Welcome to The Future of Journalism, a podcast from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
I'm Fredricka Cherubini. This is a special series of our podcast, and it's dedicated to Religion News Report 2021 over six episodes.
We are diving into the findings of the report, the most comprehensive piece of research on news consumption around the world.
I'm the head of leadership development at the Institute. And for this podcast, I'll be joined by the authors of the report.
Our guests today are Richard Fletcher, senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute and leader of a research team,
and Rasmus Nielsen, co-author of the report and director of the institute.
Richard and Rasmus will help us understand more about how people think commercial news media should be financed Rasmus.
Richard, welcome and thank you for being with us today. Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
For those who work in the news industry or a passionate about it, the conversation about the business sustainability of journalism is a crucial one.
Print has been declining for a while now, and in the last year, we've witnessed the global pandemic accelerating this decline,
further impacting the bottom line for many independent media companies.
Digital advertising revenues or a big part of it, goes to Facebook, Google and a few other large digital platforms.
And while we've seen an increasing number of publishers turning to directory revenue like subscriptions or membership,
the overall percentage of people paying for online use remains low.
Even though we've seen in this year digital news report a significant increase
in payment for online news in a small number of richer Western countries.
In this kind of environment, it is crucial to know what audiences think of these issues,
especially when a few governments are considering stepping in to help independent news organisations in different ways.
I guess the place to start here is with the audience itself. Rosmus, you've studied this issue for a few years and analysed this year's data.
Do you people know about the difficult financial situation of the news industry?
The short answer is no.
It's only thirty one percent of our respondents who recognise that most news publishers are less profitable today than they were 10 years ago,
and there are many who think that they are as profitable or more profitable than they were in the past.
And then about a third to just say flat out that they don't know.
I mean, I think this is perhaps surprising for some in the profession, the industry itself.
I mean, there are few things that journalists are more keenly aware of than the financial travails facing much of the industry,
whether they are veterans who've been through years of cost cutting and shrinking newsrooms,
or younger journalists who've joined the profession during lean years and lived their whole professional life with precarity,
short term contracts and frequent layoffs. But I mean, I think it's important to recognise here that more broadly, you know,
while our research suggests that people have a pretty clear and often quite sensible sense of what major news brands have to offer,
including how trustworthy they are,
many people have a pretty limited understanding of the more sort of detailed issues around the news industry in the media environment,
ranging from how journalists and editors work to basic features of our media environment,
like the fact that the Facebook news feed is ranked by algorithms. And of course,
I think we also need to recognise that that's arguably no different from most people's pretty limited
understanding of the details of many other important institutions or industries in our societies,
whether universities or pharmaceutical companies.
I'm sure many journalists listening to us now will find unbelievable that some people think the news media are profitable.
But I guess another question here is whether audiences are concerned about the financial state of the news industry in the first place.
Richard, what do we know about this? Well, I mean,
given that any small number of people think that the commercial news media is less profitable than
it was and media financing is is not something that is a top priority for much of the public,
as Rasmussen has mentioned,
it's perhaps not surprising that we also find this public concern over the financial status of commercial news media is low.
So across the three markets where we failed to this question, just under a third,
31 percent said that they're concerned with half, 51 percent saying that they're not concerned.
The rest said they don't know in response to this question, probably because it's not something that they've given much thought to in the past.
And are these results across these countries consistent or do you see a variation in any region?
Well, as you might expect, the numbers do very little by country, but the general pattern is actually quite consistent.
So in all but a tiny handful of countries, more people say that they're not concerned about the financial state of commercial news
media than say that they're concerned when it comes to picking out patterns by region.
This isn't straight forward because I think there are lots of country specific
factors that might influence people's attitudes on this one way or the other.
But I think it's also noticeable that in in northern Europe,
where there's typically both prominent and well-funded public service media and relatively high levels of paying for online news,
concern tends to be lower than it is elsewhere. Some countries have a history of government intervention, either via direct or indirect subsidies.
Do people think the government should step in to help commercial news organisations that can make enough money on their own?
There's not a lot of public support for the idea of stepping in to support commercial news organisations that can't make enough money on their own.
Now, you know, there are, of course, you know, some public policies that we pursue even without majority public support.
And similarly, there are public policies that do have majority support that we don't pursue for other reasons.
And this really, I think,
is sort of a personal question for each of us to make up our own minds about as citizens and for those who represent us as elected officials.
