It was put to us that because of the proliferation of ways to access the news, it is no longer necessary to be concerned about the regulation of media ownership. We do not accept that argument. Much of the news available on the internet and on the new television channels is not new. It is repackaged from elsewhere. The proliferation of news sources has not been matched by a corresponding expansion in professional and investigative journalism. It is still possible for one voice to become too powerful to be acceptable in a healthy democracy.
A new policy report from the U.K.’s House of Lords, with recommendations on the regulation of ownership concentration in media markets, poses the 64,000 golden-guinea question in plain old Anglo-Saxon English:
If technology helps news organizations cut their overhead dramatically — This article is being published on the Web for free, for example, a fact that all good utopian futurists assure us is going to revolutionize life, the universe and everything, once and for all, bringing peace, democracy, and a new Golden Age — then why do they not spend the peace dividend from the declining hegemony of the unionized print shop on doing more journalism?
This makes no economic sense.
While there has been a proliferation of ways to access the news, there has not been a corresponding expansion in professional journalism.
The Mediascópio project at the University of Minho in Portugal pointed me to the report.
The market pressures faced by news organisations have led many to scale back on investment in journalism and news gathering. Much of the news available on the internet, on the new television channels and elsewhere is repackagedfrom other sources.
The number of specialist correspondents seems to be shrinking rather than growing to keep pace with new trends in news provision. Foreign correspondents have been cut back by most news organisations.
This should make for an interesting read. Have a read yourself:
Filed under: Journalism, Media | Tagged: Antitrust, blighty, concentration, Democracy, house of lords, Journalism, Media, media concentration, media ownership, Regulation, united kingdom
