Memorandum by the Media Standards Trust
INTRODUCTION TO
THE MEDIA
STANDARDS TRUST
The Media Standards Trust was established in
2006. It is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that aims
to find ways to foster the highest standards of excellence in
news journalism and ensure public trust in news is nurtured.
We exist because we believe high standards of
news and information are critical to the health of our democratic
society. These standards are being challenged by the enormous,
revolutionary changes in the way in which news and information
are produced, funded, packaged, delivered and consumed. In many
areas these changes are leading to; less accurate reporting, less
substantial sourcing, an escalation in the use of "manufactured
news", an increase in self-censorship, a growth of subjective
over objective reporting, and a reduction in sustained, in-depth
reporting on the ground, particularly investigative reporting.
Of course there have always been high and low
standards and always will be, but right now, as the news media
is transformed, these standards are under threat as never before.
We will work on behalf of the public and the public interest to
find ways to preserve and foster high standards.
THE SUBMISSION
In this submission we will briefly outline the
evidence for the revolution in news mediain response to
the questions you have asked.
Although the submission does try to focus on
these questions, we believe there are a host of new questions
in our new media environment that are equally urgent. News providers
are, for example, losing control of their own news agendas as
people pick and choose which news stories they are interested
in or consider relevant to them. Similarly, now that people have
access toeffectivelyinfinite content on the internet,
the traditional idea of "diversity" needs to be reconsidered.
This paper will try to be as concise as possible,
but if you would like any more information about the points raised,
please do not hesitate to let us know.
1. How and why have the agendas of news providers
changed?
1.01 Due to the combined forces of new technology,
competitive pressure, and the controls now available to the consumer,
news organisations are losing confidence in the idea of shared
news values. In practice this means they either flock, like a
single herd, to one story, or splinter to different agendas according
to the perceived priorities of their audience.
1.02 There is a serious danger that as a result,
news organisations lack the resources to fund an ongoing, public
interest news agenda, and that we, as a society, are losing our
shared knowledgethreatening social cohesion and preventing
us from being able to participate fully.
How?
1.03 Loss of editorial control. News
is now often produced in such a way that each individual story
is an individual package and can delivered and consumed in any
orderceding the power of the editor to define the news
agenda, in other words, to the audience (see, for example, BBC
& Sky digital news, the BBC news player, online news sites,
RSS feeds etc.).
1.04 "Pyramiding". There
is an increasing tendency for one news story to monopolise the
attention of all mainstream news outletswhether it be the
disappearance of Madeleine McCann or British sailors held hostage
in Iran. The author Lionel Shriver described the phenomenon at
this year's Edinburgh Festival as the rise of the "hyper-narrative".
1.05 Splintering. Outside the "pyramid"
stories described above there is less shared news agenda across
outlets as each news provider tries to distinguish itself and
find its own consumer niche (BBC excepted)eg The Independent
and the environment, Five News and citizen journalism
1.06 Stress on individual "relevance".
News agendas are increasingly keen to stress how each news story
is directly relevant to YOUfor example, explaining exactly
what impact an interest rate rise will have on your mortgage.
This is both to cater to the demand for "me-media" and
to counter the growing belief that "much of the news on TV
is not relevant to me" (up from 34% in 2002 to 55% in 2007,
OFCOM 2007).
1.07 Aspiration to authenticity.
News providers try to enhance the "realness" of footage
as much as they can by, for example, including videos and/or testimony
from the public (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five all now ask their
viewers for content. ITV has recently launched its "Upload"
service and Five has partnered with Friction TV).
1.08 More emotive, more subjective.
Journalists are being encouraged to include their personal impressions
in news storiessometimes even their personal feelings.
A report by Carma International compared coverage of over 200
health and crime stories in six UK national newspapers in 2006
as compared to 1996. It found that stories were more personalised,
had been made more emotional, and had been spruced up with superlatives.
2/3 of reports put individuals at the centre of the story, vs
half 10 years ago. 14% of reports included a quote from a family
member, vs 4% 10 years ago. Use of emotive words had increased,
in some cases tenfold.
1.09 PR driven. The professionalisation
of public relations and reduced editorial resources of news organisations
mean their agendas are increasingly influenced, and filled, with
public relations material. In a recent survey of local newspaper
journalists, 92% said they used more PR copy in their stories
than previously (Williams & Franklin, Cardiff 2007).
1.10 Increased speed of turnover.
News agendas evolve much more rapidly than they did, partly due
to ease of publishing, and to multiplication of news outlets.