What I will say is that while there is no clear public support for this, according to our data,
we do know that there are policy options available if the public and the elected officials who represent them are willing to commit real resources.
And that is possible to structure these policies in a way that insulate news
media from political influence and minimise distortions in the marketplace.
We see this in the form of genuinely independent public service media with clear defined limits
and the ability to operate across different platforms that we see in some parts of Europe.
We see this in the form of indirect subsidies that have long been in place in many countries across the world.
VAT exemption and the like in recent years also extended to digital news belatedly and of course in some countries also direct subsidies,
which can be tricky territory because sometimes they are used as handouts to sort of prop up incumbents or sort of politically aligned publishers.
But they can be designed in ways that primarily support investment and independent professional journalism
and does not give politicians or civil servants or others leverage over the publishers are receiving support.
And that's really a political question for each of us as a citizen and for elected officials whether they want to pursue these options.
But what our data can show is that at this stage at least,
there doesn't seem to be a broad based public support for this in the countries where we feel these questions.
And I think for from journalists and the news media side, I think it is worth thinking about what that means,
because, of course, you know, given the very real crisis of much of the industry continues to face,
even as some titles are doing quite well and have come through the crisis stronger,
arguably there seems to be a clear case for some form of public policy intervention to address market failure, at least in principle.
But I do think that journalism news media need to think about whether such a policy intervention needs to be
based on broad based public and political support to ensure its legitimacy and resilience and reduce the risk.
That disagreement over media policy become yet another issue that further polarised public opinion about journalism
and the media and risk undermining trust in the news if it isn't based on sort of clear public support.
Thanks, Rasmus. Richard, I wonder whether there are any factors that determine how news audiences think about government intervention.
Can things like trust in news or high interest in news predict how people think about this issue?
Well, trust in newsis is quite a complicated thing and that the relationship there is quite mixed.
But interestingly, you said it matters, but I think it matters in an indirect way.
So the more interested people are in the news, the more likely they are to be concerned about the commercial media financing.
And then the more concerned they are, the more likely they are to support the idea of government intervention.
But one thing I think we found quite striking in the data is that even amongst those who are concerned,
it's still only a minority rather than a majority within this group that think the government should perhaps step in to help.
And that's also true of many other socio demographic groups in the data.
These debates are not hypothetical,
like governments from countries like Denmark or France are stepping in to help commercial news media in different ways.
Others are now looking at alternative ways of using policy to secure additional revenue for commercial news media from the biggest platform companies,
for example, such as Google and Facebook. What should policymakers be considering in terms of these changes that you've seen in the data?
I mean, I think that policymakers often have a legitimate interest in trying to understand
whether there is broad based public support for policies that they're considering,
it's not the only thing that matters, but it is a thing that matters. You know, some policies that we pursue have broad based support, some don't.
And it's up to our elected officials whether they believe that things are worth pursuing,
even if they aren't supported by a wide and broad swath of the public.
If there is such support, it, of course, makes it more attractive for policymakers to pursue such policies.
Politicians have their own self-interest in media policy as in everything else, and it would be naive to set that aside.
If there isn't such support and policymakers or for that matter, journalists and those who care about journalism still want to pursue such policies,
then there is work ahead of them to convince the public that this is the right thing to do in the absence of broad based public support.
I do fear that government policy supporting commercial news media risk coming across as a private for profit industry,
advancing its own narrow self-interest at taxpayers expense,
and a politician supporting that self-interest and essentially sort of responding to requests from private publishers for special
privileges will come across as if they are mainly interested in increasing their own leverage over an institution that is,
after all, meant to hold power to account and be independent of politicians and policy makers.
Rosner's, thank you, Richard.
Thank you for joining us and thank you to you for listening to the fifth episode of the digital news report, 20/20 one podcast series.
Our guest today, Richard Fletcher, senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute and leader of a research team at the Rasmus Nielsen,
co-author of the report and director of the institute in the next episode will
talk about impartiality and whether people want impartial coverage or news,
which takes more of a point of view. Make sure to follow our podcast channel on Spotify or Apple podcast so you don't miss the next episode.
And if you don't want to miss any news from the institute, subscribe to our weekly newsletter by clicking the link on our Twitter bio.
Also homepage, you can find the report online and digital news report.
Dot org slash twenty twenty one. This was Feature Journalism, a podcast by the Reuters Institute.
I'm David Greene and we'll be back soon.