Media as a tool
Credit to Author: BEN KRITZ, TMT| Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2019 16:27:18 +0000
YESTERDAY’S editorial in this paper was a commentary on a rather startling development in China, a government mandate that all journalists there “will be tested on their loyalty to China’s President Xi Jinping.” Beginning next month, according to a report a few days ago in UK’s The Guardian, Chinese journalists will “be required to pass a test grading their understanding of Xi Jinping on Xi Jinping thought, or the socialist teachings espoused by the Chinese leader.”
Obviously, this newspaper — and one would hope, any other one — would find that quite alarming. Independence of the media is held up as a sacred right and necessity, and for it to be assimilated as an instrument of the state is simply unacceptable.
Or so we say, anyway. The reality, however, is that the freedom we in the media really hold dear is the freedom to choose our own sacred cows, because maintaining absolute independence is a good way to starve.
Media is a business, and like any business, our survival depends on our ability to generate revenue in excess of the costs required to create its product, which is information. The challenge the media faces in the modern age, however, is that we are obliged to pursue a market from which we do not extract revenue, which most people would recognize as being rather contrary to the basic principles of doing business.
The users of our product — our audience — do not have to pay for it. Certainly, there are still some vestiges of the pre-radio era business model that are still pursued; print publications still charge for subscriptions and maintain paywalls for their online versions, and broadcast media offers a variety of subscription-based products as well. These revenue streams are rapidly running dry, however, for the simple reason that the number of sources of free information are rapidly increasing. If this newspaper had to rely solely on print or digital subscriptions for its sustenance, it probably wouldn’t last a month. My superiors might disagree with that hypothesis — but I would be willing to bet real money they wouldn’t want to put it to the test, either. There is simply too much information available at no cost to consumers that it is nearly impossible to differentiate an information product to the degree necessary to capture a large enough paying audience.
Thus, in order to survive, the media has had to completely invert its business model. Our product is no longer the information, and our market is no longer the information-consuming public.
Rather, our product has become the audience itself — measured in volume and not by weight — and our market for it has become clientele, who for their own reasons, wishes to reach that audience. The principles of competition still apply, of course, so the value offering goes beyond conventional advertising into offering all the message-crafting and -dissemination tools at our disposal to the information the client wishes to reach an audience.
Those who are incapable of progressive thought, bewail this state of affairs as harmful to humanity, because it would seem to prevent the availability of “objective” information. Those people need to get over themselves, because there is no such thing; certainly not in this era of Facebook and Twitter algorithms that deliver us only the information that fits the biases that we ourselves have indicated we have, and maybe not ever. What there is are differing perspectives; if the reader wishes to be “fully informed,” then it takes a bit of effort on his part to seek out and absorb these divergent views, and synthesize his own conclusions.
All of this does not mean that all information passing through media channels is suspect. Quite the contrary; although some media outlets have made themselves glaring exceptions to this, the vast majority understand that credibility is capital. The principles of accuracy, thoroughness, and sound ethics still apply, because the volume of audience a media outlet can offer to its clients exists in direct proportion to the outlet’s credibility.
Going back to Xi Jinping and his quest to be a bigger Chinese icon than Chairman Mao, the only thing off-putting about the new requirement for the media in that country is that it has, in fact, been made a requirement. It is a virtual certainty that, left to their own devices, a number of Chinese media would probably decide it makes good business sense to collaborate with the government, just as some media enterprises do here, to varying degrees.
As alarming as Xi’s edict may be at the moment, we really do not have to worry that “media that freely report on issues and events,” as yesterday’s editorial put it, will disappear from the Chinese landscape. By drawing attention to his effort to sanitize information, Xi has unwittingly run headlong into the brick wall of free enterprise by creating demand for its alternative. Free enterprise is tenacious, and has always existed no matter how constrained its environment; if demand exists, there will be someone to tap that market. It may be more difficult to do so, but the rewards are potentially much greater, and will be irresistible to some.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Twitter: @benkritz