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Propaganda and manipulation.

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duped delusion denial and the end of the american drea...

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Propaganda and Manipulation: How mass media engineers and distorts our perceptions

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This is a second video on the psychology of propaganda and to date has been viewed by over 275, 000 people. Prof. Kroth reviews five major techniques for how American mass media manipulates and twists the view Americans have of their world. The seriousness of the distortion, and our progressive loss of contact with reality is dramatic.

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Here is a very detailed Academic Article that explores the changing world of how we receive news and the influence of the internet.

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Here is a very detailed Academic Article that explores the changing world of how we receive news and the influence of the internet.

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Executive Summary

In this report, we analyse what is happening to television news. We map recent changes in traditional television viewing, the rise of online video, and a range of examples of how different organisations are working with new forms of television-like news developed for a digital environment.

We show how recent years have seen significant declines in traditional television viewing in technologically developed markets, and a rapid rise in online video viewing driven by video-sharing sites, video-on-demand services, and the integration of video into social media sites. Television is still an important medium, and will remain so for years to come, but it will not be the dominant force it was in the second half of the twentieth century.

Television viewing in countries like the UK and the US have declined by 3 to 4% per year on average since 2012. These declines are directly comparable to the declines in print newspaper circulation in the 2000s and if compounded over ten years will result in an overall decline in viewing of 25 to 30%. The average audience of many television news programmes is by now older than the average audience of many print newspapers.

The decline in viewing among younger people is far more pronounced both for television viewing in general and for television news specifically, meaning that the loyalty and habits of older viewers prop up overall viewing figures and risk obscuring the fact that television news is rapidly losing touch with much of the population.

There are no reasons to believe that a generation that has grown up with and enjoys digital, on-demand, social, and mobile video viewing across a range of connected devices will come to prefer live, linear, scheduled programming tied to a single device just because they grow older. This raises wider questions about how sustainable the broad public interest role broadcast news has played in many countries over the last 60 years is.

Television news is still a widely used and important source of news, and will remain so for many older people for years to come, but if television news providers do not react to the decline in traditional television viewing and the rise of online video - in particular on-demand, distributed, and mobile viewing - they risk irrelevance. The full implications of the changes we identify here will not be felt immediately, as current viewers will continue to watch for years to come. But the challenge needs to be recognised now and acted on if television news providers want to reinvent themselves and find an audience that increasingly prefers digital media to television, and increasingly embraces on-demand, distributed, and mobile video distributed online.

Many different kinds of news organisations, including legacy broadcasters, print legacy media, and a range of digital pure players, are experimenting with different kinds of television-like and online video news to reach audiences, especially younger people. We review some of what they are trying to do below and show how a limited number of new players, most notably video-on-demand providers like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and platforms like Facebook and YouTube, are currently leading the move towards a video-enabled internet and that, while there are impressive experiments with long-form, in-depth content, shorter clips, and various modes of distribution, no one seems to have found the right recipe for online video news or IPTV news. None of the platforms and on-demand services that dominate online video focus on news.

The fact that no one has found the right recipe for doing online video news in this rapidly changing environment takes nothing away from the urgency of adapting to it. Television as a platform may well be about to face disruption on a scale comparable to what printed newspapers have experienced over the last decade. Television news providers face this transition with many strengths, including well-known brands, creative talent, and deep archives of quality content, but they also risk being constrained by their legacy organisation and culture.

Television news providers who wish to reach younger audiences, adapt to this changing environment, and remain relevant will therefore need to continue to invest in innovation and experimentation, and can learn much from established insights into organisational traits that enable innovation in digital news.

Introduction: A Golden Age of Television, but not of Television News

We live in a golden age of television, but not of television news.

Television entertainment has embraced the rise of digital media, and the best programming seems to thrive in a world where on-demand, socially distributed, and mobile video viewing is more and more important. For younger people, beyond-the-box video accounts for half of all viewing in technologically advanced markets like the UK and the US (Meeker 2015). Television news, meanwhile, reaches a shrinking number of older viewers whose media habits are increasingly different from the population at large, and especially from the media habits of those who have grown up with digital media.

Technological developments and audience preferences have driven a growth in viewing 'beyond the box' and a long-term decline in television news viewing. While major television channels are still pulling in large audiences, these audiences are eroding and ageing while a range of new entrants seek to pick up younger audiences who continue to turn away from traditional television news and embrace digital media.

