The rapid pace of technological innovation is the driving force behind the ever-evolving media landscape, especially following the rise of the internet. The ECCO International Communication Network conducted an international survey to determine the role of journalists within the current changing media landscape. The 2015 ECCO International Communication Network survey explored the effect of the technological change on the media and what journalists believe the future will look like. Reputation Matters, the South African member of the ECCO network, asked South African journalists for their viewpoints on the future of journalism in the country.
Reputation Matters assisted ECCO in conducting the survey by asking over 200 South African media industry professionals their opinion on the matter. The survey was target mainly at editors, freelancers or writers and heads of departments at South African media outlets. The opinions of additional respondents such as owners, content managers, producers, radio hosts, program managers and social media managers, indicated that the changing media landscape contributes towards an increased workload for journalists, more budget cuts, and lower job security within the industry and less time available to conduct research.
Several media professionals indicate that they are concerned about the standard of journalism and dropping levels of credibility as anyone and everyone become an expert “journalist”, one respondent went as far as to say that “the blog space is crowded with morons”. “We see that most media professionals agree that turning to blog is an option as many already have blogs, but they are not convinced that it would be viable or sustainable income stream, readers would not want to pay for content when so much is already free online” said Regine le Roux, Managing Director of Reputation Matters.
The state of the Newsroom 2015-2016 is called Inside/Outside to try to catch the dynamic of multiple sources of media and news that we are confronted with, a lot of it falling outside of the “mainstream” news. Although there are still newsrooms in the normal sense of professional journalists and media houses, there are also very vibrant independent media sites and projects which are; the Daily Vox, Daily Maverick, GroundUp or projects like The Justice Project that write into the news. During the recent #FeesMustFall protests, students and academics reported from the front-line using social media and were a source of news from the coalface of the protests for many people.
The #FeesMustFall protests show how independent news producers like The Daily Vox, could ever unfolding events more effectively than the mainstream media and how student social media impacted on the coverage offered by the mainstream. If we look at the media landscape generally, there are good and bad signs. For instance, the Press Council is reinvigorating itself and now has a businessperson for online media. The South African National Editors Forum has been vocal on issues of media freedom. The diversity of content available is undeniably a good thing but retrenchments also continue and newspaper circulation is down.
Daily and weekly newspapers are expected to decline strongly, while tabloids and magazines share a similar fate. Despite the constant change, traditional television and radio should remain stable. In contrast to the other media platforms, 83% of the respondents expect an increase in the use of online platforms such as blogs, social media, news portals and internet broadcast media. With the resulting decrease in print media sales, media professionals expect revenue to come from online subscriptions and advertising as well as sponsorship. Respondents showed little confidence in paywalls (pay-per-article), crowdfunding or public funding revenue models.
The government bungled the digital terrestrial television process. The SABC seems to remain a mess, and the desire by the state to control what’s news is felt increasingly, whether through its Media Appeals Tribunal proposal or draft legislation that tries to tighten the grip on the free flow of information in the public interest. Other signs of concerns are the influences that the management has on editors. Editorial in the newsroom is being corroded. What is more worrying, is that the news start to look like deliberate propaganda fake. This goes hand-in-hand with the willingness of political parties and other public speakers to be less than truthful with the facts, or deliberately feeding the public false facts.
Consistently over the years, we have seen the South African press become active participants in a political popularity contest. This is not simply harmless of some political leaders over the others. It entrenches deed bias in the newsroom and creates a culture of making the personal views of journalists the news instead of an objective reflection of the actual events unfolding. There have been glaring examples of this in recent years. Following what is being termed as the disastrous “Zuma Years”, the media played a key role in creating the notion that there is a “good” ANC and a “bad ANC”.
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