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Saturday, 28 September 2024

'Broken' news industry



'Broken' news industry faces uncertain future

From disinformation campaigns to soaring scepticism, plummeting trust and economic slumps, the global media landscape has been hit with blow after blow.

World News Day, taking place on Saturday with the support of hundreds of organisations including AFP, aims to raise awareness about the challenges endangering the hard-pressed industry.

- 'Broken business model' -

In 2022, UNESCO warned that "the business model of the news media is broken".


I suppose it's possible that trivia, misinformation, distortion, bias, propaganda, obvious lies, clickbait, ignorance, celebrity obsession, arrogance, and supercilious demonising of ordinary people might get up the nose of ordinary people. 

Just a thought.

5 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

Unfortunately the 'news' industry is now part of a wider 'entertainment' industry. And being mere 'entertainment' undermines any requirement for accuracy.

Being optimistic people are beginning to downgrade the value of news to just propaganda. It makes the efforts of politicians to manage the 'disinformation' look (even more) pitiful.

Sam Vega said...

I think the business model only ever worked when there was no alternative. Nothing changed except that people got smarter. We realised what we were being fed on, and that it tasted nasty.

A K Haart said...

DJ - I've long seen the BBC focus on entertainment as one of it's problems in that it can't disentangle factual output from entertainment. It seems to view news, current affairs and documentaries as another type of entertainment and yes, being optimistic, perhaps people are beginning to notice.

Sam - it's not easy to look back dispassionately, but yes, lack of alternatives must be why it worked in the past. In a sense we see it now, if people reject alternatives they will be deceived.

James Higham said...

Meanwhile, we blog.

A K Haart said...

James - almost like doing our bit.