Is the news media community getting exhausted by feeding social media platforms with ‘viral’ content to earn ‘views’ to attract advertising?
For many years now, this practice has been a mode of survival for journalism. Yet, it does compromise newsrooms’ editorial standards and the quality of content, enabling disinformation to thrive.
This year the struggle has intensified. The news industry is bleeding, due to the combination of rising costs, a sharp decline in social media traffic and the exponential increase in social media ‘influencers’, who suck up a huge portion of the shrinking advertising spend.
At the same time, the fragmentation of media consumption has forced many news outlets to divert their already meagre resources to producing more targeted content on the various platforms.
Unofficial statistics, compiled by the local media watch group YamFaoJor, reveals that major media outlets laid off over 300 people in the first half of this year.
This includes political media house Voice TV, owned by the Shinawatra family, which decided to go dark in July, after having sustained losses of over 800 million baht (about US$23 million) in the past five years.
The same month, the Nation group, another major media house, introduced a partial pay deferment programme for executives and senior staff earning a monthly salaries of over 50,000 baht.
Even the smaller digital media outlets, advantaged by their low cost base, could barely survive on the production of viral content as a business model.
Legacy and emerging digital native media have been grappling with various business models to augment falling advertising revenues, a large chunk of which is being scooped up by the thriving platform business.
Many have tried, with both successes and failures, to diversify digital news products to suit different platforms to tap segment audiences, organise public forums and exhibition events and to offer audiences subscription options for premium content, in addition to providing advertorial products to public institutions and corporates.
Still, it is barely enough to attract sufficient ad spending, given the rising competition in the digital news market.
Yet, less thought and effort is being given to building online trust and safety through enhancing investigative journalism and fact checking operations.
Would it not be a more resilient approach for the news media to get their act together by doing things differently, by encouraging platforms and the business community to help foster a healthy information ecosystem?
Indeed, this could be a way out, but it requires sacrifice by the media stakeholders involved before reaping the benefits, by creating more quality content, which platforms should prioritise for wider dissemination, and for ad buyers put a prioritise a fairer allocation of ad spending.
Quality content is based on well understood good journalistic practices, often referred to as credible and trustworthy sources of information.
In essence, it is the content that does not always guarantee high audience engagement but which the public should know, as opposed to what they want to know.
Beyond the usual audience ratings, the local news industry does not have professional scoring and monitoring mechanisms, such as trust scores, to enable assessment of professional conduct and quality in both news operations and content.
What is available is not even crafted by the professional local media community.
The UK-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s annual digital news report, which covers almost 50 countries, including Thailand, for its global survey, is the one to which most local media houses refer, either to keep updated on the news industry or to boost its public profile when its news outlet receives a high trust score as a brand.
Nonetheless, the primary intent of the Reuters report is not to rate the news market as such. Rather, it provides a broad picture of the digital news market, including digital trends and the media environment, news practices and consumption behaviours.
A more catalytic media assessment tool is fairly new.
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) report, for the first time last year, chose the Thai news market as its subject for the disinformation risk survey and assessment.
The methodology provides a direct link between trust in media and disinformation risk, meaning the less trusted the media is, the greater the risk that it is spreader of disinformation.
These findings are what the Thai media needs, as they inform surveyed media outlets in private as to how much at risk each of them is in terms of spreading disinformation, based on their professional conduct and operations, and provides recommendations to reduce these risk factors.
The most useful aspects of this global endeavour are the GDI team’s recommendations that local advertising business, platforms and funders use the findings to help combat disinformation.
Essentially, the indicators provided are helpful in informing ad spending allocation, platform algorithm priorities and grant support criteria.
A multi-stakeholder approach like this would encourage the news media to adhere to their professional codes of conduct and ethical standards, add more quality content to the ecosystem, while maintaining audience relevancy and loyalty amidst today’s information overload.
For business entities, trustworthy journalism would attract desirable audiences, thus enriching the value of advertising space.
The platforms themselves would definitely benefit from having more quality content, instead of investing huge amounts in resources and technology in their attempts to weed out malicious and harmful content.
Troubled times like this could present media stakeholders with an opportunity to explore several trust-in-journalism initiatives and craft the best approach for each country’s situation.
In the final analysis, trust is the currency of journalism, serves the public interest and upholds democracy.
By Kulachada Chaipipat, Thailand-based media consultant
