The changes in the media environment and its impact on contemporary British society

The changes in the media environment and its impact on contemporary British society

In this context I am considering contemporary British society to mean the last two decades.

I will touch on some key areas where the media environment has changed the gathering and dissemination of real time news.

The changes in journalism and news media have been bewildering for many people both within the media industry itself and for their consumers, with 24 hour news, the rise of citizen journalists, the advent of a variety of social media channels, etc.

Initially, I take as a case study some remarks made by veteran broadcaster and news journalist Jon Snow in his recent MacTaggart lecture.

During his recent MacTaggart lecture Jon Snow argued: “the media lacked diversity and are far removed from ordinary people.”( https://goo.gl/4zmRGH)

The Guardian reported: “The Channel 4 news presenter used a keynote speech at the Edinburgh television festival to say the episode made him conclude that there was a lack of diversity across the media, which should have been more aware about the dangers of the high-rise block.

The Grenfell episode demonstrated, Snow said, that the media was “comfortably with the elite, with little awareness, contact or connection with those not of the elite” and that the fire had shown this lack of connection was “dangerous”.

It seems that Snow failed to understand that to many ordinary British people the media is a major part of the elite. (Note: A point acknowledged by Richard Edelman in a recent address to the Davros group when he said: “People now view media as part of the elite,” quoted in the FT https://www.ft.com/content/fa332f58-d9bf-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e)

The Guardian article continued: “Media organisations reported after the fire a blog written by residents had warned that Grenfell Tower was susceptible to fire and complained the council was not taking action. When Snow visited the area around the tower in west London, in the immediate aftermath of the fire, he was surrounded by angry locals who complained no media had shown interest before.”

Arguably the discovery of these blogs happened because journalists engaged in research and a web search on the topic of “Grenfell Tower” and Grenfell Tower Fire” would have quite rapidly found links to those relevant blog posts.

It almost seemed that Jon Snow was blaming “the media” for the fact the Grenfell Tower fire was not covered before it occurred. If so, this might be a little disingenuous, one might suggest.

Snow also used the opportunity to launch an attack on social media channels like Facebook, which drew his particular ire.

He is quoted “as having: launched a fierce attack on Facebook in the lecture, warning that the rise of digital media “has filled neither the void left by the decimation of the local newspaper industry nor connected us any more effectively with ‘the left behind’, the disadvantaged, the excluded”.

Snow added: “Many news organisations, including my own, have asked too few questions about the apparent miracle of Facebook’s reach.

“For us at Channel 4 News it has been invaluable in helping us to deliver our remit – to reach young viewers, to innovate and to get attention for some of the world’s most important stories.”

It appears Snow acknowledges the media has abandoned vast swathes of the UK, with the loss of many local newspapers, the loss of local news broadcasts with some stations employing no journalists and relying on news feeds from national outlets.

He attacked Facebook (and by extension other social media channels, presumably?) for: “not filling either the void left by the decimation of the local newspaper industry nor connected us any more effectively with ‘the left behind’, the disadvantaged, the excluded”.

As if this were the fault of Facebook and of social media!

Snow apparently acknowledges media outlets rely on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google, etc., as news sources, but then criticises those same news sources. Wanting to eat one’s cake and keep it?

Recent years saw the rise of the citizen journalist movement. This is a follow on from the alternative press era in the 1970s and 1980s when, with the advent of new reprographics technologies, publication of books, including self-publication by companies like the Book Guild and Matador Books, newsletters, fanzines and magazines became easier with people typesetting their own publications on home PCs and getting them printed at inexpensive copy shops that sprang up nationwide.

People now take their own publications to the next level. Citizen journalists can publish, in real time, news and reports of events (even using livesteam video on Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc) for people to see worldwide. This has had several impacts on the media.

A personal example happened when I worked as news editor for a monthly news magazine, the Wellington (Shropshire) News. Often I found a story which, by press day, was old hat.

