If you are in the media, news and journalism sector, you will be bombarded each day with increasingly urgent messages and information about how dire the situation is for news media and public interest content.
Just this week, the High-Level Panel on Public Interest published an open letter highlighting the critical need for urgent action on protecting public interest content. To be clear, for most news media and journalism entities things aren’t just bad, they are verging on catastrophic.
A few weeks ago, we saw the parliamentary committee chair on communication and digital technology warning of a possible SABC blackout due to unpaid bills (it won’t and cannot be allowed to happen, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t a real possibility). Most major media houses have been retrenching journalists, with many operating on half a shoe-string budget, and hundreds of small commercial/community media exist from edition to edition.
If you aren’t in the media sector and are just an interested member of the public, you might think the media whine too much, that the quality of news is getting worse, that despite the content deluge, there seems to be less news than before, or you might think the news is just too depressing.
You would be right on most of these issues, but you would also be wrong to think that the effects of a media in crisis that you experience as decreasing quality are anything other than the direst of warning signs.
Why should you care?
You should care because it isn’t just journalism that is under threat. With each passing day, AI’s impact is felt increasingly broadly. So much content is now AI-generated, and it is becoming incredibly difficult to discern AI-generated content from reality.
While polarisation, racism, misogyny, child sexual abuse material and disinformation are not new threats, social media has facilitated, incentivised, monetised and generated online harms at an industrial scale.
Within newsrooms, we have groups of real people sifting, selecting and determining what issues and stories we need to see. While there are shortcomings and limitations to these systems, we know it is real people, and that they can be held accountable.
Some, like Debrief network, are trying new models using social media for good – but applying the same principles of journalism.
With algorithms, echo chambers and personalised feeds, we have no insight into why we see what we see, beyond knowing that if we talk about buying a new pair of shoes with a friend, suddenly you will be exposed to shoe adverts across all platforms.
The reality is that with so much information on our feeds, with most of it engineered to drive engagement, through shock, anger, fear, anxiety or outrage, we have less reason to know what’s real, what’s true, what happened or what hasn’t.
Journalism’s crisis is being subsumed by a broader threat of a collapse of information integrity – or knowing what information is accurate, real, credible, reliable and transparent.
Again, you might think it’s not a problem, but what happens when you no longer know if there is a run on the banks, or a new epidemic, or whether it’s safe to take paracetamol? How will you find out? AI is only as good as the data it is fed, so rubbish in, rubbish out.
Critical issues
It is precisely because of these multiple crises that Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) and the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) got together last year to look at how critical issues surrounding journalism, media viability and the safety of journalists could be put on the global agenda.
With South Africa as the host country for the G20, we set about building on some work initiated in India, then in Brazil, to start an M20 or Media20, precisely because the issues affecting information, as a public good, and the systems that deliver it, are not only global concerns, but the crises being experienced are global in nature as well.
With the support of a global advisory group, we set about developing policy briefs to look at the critical challenges on a range of issues. You can see them here.
The briefs cover a range of issues exciting to media wonks, from AI and intellectual property issues, to media viability and funding, to attacks on journalists and children’s right to access credible information.
The work of the M20 culminated in a two-day conference at the start of September and saw representatives from 39 nations, broad African representation and critical input from Global South thinkers. At the end of it all, the Johannesburg Declaration was released.
You might feel underwhelmed by this news — oh, good, another declaration. You would be right except for a few important factors.
The M20 highlighted how, despite our national differences, despite issues of the digital divide, we are all facing similar threats and challenges that cut across left and right, across political ideologies, across geographic boundaries.
It’s useful to go back to Covid – when the pandemic took hold, when the fruitcakes, crooks and denialists emerged in their numbers with notions of Covid being caused by 5G (see this still really excellent debunk by the brilliant
style="font-weight: 400;">Alan Committie), people knew they could turn to credible news sources for information that could be trusted, information scientifically and evidence-based.
All credible news media saw massive surges in their audiences – precisely because, at a time of crisis, people need to know what is real and what isn’t, to understand what’s happening. News and journalism are more than holding powerful people accountable or exposing corruption – they are a fundamental public good.
Reliable information ecosystem
The Johannesburg Declaration is valuable as it covers critical issues and provides short, succinct points to political leaders (let’s face it, some need short points if they are going to understand), the media and the public.
In addition, it offers a clear mechanism for us to monitor progress and to track if those in power are heeding the calls and warnings. It gives us a means to mobilise support, irrespective of political allegiance, for an information ecosystem that works for all people.
Whether you are a fan of guns, Charlie Kirk, Trump, Israel or Palestine. Whether you love AfriForum, the MK party, the ANC, DA, EFF, we all need information we can rely on, we all need to understand and participate in our democracy, even if it is only to ensure our children can go to a good school, be safe, and have affordable healthcare if they are sick.
We should all be able to express ourselves online and not be threatened, dehumanised, doxed, harassed or be the target of hate speech or incitement to violence. We all need to have access to news and credible information. If we don’t act now to ensure we protect journalism as a public good, we will lose not only credible information, but ourselves.
From our side, as Sanef and MMA, we will be highlighting and encouraging organisations to sign on to the Declaration. We will be raising the key issues it highlights with our stakeholders. Encouragingly, our Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies agreed to share the Declaration with the G20 ministers. We will be developing monitoring mechanisms and an action plan to track progress, and we will work with the next hosts of the G20 in the US to ensure that the issues are carried forward.
What can you do? Read the document. It is short and uses plain language.
Then, as we celebrate World News Day, subscribe to a news organisation, subscribe to two if you can, pay your TV licence – yes really – tell your friends and families over meals why we all need information we can trust, why despite disagreements within news media, whether they are biased or not, we have a common interest in journalism, as a public good, being part of the kind of society we all want.
Also, don’t hate on journalists even if you disagree strongly with them. Finally, please register to attend the Media Freedom Festival this year. There are some big announcements and cool discussions to look forward to. DM
