Monday 1st June: Finding a way forward for media trust

June 01, 2020

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

As we hopefully made clear in this week's podcast (link below) there are far more, often worse incidents happening at the moment than the attacks against journalists covering the George Floyd protests. This, however, is a media newsletter and we cannot do the wider crimes committed against the public justice. What we can do is point out that the attacks on journalists - which are horrifically brutal in a number of cases - are the culmination of a series of trends that have been building over the past few years.

The first is that politicians like Trump, Boris Johnson and others on all sides of the political spectrum have taken advantage of a poorly-funded press to make 'fake news' a rallying cry to deflect from any criticism of them, legitimate or not. That has led to journalists being seen as enemy rather than ally by the public. The second is that the vast majority of established media is still doing a poor job of hiring employees that reflect society, missing these issues until they erupt and framing them poorly. And finally, as Will Smith pointed out, racism isn't getting worse, it's just getting filmed. Citizen journalism is indivisible from professional journalism at times like these, and it's long overdue that the media as a whole sorts out those trends so we can deliver on the promise of the press to protect the public.

This article - which we referred to in the podcast as being an example of the good work that can be done for community journalism if it's properly funded - is worth a read even if you don't listen to the episode (but do). Without community reporting we can't properly represent the public. One bit that stood out to me: "Such stories are bittersweet — there is pride in being in the position to help to raise awareness for good causes, but it often comes with an emotional plea and phone interview which can really leave an impact when shrouded in sadness."

AI is best used to free up journalists to do the qualitative aspects of journalism. At the same time, we've seen what happens when human-made algorithms - created with the biases of their authors - run unchecked. So while you could argue that this move from Microsoft doesn't actually take jobs away from 'journalists' by the strictest definition, it's a move away from that human approach which is more needed than ever.

Finally, some heartwarming news. Rather than having cuts foisted on them from above, BuzzFeed news staff have banded together to reduce the impact of calamitous cuts: “We decided as a unit that we were willing to fight for a solution that would let us share the impact... rather than having to say goodbye to a full fifth of our co-workers.”

This week's podcast:

This week Will Gore, Head of Partnerships and Projects at the National Council for the Training of Journalists, tells us about the NCTJ’s role in the Facebook-backed Community News Project which has funded about 80 journalists in local news rooms across nine publishers. He also speaks about journalism education, trust, the future of local news and - of course - shorthand.

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Thanks again for taking the time to read our newsletter! We're already proper proud to have you on board, but we'd be absolutely cock-a-hoop if you forwarded it to some of your colleagues.