What Is Happening to Television News?

This development is a major challenge for television journalism. It challenges the role television news has played over the last half century in many countries as the most used, most valued, and most widely shared source of news (see e.g. Barnett 2011, Cushion 2011). It challenges the business models underwriting commercial television news. It also challenges the ability of public service television news to deliver on its mission, as well as its long-term political and popular legitimacy.

The full implications of the decline of traditional television viewing and the rise of online video will not be felt immediately, as current viewers will continue to watch for years to come. But the challenge needs to be recognised now and acted on if television news providers want to reinvent themselves and find an audience that increasingly prefers on-demand, distributed, and mobile video (see the back of the report for a list of terms). Television news as we know it, from evening bulletins to 24-hour news channels, increasingly serves the past, not the future, and television news producers have to experiment with new formats and forms of distribution if they wish to remain relevant.

Traditional television viewing is still strong, but no longer as stable as it once was. 2015 may turn out to have been for the television industry what 2005 was for the newspaper industry, a year when the pace of change accelerated. While we should not overestimate the immediate short-term impact, it is clear that the longer-term effect over a five-to-ten-year horizon will be dramatic. This concerns television generally, but also television news specifically. As traditional television viewing overall erodes, television news will benefit less from lead-in programming and will see its own audience shrink faster, and television news providers will have to develop new offers and new strategies.

The Erosion of Traditional Television and Growth of Online Video Challenge Television News Providers

The change among younger people is already particularly pronounced. In many of the most technologically advanced markets, traditional television viewing has begun to erode, and online video consumption is increasing. The rise of the video-enabled internet puts television and digital media in much more direct competition. As connectivity, devices, and file compression formats improve, this competition will become more intense. And the development will continue as older viewers with pre-digital media habits are gradually replaced with younger generations who have grown up with digital media, and as online video offerings develop in terms of content, convenience, and integration into people's communities and daily conversations.

The question is who will benefit from this development - legacy broadcasters, other legacy media, new online video start-ups, video-on-demand services, or third-party platform providers like Facebook and YouTube - and what role specifically will news find in this changing environment? Given the accelerating shift away from television and towards an environment where traditional television remains important, but digital media grow ever more important, it is clear that the future of television news is about much more than television. It is at least as much about whether and how television news providers benefit from the rise of on-demand, distributed, and mobile video viewing on digital platforms. And will television news broadcasters continue to play the core role in informing a broad base of society that they have played for much of the last half century? Television news will continue to reach millions of people for years to come via evening bulletins and 24-hour news channels. But to remain relevant and reach a younger audience, television news providers also have to embrace a whole new range of digital platforms and experiment with on-demand, distributed, and mobile video news.

Overview of the Report

In this report, we analyse what is happening to television news. Our main focus is on what is happening in technologically developed markets like the UK and the US, but we also examine trends elsewhere. First, we map recent changes in traditional television viewing. Second, we consider the rise of online video. Third, we examine examples of how different organisations are working with new forms of television-like news developed for a digital environment. We go into some detail in providing an overview of how television more broadly is changing and online video growing because these two trends help define the environment in which television news providers operate. We focus on new experiments with television-like and video news online in the third part of the report because we are interested in innovative approaches to adapting to a new environment rather than the incremental evolution of traditional formats.

We show how a limited number of new players, most notably video-on-demand providers like Netflix and Amazon Prime and platforms like Facebook and YouTube, are currently leading the move towards a video-enabled internet and that, while there are impressive experiments with both long-form in-depth content, shorter clips, and various modes of distribution, no one seems to have found the right recipe for online video news or IPTV news.

What is clear is that the right recipes are unlikely to be the same recipes that worked for news bulletins or 24-hour news channels and that news organisations need to break with much of the broadcast legacy and continue to experiment with both editorial products and distribution strategies to make online video news work. Television news is changing as traditional formats evolve, with evening news bulletins seeking ways to add value though much of their audience already know the major headlines, and 24-hour news channels seeking ways of balancing their desire to break news in an accelerated cycle with the challenge of getting complicated stories right in real time. But television news is also changing in a wider sense as people increasingly move away from these traditional formats and incorporate new kinds of online video news in their media repertoires.

If television news providers do not adapt to these changes, they risk irrelevance.