"When I fought the 1997 election" Tony Blair said in
a speech in June 2007, "...we took an issue a day. In 2005
we had to have one for the morning, another for the afternoon,
and by the evening the agenda had already moved on."
Why?
1.11 Competition from new news providers.
In addition to competing with one another, UK news organisations
now have to compete with new sources of UK news on the web (especially
specialist sources and blogs), international news providers (such
as www.nytimes.com), and news aggregators (such as Google News).
The day after the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones you could,
for example, read 684 news articles about the killing on Google
News.
1.12 Competition from non-news media
(nb entertainment). The greatest competition to news comes
not from other news but from other media contentparticularly
entertainment. The media options available to the public are now
overwhelming. Many homes now have access to seven digital platforms
(OFCOM), through any or all of which they can consume media content.
The average Briton spends more than seven hours a day watching
television, listening to the radio, surfing the internet and talking
on the phone. News therefore competes with all other media content
for people's attention.
1.13 Demands created by the increasing
number of technological platforms. Having to provide news
in print, in pictures, in audio and in video has forced news providers
to alterand in many cases narrowtheir news agenda.
The BBC, for example, now releases the same news story, packaged
differently, on terrestrial TV, on digital TV, on radio, online,
and on mobile phones. Mark Byford, deputy DG and head of BBC journalism,
said recently that "Mobiles are the news medium of the masses.
And that means text". Inevitably this also means fewer words.
1.14 Demands created by ease of publishing.
News organisations have had to take account of the ease by which
anyone can now publish (eg via blogs, video logs, or picture sites).
There are, for example, 1,845 new articles published on Wikipedia
every dayequal to about 22 newspaper broadsheets' worth.
News outlets have reacted by trying to integrate their audiences'
output to their own (eg see MyTelegraph.co.uk) and encouraging
audiences to send them content.
1.15 Multiplication of distribution channels.
As well as providing news through their own channels, news organisations
are now having to provide it via other channels and platforms
such as Google News and social networking sites like Facebook.
You can now view Reuters news videos, for example, via YouTube
on Google News. News organisations have even less control of their
agenda when distributed through these channels.
1.16 Increasing information about the
behaviour of the audience. News providers have much more information
about the stories that their audience find interesting thanks
to the internet. This has started to affect the priority given
to different news stories. The online editions of the Guardian
and the Times, for example, now have more American than
British readers (from Nielsen/Netratings). This has encouraged
them to "internationalise" their web content, and led
both to launch international version of their websites.
1.17 New opportunities for dialogue with
the audience. Now that news organisations receive input from
the audience within the news cycle, the attitude of the audience
is having a real-time impact on the news agenda. When there was
evidence of petrol tampering early in 2007, the BBC pushed the
story to the top of its news agenda due to the number of people
contacting them about it.
1.18 New opportunities for the audience
to define their own news agenda. People are now ableon
digital television, on the internet and on mobile phonesto
choose which news stories they are interested in viewing and in
what order. They can do this on digital TV (see BBC and Sky news
interactive), on the internet (see reddit, digg, newsvine, daylife
and RSS feeds) or on their mobile.
1.19 New opportunities for the audience
to record the news themselves. Many people are now recording
news themselves, from 7/7 to the Buncefield oil depot explosion
to celebrity sightingsand sending them into news organisations,
selling them via intermediaries (like Scoopt) uploading them to
citizen journalism websites (like www.nowpublic.com) or loading
them onto their own sites.
1.20 The greatest change in media content
over the next five years will be the massive accumulation of so-called
"user-generated content". In 2006 the world generated
161 billion gigabytes of digital information. That is equivalent
to three million times the information in all the books ever written.
By 2010 we will be creating six times as much again. 70% of this,
it is predicted, will be user generated.
2. How is the way that people access the news
changing?
2.01 Reliance on "ambient news".
There is an attitude, particularly prevalent amongst young people,
that news is now so ambient and ubiquitouson the internet,
on television, on mobile phones, on the radio, and on electronic
billboardsthat if there is important news, they will hear
about it without needing to make time for a particular news programme
or newspaper (from OFCOM qualitative research).
2.02 Personalisation of news to one's
own agenda. Many people are tailoring the news they receive,
particularly online and on their mobile phone. By subscribing
to email alerts and "RSS Feeds" they define the type
of news they receive and how they receive it. As long as two years
ago there were 20 million "click-throughs" from RSS
news readers to BBC news stories.
2.03 Searching for specific stories.
If people want to know about a particular news story they are
as likely to go online and search for it via Google as wait for
more information from a news programme.
