Submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism (original) (raw)

Submission to the Select Committee on Future of Public Interest Journalism

We argue that it is essential for government to study the impacts of social media news consumption and loss of public interest journalism on media diversity before it moves to enact changes to legislation than may reduce diversity or measures to support journalism that may not target the forms of reporting that are most lacking. Further, we will also argue that is essential for government to understand the consequences of further local media consolidation for employment in the sector. With these two considerations in mind we will recommend research into how changes to digital news consumption and production are affecting local source and content diversity, as well as the size and composition of the media workforce.

Journalism and democracy facing common risks and challenges

Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies, 2016

Journalism is an essential activity for democracy and for the full exercise of freedom. However, it is threatened by several factors. The major one is the increasing fragmentation of the information environment. The phenomenon started in the 1990s with the introduction of the Internet on a large scale. From that period onwards: the main publications opened their contents, promoting the perception that information is free; instantaneity and interactivity changed the consumption patterns of information, dispersing public attention; diluted attention changed the media planning of advertisers; and proliferation of mobile devices deepened the dispersion. This article will not consider the undeniable social benefits offered by networks-or it will do it in a superficial way, as a necessary context. The focus will be on journalism dilemmas as an organized activity-as such, a private business with high public interest.

Journalism and Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere

European Journal of Communication, 2006

revenues were bolstered hugely by a $200 million bequest from Joan Kroc, heiress of the McDonald's hamburger fortune. At no time soon should its listeners expect to hear a documentary about the deleterious effects of fast-food. McCauley's book is in essence a surprisingly cheerful account of how some people have craved a certain kind of informational and cultural enrichment from radio, but in insufficient numbers to be able to afford it without help from dubious friends in government or business, or both. The programming achievements of NPR seem, not altogether surprisingly, to have been sparse: Morning Edition and All Things Considered are cited with dispiriting frequency. There are portraits of those who have managed NPR and descriptions of the difficulties they have faced, but no systematic explanation of the objectives, values and audiences that public broadcasting should serve. We in Britain might be inclined to take a lofty view of all this, but the same questions and problems will begin to haunt us on the very day the government abolishes the universal licence fee.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication: Policy Issues Surrounding Journalism

Issues of journalism ethics and performance have found their way into the policy agenda as well. This has most notably been the case in the United Kingdom, where revelations of illegal mobile phone hacking by British tabloid journalists led to a formal government inquiry (the Leveson Inquiry) and recommendations for the creation of a new, independent governance structure with significant sanctioning and dispute arbitration authority.

The “Government” of journalists. Introduction

Sur Le Journalisme About Journalism Sobre Jornalismo, 2013

B y postulating a "government" of journalists, this issue proposes to study the effects of public authority mandates, actions, and inducements on journalism. This implies examining the forms of state action which affect journalism, and assay journalists, their practices, and the information they produce, within the context of the governor/governed relationship. The concept of "government" 1 here refers to discourses by Michel Foucault, who defines it as "techniques and procedures to govern the conduct of men" 2 , taking into account circumvention and resistance. Today the "government" of journalists is the result of a superposition of texts and institutions that historically spans a wide array of views on the relationship between freedom of information, freedom of action, public right to information, and the "protection" of journalists. It is precisely to protect themselves that journalists sought to establish an institutional status. This guarantees their profession a form of security, certainly, but also the material and symbolic benefits of which the form and importance vary continually, or decline, as in recent decades-so much so that the recognition of a professional identity may, at times, now appear to be an unnecessary luxury. According to Foucault, the degree of societal state control can also be weighed against the paradoxes of liberalism, which imply more freedom and

Connecting Journalism and Public Policy: New Concerns and Continuing Challenges

Digital Journalism, 2020

This Introduction to this special issue on Policy Issues in Digital Journalism explores the reasons why this is a particularly important time for scholars to be exploring policy issues in digital journalism, as well as the reasons why, in some national contexts, there has been resistance to approaching the crisis in journalism as a public policy issue. This Introduction also suggestions direction for future research on policy issues in digital journalism.

‘Journalists are no longer gatekeepers of political information’. Discuss.

Journalists are members of what Bruns call the ‘controllers’ of the content being allowed to emerge from the production processes in print and broadcast media; they control the gates through which content is released to their audiences. Other members include the editors and owners. The relationship between the members is based on a hierarchy of power . If the statement “journalists are no longer gatekeepers of political information” implies that journalists have only been the ones gatekeeping political information, then unfortunately this has never been the case. The ones that have been the most powerful gatekeepers of political information are their editors and the owners of the media company. However, for the purpose of this essay, and because one can argue that journalists are the ones who primarily extract and choose information to be published, this essay will look at how classical journalists find it difficult to gatekeep political information in our digital age.