The Erosion of Traditional Television Viewing

Despite the rise of digital media, traditional television viewing held up well for the last twenty years. Measured as viewing of live, linear, scheduled programming, overall television consumption remained stable - and in some cases grew - throughout the 1990s and 2000s, even as digital technologies disrupted other media industries and as desktop internet and later the mobile web came to account for a larger and larger share of overall media use.

These declines are directly comparable to the declines in print newspaper circulation in the 2000s. Compounded over ten years, annual declines of 3 to 4% will result in an overall decline of 25 to 30%. This would be a more severe drop than the decline in print newspaper circulation in the UK or US from 2000 to 2009 - in both cases about 20%. Audience share - the percentage of people viewing who are viewing a particular programme - may hold up for some channels and programmes, but the total audience that this is a share of is eroding, ageing, and spending less time watching television. In recent years, the average age of the BBC1 audience has grown by more than one year every year, from 52 in 2009 to 59 in 2014.

Television News Viewing

Overall viewership of some television news programmes is now declining about as fast as the readership of print newspapers. Some programmes have held up relatively well, but many have not. ITV Evening News in the UK drew about 3.4 million viewers on weekday evenings in 2010 and was down to about 2 million by late 2015. RTL Aktuell in Germany is down from about 4 million to about 3.3 million in the same period, and TF1 20 heures in France from 6.7 million to about 6 million. The remaining audience is also, like print readers, increasingly older than the population at large. In 2015, the median age for viewers of Fox News in the US was 67, MSNBC, 63, and CNN, 61. By comparison, the average reader of the print edition of the New York Times was 60. In the UK, the average reader of the print edition of the Daily Mail is younger than the average BBC1 viewer. In the US, viewing time is down 29% over the same period for 18-24 year olds. In 2015, Nielsen estimated that younger Americans (those under 34) spent almost as much time watching video across TV-connected devices, personal computers, tablets, and phones as they did watching traditional television. While it is still the case that young people watch significantly less television than the population on average, although they tend to start watching more as they age and settle down, internal research from one broadcaster in the UK that we have seen suggests that not only do young people today watch far less television than people the same age in the past, but the increase in television viewing as they age is also far less pronounced. (The distribution in France and the US is very similar.) Even in countries like France and Germany, where television is the most important source of news for the population overall, online is far more important for younger people. In the UK and the US, online is the most important source of news for every age group under 44 (Newman et al 2015).
Figure 1.2. Proportion within each age group who said each source was their main source of news (UK) Figure 1.3. Proportion within each age group who said each source was their main source of news (Germany)
There are thus no reasons to believe that a generation that has grown up with and enjoys digital, on-demand, social, and mobile video viewing across a range of connected devices will come to prefer live, linear, scheduled programming tied to a single device just because they grow older. A combination of two powerful factors point to a long-term move from traditional television towards digital media, including various forms of online video. First, the continued technological development of better devices, connections, and file compression formats. Second, the generational replacement of older, pre-digital generations with younger generations who have grown up with digital media and prefer them.

The Rise of Online Video

Distributed viewing, viewing of video from many different brands and content creators (including user-generated content) on video-sharing platforms, social media sites, and via messaging apps, grew particularly rapidly in 2015. YouTube is the single most important example of this, and it reported more than 8 billion daily video views. But social media and messaging apps moved aggressively into video distribution in the course of 2015 and increasingly prioritise video. Facebook has evolved from posting links to showing clips, to hosting clips, and now to auto-play of videos, and by the autumn of 2015 reported more than 8 billion video views per day - up from 4 billion earlier in the year. The messaging app Snapchat reported 6 billion daily views by the end of 2015.

Mobile viewing, especially people watching videos on their smartphones, is also growing rapidly. Small screens, often used vertically and in silent mode and thus offering a very different interface and user experience from a large horizontal television screen with the sound on, account for a larger and larger share of video-enabled devices and time spent viewing. And it is not only that mobile is increasingly central to video. Video is also increasingly central to mobile. In 2015, Cisco estimated that mobile video grew to account for more than half of all mobile data traffic. What is noteworthy about this is not the figure in itself - video consumes a lot of data compared to text or images - but how quickly mobile video data traffic has grown in recent years, with annual growth rates of over 60%. Mobile video is expected to account for over 75% of all mobile data traffic by 2020. With better (4G) connections and cheaper data, video will also be more appealing to users.