2.04 Sharing stories via social networks.
Email, instant messaging and social networks enable people to
share news stories with one anothera sort of broadcast
"word of mouth" news. This is particularly true of sites
like MySpace and Facebook.
2.05 There is also evidence to show many
young people are hardly accessing news at allor only very
small amounts. 16-24 year olds now watch an average of only 45
minutes news per week (OFCOM 2007) There is, OFCOM states, "strong
evidence to suggest" that large numbers of young people feel
that "news of any kind... is of little current relevance
to them".
3. How has the process of news gathering changed?
3.01 Less on-the-ground news gathering
staff. Almost all national and local news organisations have
reduced their editorial staff over the last three years. From
the Financial Times (50 journalists made redundant last
year) through to the Telegraph (54 redundancies) to the
BBC (15% staff reduction across the board), to local newspapers,
there are now many fewer journalists gathering news than there
were a few years ago.
This is having a negative impact on public interest
newsgathering. Recent research by the NUJ claimed the number of
reporters sitting in local government meetings has significantly
dropped in the last five years (NUJ, Journalism Matters). And
in a survey of reporting on local councils, the Press Gazette
could not find one council who said coverage had improved, most
said it had worsened (Press Gazette, 29 June 2007).
3.02 Reliance on agency reporting.
A greater number of news distributors are relying on an ever smaller
number of professional journalistsmostly from AP or Reuters,
for specialist and international news. Chris Paterson's study
for CICR found that 85% of international news copy on internet
news aggregators can be traced to wire reports. And this figure
only falls to 50% for major original news content providers.
3.03 Increasingly desk-based news gathering.
Two forces have combined to increase the amount of time journalists
spend gathering news from their desk rather than in person. It
has become easier to access information remotely via the internet.
And, there is less money, fewer people and less time, constraining
journalists' ability to travel or meet people.
According to the Financial Times, the
UK's local newspaper industry lost about £225 million in
revenue last year as regional publishers invested heavily online
but failed to counter declining circulation.
3.04 Greater use of press releases.
Fewer journalists producing more stories has also led to a greater
relianceboth within newsrooms and by the publicon
press releases and public relations material.
For local government news, for example, official
newsletters and websites are starting to take the place of news
reporting (from Richard Orange, Press Gazette).
3.05 Greater use of "citizen media"
content. Television news broadcasters as well as national
and local newspapers are now gathering more of their news from
ordinary people. As the Independent wrote on 30 June, "Many
images we see nowadays are not taken by professionals, but by
members of the public". The same is becoming true of video
and even written content.
3.06 Automated "newsgathering".
Google News, one of the top 10 most popular news websites, does
not employ journalists. It "gathers" news automatically
from 4,500 news sources worldwide.
4. What is the impact of the concentration of
media ownership on the balance and diversity of opinion seen in
the news?
4.01 This is an extremely difficult question
to answer because the current environment is changing so fast,
and because traditional notions of balance and diversity appear
increasingly anachronistic. The problem is, increasingly, not
with the diversity of viewpoints but how to find them, and how
to establish if they're credible.
4.02 There have been serious concerns about
the affects of concentrated media ownership in the UK at least
since the first Royal Commission on the Press in 1947. These concerns
are currently being bypassed by even more urgent problems concerning
the whole economic structure of news. Since competitionfrom
alternative news providers, from "free" news sources,
from other media contenthas undermined the financial model
of news organisations. It is no longer clear that they can be
profitable (or profitable enough) through circulation and advertising
revenue. Most news organisations are therefore thinking about
how they maintain profitability. This normally means reducing
costs and finding new sources of revenue.
4.03 An equally, if not more urgent question
now therefore is, what is the impact of competition on the provision
of public interest news?
5. How should the public interest be protected
and defined in terms of news provision?
5.01 The provisions made for public interest
news in the 2003 Communications Act are no longer adequate. It
assumes that the biggest threat to diversity, plurality and the
public interest are from monopoly ownership. This is no longer
the case.
5.02 The greatest threat to public interest
are the competitive and economic pressures which are leading existing
news organisations to reduce or stop producing news in the public
interest (eg political, legal, social).
5.03 Further provision needs to be made
if we are to safeguard public interest news in this country.
5.04 The Media Standards Trust is conducting
research into the problems facing news, and has started developing
specific initiatives to deal with them. Given the rate and scale
of media change, we believe this is critical moment at which to
act. We would be more than happy to present further evidence on
these issues and to tell the Select Committee what the Media Standards
is doing to try and address them.
30 August 2007
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