Why journalist Emily Bell is calling for a civic media manifesto
'We need to think about journalism as part of a basic human right, as part of a civic service.'
'How can independent, civic-minded journalism survive in a world dominated by corporate media takeovers and fake news? Acclaimed academic and journalist Emily Bell suggests an ambitious civic media manifesto — a radical rethink to ensure journalism has a future.
"Journalism, I do believe, really does work. But there are many things about it that are broken," she told CBC IDEAS' producer Mary Lynk.
"The business model is broken. The publishing environment is broken. The public's belief in the reporting process and in journalism, unfortunately, is broken. And even, you might argue that the democracy that we are meant to be a part of, the functioning of that, too, is a little bit broken."
Bell confronts dilemmas the media face in her 2019 Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B. She explores the state of the free press in a world where digital platforms are increasingly controlling society's news narrative.
The media scholar helped create Britain's Guardian newspaper website — which has more than 24 million monthly readers around the world — and still contributes as a columnist. She left England 10 years ago to become the founding director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in New York.
In order for journalism to thrive, Bell explains, the mission must come before profit.
"We have to put the kind of energy that we've put in to making money into fixing our civics. So I think we need to think about journalism as part of a basic human right, as part of a civic service," said Bell, a strategist on the state and future of journalism.
"And we need to be really committed."
Rupert Murdoch's 'superpower'
Bell has met media mogul Rupert Murdoch on various occasions. She considers him a fascinating character who she says prefers to operate behind close doors. She also notes he has cozy relationships with many heads of state.
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has 'a huge monopoly over journalism that we've never seen before,' says Emily Bell. (Josh Reynolds/Associated Press)
"He always talks about how much he hates regulation, but really, his superpower is understanding how to play the regulators and the governments," she told Lynk.
"And...he's very close to all world leaders, and is very close to the current president of the United States. Fox has become a sort of default state media."
Bell also has stern words for public media, including the CBC and BBC.
"It still behaves like a competitor to the commercial market. And that isn't really its function anymore."
But she argues the biggest danger is coming from giant and powerful digital platform companies that are scooping up most of the ad revenues and are increasingly in control of the news narrative — both real and fake.
"Since the introduction of the share button on Facebook, which was in 2009, the spread of misinformation has absolutely rocketed, " Bell said. "Fact checkers told me that since 2010, an increasing amount of their work has been to debunk misinformation rather than keep lying politicians in check."
Emily Bell argues it's very hard to detect misinformation that has been shared on Facebook. (Toby Melville / Reuters)
It is because journalism is at such a critical crossroad that Bell argues a civic media manifesto is so urgently necessary.
"I've thought about striking similarities between the crisis in our climate and the crisis in our news environment. Although the scale and consequences of both are completely different, they are, I think, related," Bell said.
"Both have been caused by profit placed as a higher priority than civic well-being."
* This episode was produced by Mary Lynk.
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Patricia W. Elliott · For CBC Opinion · Posted: Jan 30, 2023 5:00 AM AST
Emily Bell
Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism; Director, Tow Center for Digital Journalism
Emily Bell is founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism (link is external) at Columbia Journalism School and a leading thinker, commentator and strategist on digital journalism.
Established in 2010, the Tow Center has rapidly built an international reputation for research into the intersection of technology and journalism. The majority of Bell’s career was spent at Guardian News and Media in London working as an award-winning writer and editor both in print and online. As editor-in-chief across Guardian websites and director of digital content for Guardian News and Media, Bell led the web team in pioneering live blogging, multimedia formats, data and social media, making the Guardian a recognized pioneer in the field.
She is co-author of “Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present” (2012) with CW Anderson and Clay Shirky. Bell is a trustee on the board of the Scott Trust, the owners of The Guardian, a member of Columbia Journalism Review’s board of overseers, an adviser to Tamedia Group in Switzerland, has served as chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Advisory Council on social media, and has served as a member of Poynter’s National Advisory Board.
She delivered the Reuters Memorial Lecture in 2014, the Hugh Cudlipp Lecture in 2015, and was the 2016 Humanitas Visiting Professor in Media at the University of Cambridge.
She lives in New York City with her husband and children.
Dr. Patricia W. Elliott
University of Regina / First Nations University of Canada
Bio
Patricia W. Elliott is professor of investigative and community journalism at First Nations University of Canada. She has an MA in Media Studies from the University of Regina and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Previously Elliott worked as a freelance magazine journalist, and was cited numerous times by the Canadian Association of Journalists and National Magazine Awards for her investigative work in publications such as Saturday Night and Canadian Living.
She has worked on assignments around the globe, including Pakistan, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Burma. As a former news reporter for the Bangkok Post she covered general news, refugee issues and the drug trade, including travelling to Burma’s Golden Triangle region to interview Khun Sa, indicted by the U.S. government as the world’s largest heroin trafficker. This experience led to an interest in Burma/Myanmar, which continues to be the focus of much of Elliott’s journalism, including a book, The White Umbrella, several articles and, more recently, a documentary film, Breaking Open Burma. As well, her M.A. research focused on refugees and migrants from Burma who became involved in community radio in Thailand.
Her research also took her to Romania in 2009, where she joined a group of Central European University Scholars in interviewing journalists about their struggles to sustain independent media. In 2018 she returned to her reporting roots in Burma, on an extended research trip to Southeast Asia, interviewing local journalists in Burma and along the Thai-Burma border. Her encounters abroad have led her to highly value a free and critical press that, above all else, holds power to account.
Back in Canada, she has been active on issues around media decolonization, working alongside Indigenous journalists and community leaders to address media deficits. In 2017 she helped coordinate U of R student participation in the Price of Oil, the country’s biggest investigative journalism collaboration at the time, involving some 50 journalists, students and university researchers across the country. She also facilitated a major student investigation into First Nations drinking water issues, Broken Promises, which received awards from the Native American Journalists Association and the Emerge Media Awards for best student multimedia reporting. She currently serves as a professor of investigative and community journalism at First Nations University of Canada.