Television beyond the Box

The rise of on-demand, distributed, and mobile viewing points towards an environment in which video is used very differently. Linear scheduled television continues to be an important part of this digital environment, but only one part, and is no longer the dominant platform it was for much of the twentieth century. Online, content discovery is not about prime-time scheduling or position on the electronic programme guide, but about brand awareness, search, and recommendations - including social recommendations and algorithmically generated 'you-may-also-like' recommendations.
Figure 2.1. Global install base of video players (2014) Figure 2.2. Hours per day spent on screens by orientation (US)
Already, mobile devices account for the largest share of video-enabled devices globally (46% according to one estimate; see Figure 2.1, adopted from Evans (2015)). People do not necessarily watch much video on these devices (yet), and may never watch as much video on any one of these many other screens as they do on a television set with a good screen, good sound, and a central place in the home - but the proliferation of video-enabled devices suggests where new opportunities lie in the future.

And this is not only about potential and about the future. Since 2013, some estimate, digital devices have accounted for more than half of all time spent on screens in the US. Mobile screens alone grew from a 5% share in 2010 to a 28% share of all screen time in 2015. (See Figure 2.2, adopted from Meeker (2015).) This is a transformative change in just five years.

There is still considerable growth potential for digital video, unlike traditional television viewing, which is expected to continue to erode for the reasons discussed above. In relation to both devices, connectivity and content quality deterring some, Ofcom estimates that only about two thirds of those in the UK who own personal computers and smartphones regularly use them for video at this stage. But in the future, as devices, connectivity, and file compression improves, we expect more and more people to get video-enabled digital devices, and more and more people to in fact use them to watch video.

Broadcasters Are Unlikely To Be the most Important Players in Online Video

The most important players in this new online video environment are not legacy broadcasters, but newer video-on-demand providers like Netflix and Amazon Prime and platforms like YouTube and Facebook. In France, for example, Mediametrie estimates that France Télévisions videos were streamed 19 million times online in September 2015 and TF1 videos 42 million times. By comparison, the French video platform DailyMotion was estimated to have seen 50 million views in France that month, Facebook 325 million, and YouTube 1 billion. (Some of these videos originate with broadcasters, but exactly how many is unclear, and in any case broadcasters have less control over where and how their content is consumed in this more distributed environment.)

Whereas legacy players often have strong brands, in-house creative talent, and audience loyalties and habits built over decades (especially in terms of offline media use), a few dominant new players, all of them coming out of the United States, are building an advantage in terms of ability to invest, in terms of technology talent and in terms of data about their audiences. They are developing superior technologies both at the back end and at the interface with users and they are building global scale in a way no legacy media organisation has been able to do. Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and Google all operate in more countries than even the biggest international broadcasters. They are not invincible - several of them have made multiple attempts to break into the large and lucrative television market, for some with only limited success. But even when they fail, they are not giving up, and they will continue to experiment and invest in video.

The Business of Online Video and its Implications for Television News

The decline of traditional linear scheduled television relative to on-demand, distributed, and mobile viewing will eventually impact the resources invested in television news. Television news today is funded by money coming from advertising, subscription to pay television, and, in most high-income democracies, significant funds invested in public service broadcasting. In the United States, the television industry in 2014 was about 40% advertising and about 60% subscription, with less than 1% public funding. In European countries like the UK, France, and Germany, public funding is far more significant - about 27% of total television revenues in France and the UK, and 46% in Germany - with a broadly similar split between advertising and subscription. (And the BBC licence fee in the UK is £145.50 a year, more than $200.)

Private broadcasters in many countries have already cut their investment in news. Public service broadcasters faced with budgetary pressures are doing the same - like the BBC in the UK. Where investment in news provision was once a formal or informal condition for obtaining a licence to broadcast (a private provision of public service in return for access to scarce spectrum), this is less and less relevant in a digital environment.

Meanwhile, the dominant new players are delivering significant growth, and in the case of Netflix and Amazon, investing heavily in original content. But none of the dominant online video players - whether content-based like Netflix and Amazon Prime or platforms like YouTube and Facebook - are making investments in news. (When a journalist freely interpreted a statement from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and headlined an article 'Netflix Sets Sights on News Programming', the company's communications office immediately and very publicly clarified that Netflix was not attempting to get into the 'reporting and live news business'.)

