Why Journalism Begging?
21st Century so blessed with a gift of witnessing governance in all forms is in shatters including Content Governance….
Occupation of producing and distributing reports in all sorts of media these days has taken real a beating due to social media and freedom of expressions in all forms. The world seems to be in need of no designated reporters aka journalists due to unlimited content and unfathomable information on the Internet and also the power to interpret data and conclude decisions.
The recent dialogue between Australian Broadcast Union and Facebook on revenue share is a sign of death — on the cards — for those traditional media houses. It’s also unfortunate to see those dedicated and committed journalism die in the hands of technological riffraff. Where are we heading towards — are we going to be our own first-hand journalists or a poor consumer of poorly-sourced tertiary content of shares from social media?
Content governance is a global challenge and a slowly-killing pandemic for the world to realize and respond. Content share is feeding our brain cells in lightening speed being forced into a sedentary state of affairs and self-enforced isolation. The illegitimate, free feeds are so much that legit, informative feeds find no takers, which force the media houses cut down their already-sinking ship of overheads and operations.
Be it democracy and draconian measures, it should find some common grounds where content consumption to common man are legally set and logically limited, else cascading negative effect will be too much to blame; too early to lose the privileges. Imagine, journalism closes its shops and no more formal campus education. It will only be left with two sources of information — static government communication and seamless social media.
Too much of social media; too less of social responsibilities..
Remember those days of reading heavy, 90-gsm-thick printed news papers covering all facets of life and huge space for center pages kept aside for editorials and opinions for Chief Editors and Columnists where you’re magically taken into a state of mind served with brazen truths cut open, left out on the brain table to consume, process, and decide your act? Can we enjoy those cerebral sojourn these days, anymore?
When social media sets you up on a sub-second informational war on each incident or event or accident in jiffy, learning curve of news takes an inexplicable suicidal route and verdict is made in the same velocity with which it’s received, without an opportunity for an independent candidate called “Journalism” to do its duty but forcing it to beg for its very survival with a loud voice….
hear me out once; then decide
If at all technologists can think of governing social content across the globe, this is the time. The lock-down phase has cut down the physical transactions to almost null, if we can’t enforce it now, it is only going to explode as pent-up fury when normalcy is back and then the demise of legitimate content takes its final nail in the coffin. Multiple ways to handle this challenge are to:
- Be an advocate to yourself to legit content.
- Encourage legit content by qualified journalism.
- Empower legit content by subscriptions.
- Moderate your content consumption internally.
Without individual discipline and self restraints, no governments seem to be in mood to containing or compromising social content with proper checks and controls. As we keep child-locks on media devices and browsers, high time we introduce content-locks to our cognitive process.
How many of you have noticed the “Subscribe” popups from all those leading media houses on the home page pleading for a $1 subscription? Isn’t so pathetic to see those glories die slowly? Another group of media just fall at your feet for donations telling their own stories of survival before they tell those world stories. Those popups are like aging veterans standing at traffic signs for help….
For who the bell tolls and who will bell the social cats? Will time and tide wait?
