The threat to journalism

The professional journalist is facing an enormous challenge from the citizen journalist, a challenge that is reshaping the media world, writes the former editor of The National, FRANK SENGE KOLMA

WHAT I offer in the following paragraphs is dated by at least two and a half decades but it is relevant and needs saying now more than ever.
There is a towering wave of considerable size, global in extent and damaging in all aspects, that is pushing all before it today and lying prostrate directly in its path is the noble profession of journalism.
This threat is all around us, all pervading and invasive.
It is carried via the internet.
Unless the hapless profession can wake up to the danger and do something about it, its hey-days are over and its very days may be numbered.
Let me decrypt.
Professional journalism in PNG is facing two not so insignificant challenges.
By professional journalism, I refer here to the traditional purveyors of news, information, current affairs and entertainment to the public via popular mediums such as newspapers, radio and television.
The first challenge is lethargy stemming from a combination of factors including lack of professional competition, lack of motivation, lack of training, lack of direction and lack of adequate compensation.
The second is the technological challenge provided by the advent of the Internet and its off-springs which has caught the professional journalist off guard in certain important aspects.
This writer contends that all newsrooms are feeling the pinch of both challenges.
The first challenge is self-explanatory and can be seen in the standard, style and end product of journalism across mass media.
The standard of journalism is dropping dramatically.
Very simple errors of fact, of language, syntax and identification are occurring on a daily basis.
There is no “go-get-it” spirit.
There are no follow-ups.
News judgement is often questionable and the list goes on.
Much is carried in the social media that is not there in the news media and although not always accurate, the former is garnering an increasing following while the latter is losing traction and direction.
Newspaper circulation and viewer and listener audiences are dropping for the mainstream media.
Unless urgent moves are made to correct this, it will develop into a very serious threat to the very existence of the mainstream news media.
It behoves all newsrooms to take this challenge very seriously.
The second challenge, which multiplies the condition brought on by the first, requires elaboration.
The professional journalist is under attack from the emerging citizen journalist using the medium of social media.
It is a sustained attack from which journalism as we know it might never recover if it does not realise that it is under attack first, and next, do something about it.
At the heart of it is the Internet and its most notable off-springs – social media and public access to a seemingly endless data bank.
Suddenly, gone are the most powerful tools in the traditional journalist’s arsenal: unfettered access to information, exclusivity of that access, exclusive ownership of the information obtained and exclusivity in the conveyance of that information.
The professional journalist’s wings have been clipped.
He is adrift in an ocean of information, the main asset of his trade which he once was sole sorter and purveyor of.
Now he risks being drowned in it.
Where once he was the conduit for mass circulation of information to the public, today, anybody with a smartphone and a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account, among a host of others, can speak to his own audience all over the world in whatever language he wants, express his message however way he wants to and do so via text, voice or video.
US President Donald Trump is the biggest living example of this with his tweets and his deep and open war of hate with the mainstream media.
Trump is the earth tremor signalling a greater danger.
A tsunami of cataclysmic proportions is occurring and lying prostrate directly in its path is the mass media as we know it and its linchpin, the noble profession of journalism.
The news empires of the world, long the untrammelled kings and queens of information and public opinion, are getting a rude wake up call.
It goes beyond just wake up calls to other areas where the journalist once ruled supreme.
The public relations executive who used to depend on the journalist to do his work for him is in a position today to dictate or to go on his own without need for a journalist.
The power of former has increased and the latter, diluted.
The politician and the corporation can likewise speak as they like across mediums that have given every person a voice that can be heard across the world.
Ask Minister (Bryan) Kramer and governors (Allen) Bird and (Gary) Juffa.
They will tell you.
Using Facebook and blogs, the citizen journalist will “break” the news first as happened when photographs of a hovering gigantic wave were posted online nano-seconds before it hit and capsized the ill-fated Rabaul Queen.
So the traditional journalist cannot always be first to the news, an adrenalin filling competition among journalists in eras past.
Gone are the days of exclusive coverage of news and events.
The citizen journalist can write whatever he wants, however way he wants to express it in whatever language or a mix of languages.
He can post it online as text, voice or audio-video or all three combined.
The citizen journalist does not heed to the duty of care, of checking and cross checking to ensure information is accurate.
He expresses it without a thought to fairness or balance and the laws of libel, sedition and defamation do not exist for him.
Straighter than straight language is employed in social media making nonsense of traditional journalism’s legal no-trespass zones of libel and defamation, fairness and accuracy.
The citizen journalist does not care to balance the news so that it does not come out lopsided or partial.
He does exactly the opposite because that is the intention, after all.
Once Fox cable news was the partial political mouth piece of America’s Republican party or so we thought and Cable News Network (CNN) was the standard bearer of journalism.
Today, the former seems in vogue, the latter the hated public enemy number one, if we are to go by President Trump’s assessment.
Trump, unfortunately, is not alone.
Where in this brand new world of citizen journalism does traditional journalism fit in?
Is there any room at all?
This is the question that all newsrooms must grapple with today, here in PNG as well as abroad. It is a question upon which answer depends the future of professional journalism and all it entails – a consideration upon which outcome depends the future of the news empires of the world.

• Next time, we conclude this two-part series: “What to do?”