Television News in a Changing Media Environment

Traditional television formats, including evening bulletins and 24-hour news channels, still serve large audiences, but television news providers face an ageing and eroding audience on traditional platforms, an increasingly digital media environment offering more and more forms of online video, and a whole range of new competitors vying for people's time and attention.

In this section, we focus on the development of television-like, often primarily video-based, forms of news online, rather than on how traditional television formats are evolving to find their niche in an increasingly digital media environment. We discuss them apart from developments in traditional television formats in part because the recent history of innovation in digital journalism shows how dangerous and stifling it can be to always discuss new initiatives through the lens of inherited professional and technical standards without first examining them on their own terms (e.g. Boczkowski 2004, Küng 2015).

Many different kinds of news organisations are experimenting with different kinds of online video news to reach audiences, especially younger people, in this changing environment.

Major players include:

Legacy broadcasters both private (CNN, ITV, RTL, TF1, etc.) and public (PSB, BBC, ARD/ZDF, France Télévisions, etc.) seeking to complement their traditional television offerings. With a few exceptions like the BBC and Fox News, their online reach is generally much more limited than their offline reach (Newman et al 2015).

Legacy media with a print background seeking to develop video as part of their digital strategy, including brands as different as The New York Times , Vice, and The Daily Telegraph , as well as brands like and in Germany - both of which have incorporated more traditional television elements (N24 and Spiegel TV).

Digital pure players , including both established players like BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post as well as newer start-ups like NowThis and WatchUp built primarily around video, who often have focused primarily on building an audience for distributed viewing via platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

Everyone is still experimenting, and the clearest take-away from these experiments in online video news so far is that there is no one recipe, and no one has it. Further, with such a significant shift in consumer patterns and technology, some failures are inevitable and even essential for successful innovation. As yet, there is no major success for on-demand TV news along the lines of Netflix for drama, no news-related YouTube stars to compete with PewDiePie, and few news brands among the most viewed videos on social media and messaging apps - although many organisations are trying to move into these spaces.

Two of the earliest ambitious attempts to offer online video news, Reuters TV and Huffington Post Live, illustrate how hard it is. Reuters TV has completely changed strategy within two years - from selling access and its app to giving it away for free across many platforms and allowing other publishers to use their content. Similarly, Huffington Post Live has, after major investments in an online streaming news channels, discontinued its live stream and moved towards a much greater emphasis on distributed viewing across social media platforms. Neither of these initiatives worked out as originally intended, but both organisations deserve credit for investing in new approaches to online video news, and have learned from their experiences and adapted accordingly. The right model is not always clear and no one model will work for all of the different providers or in all of the different contexts.

Incumbent Legacy Media and Insurgent Start-Ups Face Different Challenges

Online, the challenge for incumbents is to adapt their formats and production process to new platforms and patterns of consumption; the challenge for insurgents is to create sufficient distinct, compelling content and build their brand in a crowded, fast-changing market. As, for example, Vice attempts to move from online video into TV channels it faces a formidable challenge in stepping up from a few hundred hours of available content to a sufficient inventory to sustain linear broadcasting. In contrast, legacy broadcasters moving into online video have thousands of hours of content, but it is all shot in horizontal formats and produced to be viewed on a big, horizontal, HD screen with the sound on in the comfort of one's own home - not to be watched on a small, vertical smartphone screen with the sound off and the viewer 'on the go'.

Both legacy broadcasters and newspapers have for years produced some online video, but most of it so far has been either 'shovelware', originally produced for other purposes, then simply cut up and posted on the website/app or very low production value 'talking-head' videos of journalists talking to camera in a simple studio in the newsroom, often repeating points made in already published articles. These approaches have led some to dismiss online video news as 'Same Sh*t, Different Screens'. It is clear that news providers have to move beyond these genres to allow online video news to find its own voice.

Current experiments have moved in two very different directions when compared with the classic two-minute television news clip bundled up in a 30-minute bulletin. A lot of experimentation has focused on short, sharable, immediately compelling videos produced for social media and video-sharing platforms (for example BuzzFeed), while others (like Vice) have prioritised longer-form, rich, sometimes interactive video content and hope to draw people to their websites or apps with especially compelling content. Both legacy organisations and pure players face the challenge of reaching people in a more distributed environment where brand awareness, search, and recommendations are central to discovery.

