“Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the Internet,” he said. “We seem to have decided as a society to let independence and plurality wither.” Many believe that James Murdoch and his father Rupert, ardent believers in the “free for all” of a neo-liberal market economy, may not be best placed to defend quality news journalism. But Jamie Murdoch's statements did nonetheless raise important issues that need to be debated.
All over the world, media organizations are struggling and scrambling for new business models that will enable them to finance their news gathering. The importance of serious journalism that challenges the status quo in any democracy can hardly be overstated. In Turkey, the arrival of Taraf newspaper on the media scene raised the bar across the media landscape and helped usher in an era of greater political openness.
Maintaining diversity and independence in the provision of news is crucial.
James Murdoch's assault was directed mainly at the state-funded status of the BBC, which he and others believe creates unfair competition. His father Rupert recently announced that his News Corp. outlets will, from 2010, start charging for Internet access. The BBC, on the other hand, provides its content for free.
In the past, media regulations made a clear distinction between the written press and organizations that specialized in radio and broadcasting. These days, the lines dividing the various platforms that deliver news have grown increasingly thin. I realized the extent of the change a couple of years ago when I spotted an American colleague, a roving correspondent for a major US print organization, giving his new video camera a test run. He had not bought it to create home videos but had been given it by his newspaper, which expected to get audio and video reports alongside written articles when he traveled to remote areas.
In the past, such crossover was unusual: While TV had the advantage of the visual impact, the anonymity that written coverage provided sources offered other advantages to reporters for the written press. The two rarely mixed.
BBC Business Editor Robert Peston, who rebuffed the young Murdoch during his own presentation in Edinburgh, is a good example of the trend. A talented investigative financial reporter, he repeatedly trumped his rivals in the reporting of the banking meltdown in the UK last autumn. But while he was a familiar sight on news shows, it was his blog on the BBC Web site, updated regularly during those heady days, that won him international notoriety.
BBC fans are, these days, as likely to tune into its reporters on the Internet or their cellular phones as on the small screen. Conversely, most newspapers have had to invest heavily in Web sites that need to be regularly updated and have turned them into 24-hour news organizations. The New York Times, whose motto was “All the news that is fit to print,” recently upgraded its Internet outlet to keep up with the trend.
With ad revenues on a sharp decline and fewer readers buying newspapers, all news organizations are struggling to find new ways of generating revenues. Most experts believe the global economic downturn is only partly to blame that traditional media is unlikely to recover. The entire media game is changing and regulations, as well as the media players themselves, will have to adapt if good journalism is to survive.
