist from developers and other real estate interests, none of Ireland's major newspapers questioned the underlying economics of the boom - did this sin of omission benefit the public or the advertisers? And if newspapers are to be blind to the sins of their financial backers, then from who or what should the public expect to get hard analysis and critique of the government - one of the core functions of the Fourth Estate - if the government is underwriting the newspaper?

While newspapers have their own ideological biases, if they are to have a role in maintaining a robust, independent civil society in a democracy then they have to be independent of the government. So their either needs to be a viable business model for them to survive, or if there is some kind of subsidy it has to be ring-fenced in order to protect the paper's editorial independence. But I'm having a hard time imagining how that would be possible.

hatrickpatrick

I also know it has the capacity to destroy civil society

Before I respond to his remarks in full, someone clarify: What does he mean by "civil society", and what does he mean by its destruction?
If he means it could destroy traditional power structures and social hierarchy, then I for one say yipee.

Gurgle

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Before I respond to his remarks in full, someone clarify: What does he mean by "civil society", and what does he mean by its destruction?
If he means it could destroy traditional power structures and social hierarchy, then I for one say yipee.

Nothing so grand. He means its going to be more difficult for his heirs and successors to make an easy living in the family business than it was for him.