by Paul Starr
The good news is: the digital revolution has
revitalized journalism. The bad news: nobody wants to pay for it. With
the Internet undermining the economic basis of professional reporting,
the freedom of the press in western democracies is at stake, warns
American sociologist Paul Starr.
The digital revolution, as great as its wonders are, is a mixed blessing
for democracy. It has unquestionably been good for freedom of
expression – for the free expression, that is, of opinion. It has also
been good for freedom of information – that is, for making previously
secret or inaccessible information more widely available. But it has not
been uniformly good for freedom of the press, if we understand that
freedom as referring not merely to the formal legal rights but to the
real independence of the press as an institution.
The digital revolution has been good for freedom of expression because
it has increased the diversity of voices in the public sphere. It has
been good for freedom of information because it has fostered a culture
that demands transparency. But the digital revolution has both
revitalized and weakened freedom of the press. It has revitalized
journalism by allowing new entrants into the media and generated
promising innovations, and in countries where the press has been
stifled, that effect is the most important.
But in the established democracies, the digital
revolution has weakened the ability of the press to act as an effective
agent of public accountability by undermining the economic basis of
professional reporting and fragmenting the public. If we take seriously
the idea that an independent press serves an essential democratic
function, its institutional distress may weaken democracy itself.
That is the danger that confronts us in the advanced societies:
throughout the post-industrial world, the news media face a long-term
crisis that social theory did not anticipate.
Beginning in the 1970s, theories of post-industrial society projected a
flourishing and happy future for the fields associated with the
production of knowledge and information. The most influential theories
of contemporary political development also did not anticipate a crisis
in the news media that would pose a problem for democracy. As the 20th
century came to a close, the collapse of communism gave rise to
increased confidence – even triumphalism – about the future of liberal
democracy and its institutions. The new media initially seemed to
reinforce that confidence. As the digital revolution developed, its
theorists argued that it inevitably creates a more open, networked
public sphere, thereby strengthening democratic values and practices.
In short, all of these perspectives have suggested that in the
post-industrial world, a free press and democracy would thrive together.
Social theorists were not alone in their optimism. The professionals
and executives in the news media were also confident about the prospects
for growth in their industry.
Through the last decades of the 20th century, the economic trends
supported these expectations. Like the other knowledge-producing
professions, journalism expanded, and the news media prospered. With
personal computers and the Internet, the costs of producing and
distributing media of all kinds diminished, and previously marginalized
groups and individuals could bypass the old mass-media gatekeepers in
reaching a wider public.
But in recent years, the contemporary transformation has taken a darker
turn for journalism and for democratic government more generally.
Several long-term trends have combined to weaken the finances of the
news media and to reduce professional employment in journalism. A recent
OECD study reports that over the decade ending in 2007, the number of
newspaper journalists declined 53 percent in Norway, 41 in the
Netherlands, 25 in Germany, and 11 percent in Sweden, while holding
steady in France and Britain. In the US, the number of journalists has
fallen from 56 000 to 40 000, according to recent estimates.
Everywhere, the media are under severe financial stress. The data on
revenue for newspapers, magazines, and other news media in the rich
democracies typically show a pattern of growth through the last three
decades of the 20th century, a peak around the year 2000, and then a
decline in the past decade.
The expectation that the news media would flourish in post-industrial
society failed to take into account certain economic realities, social
trends already in progress, and emerging technologies. The prevailing
optimism ignored the reality that information, including news, is a
public good and that public goods tend to be systematically
under-produced in the market.
The prevailing optimism failed to consider that the news media had been
able to overcome the public-goods problem, with varying degrees of
success, only because existing communication technologies had limited
the ways for the public to find information and entertainment and for
advertisers to reach consumers. And even though it should have been
clear that new technologies would expand the choices for both
advertisers and the public, hardly anyone anticipated that in this new
environment, the public would fragment, the audience for public-affairs
news would shrink, advertisers would be able to reach their markets
without sponsoring news, and the traditional commercial basis for
financing journalism would be shattered.
The changes in the public and the demand for news are showing up in
generational differences. Older generations that formed their habits
decades ago continue to read print newspapers and watch television news
at an appointed hour, but young people are not forming those habits in
the first place. As a result, the traditional media find themselves
living off aging audiences, even as they continue to supply most of the
original reporting.
These developments are not playing out exactly the same way everywhere.
With its primarily commercial media and very high level of generational
change, the US may be more exposed to a crisis in the news media than
are European countries with strong public-service broadcasting
institutions and slower rates of generational change in media use. After
a period when the media in Europe were moving closer to an American
model, the media in America may be moving in a more European direction –
not with government subsidies, but with more philanthropic support.
American journalism is also becoming more partisan, more polarized, and
more distrusted.
It is all very humbling for the American news media, which have not
exactly been modest about their achievements. Their current troubles may
cause a certain
Schadenfreude here in Europe, where at least in
Austria and some other countries things may appear more stable. But to
use a phrase from a famous Austrian-American economist, Joseph
Schumpeter, the gales of creative destruction are blowing, they are
likely to sweep everywhere, and how much creation and how much
destruction there will be remains to be seen. What may be good for the
news media as businesses may not always be good for democracy; in fact,
what may be good for the business of news may not always be good for
journalism. Democracy may need to find new ways both to support
journalism and to guarantee its independence.
Source: Eurozine
