Last week saw Chinese government announce that they will no longer allow for private investments in the News industry. You can read more about this on the Bloomberg site here.
In a strange way, I kind of think this is a good idea but not for the reasons that the Chinese government took this decision. Let me explain with respect to TV NEWS channels. My explanation below for the TV NEWS Channels holds true for newspapers to magazines to radio channels. It’s just easier to explain this from one perspective (I can see the irony here :-)).
When I was growing up in India in the early 80’s and 90’s, I remember that there used to be a national television channel which would have a NEWS bulletin once in the morning and once in the evening. That used to be more than what we usually needed.
The world has changed since then. We now have multiple NEWS channels blaring their versions of the NEWS on every medium that they can get a hold of. They are on TV, Radio, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and every other medium that they think their readers are congregating on.
And I believe that this proliferation of 24×7 NEWS agencies (for the lack of a better word) is probably at the root of a lot of the problems that we face in our societies. Here is how:
These 24×7 NEWS channels are set up as a for-profit organisation. This means that they are expected to maximise their profits over a period of time. Let’s think about the options that they have in order to do this.
They can charge a subscription fee to their customers or consumers to access their news feeds and stories. This is strategy that they would use but quickly hit a dead end once they have signed up enough people and there are no more people who are willing to sign up on their own. So far so good.
The second thing that they can do is to sell advertisements. Since they have a captive audience, they are successful in selling some advertisements to businesses who want to reach these captive audience.
Since they want to grow their business and increase profits (to satisfy shareholders), they now need to find a way to continue to increase their share of the advertisers wallet and the audience’s attention. In the age of big data, the advertisers want data to show that their advertisements are reaching the right kind of audience and to ensure that they are not “Spraying and Praying”. So, the news channels now start doing demographics of their audience and find out which demographic would be the most profitable to target.
Other NEWS channels are doing the same thing, so the competition to get the attention of the most attractive demographics heats up. All the NEWS channels are now competing for the attention of the same demographic (as advertisers are the same for all the channels). This creates a cluttering of the market. So, as any management student or a marketing student would know, each NEWS channel wants to differentiate themselves from the others.
The question then is how to do that, if all of them cover the same NEWS. Some bright person would come up with the idea of not just reporting the facts (which is what NEWS is) and instead colour the facts with perspective. Once one channel does it, the others follow suit. Since they all cant share the same perspective, each one picks a position and shares their perspectives from that position. This position could be political, social, economic or a combination. Now this perspective has turned into opinion.
Since they are still NEWS channels, they can’t get away from reporting what is happening in the society, so that they can bring their perspectives on. This creates a race of who breaks the NEWS first. So, instead of taking their time to verify the sanctity and veracity of their sources, the NEWS channels start to optimise on the speed at which they bring NEWS to their consumers.
Now, there would be days which are silent, meaning nothing much of significance occured on that day. However, the NEWS Cycle must go on. Since they are on 24×7, they need content to publish. So, they start programming that is not necessarily NEWS based but is pure entertainment. They also start talking about things that they would have never talk about if they had a valid NEWS worthy occurrence.
And this spiral continues and we end up in a situation where, each NEWS channel has created a clear position on which side do they lean on. This positioning attracts a section of their audience who also identifies with this position. This audience ends up becoming a captive audience. The advertisers know who the audience is and are willing to continue to open up their wallets. And the cycle continues.
What this has done is created a polarised society. We tend to listen into the perspective that aligns to our own and potentially never get to hear the other sides of the story. We create and add belief systems based on this and thus resulting in a polarised society.
In addition, due to the impact that these channels have, because of the micro-targeting of their audience, the potential for propaganda and swaying public opinion on various topics. When NEWS channels are trying to optimise for revenue and profits, it becomes an easier sell for the propaganda machinery to sway them and therefore control the social narrative, which is never a good position to be in.
The question then is what can we do about this situation. There are no easy and simple answers to this challenge. Every option has its own corresponding challenge that could make matters worse.
Where do we start? What options do we have?
However, we need to start somewhere and here are a few pointers that could get us started.
Firstly, we don’t any more 24 hour NEWS channels on TV. Specially with the advent of social media, which is always on. In fact, we can do with less than what we have today. This is why I believe that the Chinese governments step is probably in the right direction. We can have regular entertainment channels serve NEWS at regular intervals. This doesn’t necessarily change much except for the fact that we can stop watching or listening to bizarre NEWS items that are used as fillers in the NEWS channels. This could potentially also limit the opinion sharing on NEWS sites, which could then reduce the impact on the social rhetoric.
Secondly, we need to find different funding models for NEWS outlets and limit some funding models. I personally believe that selling advertisements on NEWS channels should be banned altogether or become limited. The funding could come from their constituents or publicly funded. The pressure to sell more advertisements and then to serve the advertisers is the root cause of everything that is wrong with the NEWS industry today.
In conclusion:
In conclusion, all I would like to state is that as consumers, we need to learn that nothing in life comes free. If you are not paying for a service with money (cheapest form of currency and easily replenishable), you are paying them with something else – attention (which is the most expensive form of currency and cant be replenished).
Once all of us understand that it is cheaper to pay for these services, we can start making better decisions. And most importantly, if we are the paymasters, the industry will serve us. If someone else is paying them $$$, they will serve them, which is not good for us.
I hope I will live to see that day coming to pass!!!