Distributed Content

Third-party platforms are currently driving reach in online video. Traffic at scale is focused on 'one-stop-shop' sites like YouTube and Facebook and messaging apps like Snapchat rather than on attempts to draw users back to a home site. For publishers like AJ+, BuzzFeed, and NowThis News, this is a way of offering content without dragging users away from the platform they choose to be on. These approaches offer an opportunity to reach the significant number of people who use these platforms every day, but also risks losing a direct relationship with the audience and poses challenges around monetisation, and there are unresolved questions about what kind of user data platforms are prepared to share with publishers.

Many different news providers, including legacy broadcasters and digital start-ups, have embraced this idea and pursue distributed video strategies. AJ+, Al Jazeera's online news and current events channel, is one prominent example, and various BuzzFeed verticals and the video-oriented start-up NowThis News are other examples. All three feature among what the

analytics company Tubular Labs report are the top ten most viewed 'creators' across YouTube, Facebook, Vine, and Instagram - alongside Justin Bieber, The Ellen Show, and World Wresting Entertainment Inc..

AJ+ is focused on distributed content, building audiences directly on Facebook and other platforms. It is short, sharable and made so that it can be viewed with the sound off. 'Volume-agnostic' video is seen as essential for the mobile, social market. On Facebook, where it has 2.8 million likes, AJ+ reported 2.2 billion video views in 2015 - around half of those were 30-second views. Similarly, BuzzFeed operates several verticals with a strong distributed video profile, including Tasty, BuzzFeed Video and BuzzFeed Food. At the end of 2015, BuzzFeed was estimated to generate more than 2 billion video views across multiple social media and video-sharing platforms every month. Its strategy is not focused on distribution via its own website, but on distribution via third-party platforms. NowThis News, another brand built around distributed viewing, also reported dramatic growth, going from 1 million views in 2014, to 50 million early in 2015, to 200 million by the summer and 600 million a month by the end of the year. Like other digital start-ups, it has adopted a distributed media strategy, attributing its success to 'platform appropriate' video and data-driven decision making.

AJ+, BuzzFeed, and NowThis News are not alone in pursuing a distributed strategy around short, sharable videos. The BBC's various efforts across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Vine, including dedicated teams like BBC Trending, are examples from a prominent European public service broadcaster. Major American television news brands also have significant reach via social media and video-sharing platforms. Tubular Labs estimate that CNN generated 214 million views in January 2016 and Fox News about 172 million. [https://tubularlabs.com/yt/cnn, https://tubularlabs.com/fb/foxnews] (BBC News, by comparison, had 87 million.) In all three cases, their distributed reach was overwhelmingly driven by Facebook. CNN's 'Great Big Story' initiative is an example of how some legacy broadcasters have embraced distributed viewing, and one clear take-away is that socially distributed videos have to be different not only from television clips, but also from website content.

Long Form

But short and sharable is not the only way to go. A range of other players including brands as different as Vice and The New York Times have prioritised longer-form, rich, sometimes interactive video content in an attempt to stand out in a very competitive marketplace for attention.

Vice began as a Canadian print magazine but has built a formidable online brand across different genres and demonstrated that there is a young audience for long-form video online with its documentaries. Its success is attributed to its tone, relevance to its target audience, and its understanding of how its material is viewed.

News organisations like The New York Times and Sky News have experimented with virtual reality, allowing users to have a rich, immersive experience of a major news event or location through their smartphone. As yet it is a minority service - but producers believe it will quickly develop into a mainstream application.

Similarly, some broadcasters seek to exploit their long-form experience and strength. The UK's Channel 4 offered a video-rich, interactive analysis of the European migrant crisis on a bespoke site, twobillionmiles.com, building on the interactive precedents of The New York Times' 'Snow Fall' and The Guardian 's 'Firestorm'. These interactive, video-rich experiences offer depth and a compelling user experience. Even though they do not attract mass audiences, they may help some brands carve out an identity as a distinct destination website for key users.

It is not just the format, but the type of content that is offered which has to change. There is a market for the latest breaking events, for the highly visual, and also for in-depth specialist topics. But the middle ground of the basic television news package finds little traction online. One reason for this is that video and packaging in the style of rolling broadcast news is harder to manage online or on mobile than providing text updates on a fast-moving story. If all one wants is headlines, headlines delivered in text and images is faster and more convenient for the user. The longer-form video packages that work therefore have to add value - by being emotionally compelling, providing background, novelty, and an explanation or an angle - and should normally be something which will still be appreciated 24 hours later and beyond. Differentiation is all.