But it was decided to launch an online version, this meant I could publish stories on the online version as soon as they came in.

This brought about changes in our part of the media environment because our news website was the only local news website publishing full, unabridged news stories, whereas the local evening newspaper’s website only carried the first paragraph of a story, enjoining those interested in reading the rest of the story to buy their print edition. 

As a result, despite being published by a small local publisher, against the evening paper which  was part of a large regional concern, our news website became the “go to” destination for many local people and we had many thousands of online readers. We stole a march on our rival and did so until they made a massive redesign of their website after several years and began publishing entire news stories.

Nationally, the media environment has been changed by the advent of print publications like Private Eye, a mixture of satire and real news. Real and embarrassing news, in many cases. News that was often spiked by cautious editors at mainsteam publications.

Political news, once the provenance of Parliamentary Lobby Correspondents, was gate-crashed with considerable vigour and style by the Guido Fawkes blog (www.order-order.com) published by Anglo-Indian-Irishman Paul Staines. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Staines)

The blog has been published for 14 years and has won several awards, often for the highly embarrassing political stories that it broke. (Including 2016 Vuelio Best Political Blog http://www.vuelio.com/uk/blog-awards/2016-winners)

In common with Private Eye (founded 1961) Guido Fawkes is often the recipient of tip offs, or complete news stories from journalists, often lobby correspondents from the Mainstream Media irritated their newspapers or broadcaster spiked a troublesome political story. 

Paul Staines has often reported one of the biggest consumers of the news from his website is from within the political establishment itself, with many hits from Westminster. (Confirmed by IPOS Mori https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/communicating-mps-power-media)

In the USSR there was a lively, secretive, illegal Samizdat movement. The dictionary definition of Samizdat: “a clandestine publishing system within the Soviet Union, by which forbidden or unpublishable literature was reproduced and circulated privately.” www.dictionary.com. (For a detailed reference https://www.britannica.com/technology/samizdat)

It might be argued in the UK, with people writing blogs on various platforms and, to a lesser extent, Twitter, etc., we have a pseudo-Samizdat system, which can be viewed read, copied and forwarded to everyone with a Smartphone, laptop, or personal computer.

Theoretically almost everyone can launch a digital news outlet.

One result of such activities which is having a tremendous impact on contemporary British society is that the Internet rarely really forgets anything and now journalists can use search engines to find reports on blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that the authorities might wish not to be published. Like the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, previously warned about concerns about Grenfell Tower.

This means privacy isn’t what it was and people live in the glare of the lantern that is the Internet. (The Harvard Gazette makes some interesting points 

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/08/when-it-comes-to-internet-privacy-be-very-afraid-analyst-suggests)

This has brought major changes in the relationship between the media and society. (PWC have published a paper https://www.pwc.co.uk/industries/entertainment-media/insights/mymedia/understanding-the-media-landscape.html) 

An example yet to be mirrored in the UK to any real extent is U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump has alleged much of what he says is distorted by the American media. So he has continued to use Twitter to communicate with 86 million followers and, as he sees it, ‘correct the media narrative’. (http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/17/technology/trump-social-media-followers/index.html)

The public no longer trust the media and are becoming cynical about it, born out in research by Edelman, publisher of the Edelman Trust Barometer.  (https://www.edelman.com/trust2017/)

“The implications of this accelerating scepticism are “deep and wide-ranging” said Mr Edelman, pointing to the election of Donald Trump, Britain’s vote to leave the EU, likening the decline in trust to “the second and third waves of a tsunami” after the financial crisis of 2008.” (Financial Times https://goo.gl/EQN3At)

Bibliography:-

Guardian (August 2017)

Guido Fawkes (Various dates)

Financial Times (January 2017)

CNN Money (July 2017)

Private Eye (Various)

IPOS Mori (2014)

PWC (2017)

Encyclopedia Britannica (2017

Wikipedia  (2017)

Harvard University (August 2017)

Vuelio