Live Streaming News

Those attempting to build an audience for live streaming have had a mixed experience. Big live events, particularly sports events like the Olympics, have seen significant audience spikes for broadcasters like the BBC and NBC, as have major breaking-news events like the Paris terror attacks - but so far there has been little audience for general day-to-day streamed news programming.

Some media organisations are working to develop online video offerings built around streams. The BBC is developing its own mobile 'Newstream' - aggregated content and live video, structured to offer either immediacy or depth, which some speculate may replace its UK news channel. CBS News runs a 24/7 online live stream running content from the news division and affiliates. News agencies too have recognised the demand for content around live events. The Associated Press (AP) works in partnership with Livestream.com to bring major news events live to customers that is formatted for TV, mobile, or online. So far, little data is available on how these live news streams are performing.

Apps like Facebook LiveStream, Twitter's Periscope and Meerkat, offering live streaming as opportunities to witness events, have built an audience around live events and events like the Paris terror attacks. Much of the content is offered by the public or 'citizen journalists' rather than professional news teams. [40. https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/mobile-journalism-has-great-potential-but-where-are-the-journalists-/s2/a594525/ And from the point of view of news organisations, there are not only editorial challenges involved in making use of these new tools, but also questions around what kind of business private news providers can build around them.

Mobile Video News

All this reinforces the notion that the current battleground is mobile. As data from the Reuters Institute's Digital News Report indicate, the growth in mobile use for news across many markets continues to accelerate (Newman et al 2015). Mobile needs to be seen as a disruptive technology in its own right, one that affects every stage of news - from newsgathering to production, distribution, and consumption. Mobile is a medium with its own dynamic, expectations, demands, and opportunities. What organisations, seeking to adapt to the demands of mobile, must recognise is that going 'mobile first' does not just mean introducing a responsive design website or app, or about rearranging desks in the newsroom. It is much more fundamental than that. Storytelling has to change - it has to be short, visual, timely, and hyper-relevant. Production routines and content management systems have to evolve to include new formats as more and more video viewing is moving from landscape to portrait and from large screens with sound to small, muted, screens.

But above all, news organisations have to figure out what editorial value is on a mobile screen. How do you serve people on small personal screens? How do you differentiate in a world of abundant digital content? Technological change has always had a major impact on journalism and media organisations - in the past through the rise of the printing press, radio, cameras, and the web. Mobile is now doing the same.

Ways Forward For Television News

For half a century, traditional television news has been the most widely used, most important, and most shared source of news in most countries. That is not going to change overnight, and television remains an important part of people's media use and an important source of news for many. But audiences - especially younger audiences - are increasingly moving away from traditional television and towards digital platforms.

Television news providers have yet to find their place in this changing environment. If they do not, they risk irrelevance. And losing touch with the audience will undermine the journalistic mission of television news, as well as the commercial business models and public service justifications for funding it. The move to a 'post-broadcast democracy' heralded by the rise of cable and satellite multichannel television in the 1990s and 2000s may now point towards a 'post-television democracy' as digital media are on track to overtake television as the most important sources of news.

The erosion of traditional television and the rise of online video present legacy television news providers with a range of challenges and opportunities.

Challenges , because adapting to a dynamic environment requires constant change, and change is always difficult. And organisations that used to occupy a very privileged position in a low-choice environment suddenly find themselves caught between very large platforms and many new players all providing online video in a high-choice environment. (The situation that legacy broadcasters face online today is thus in some ways quite similar to that faced by newspapers in the early 2000s.)

Opportunities , because a video-enabled internet with better devices, connections, and file compression formats provides television news providers with a whole range of new ways of reaching and serving audiences, and because they benefit from having strong brands, creative talent, and deep archives of quality content that they can use in new ways in a new environment.

The Need for Experimentation

As we have shown, no one has defined how to do online video news. We see many interesting experiments, both those focused on leveraging distribution of short, sharable videos via large platforms and those focused on producing stand-out, rich, longer-form video and virtual reality content to draw people to their own website or app. But it is not yet clear that any of these examples represent best practices for others to imitate. A better understanding of what adds value for audiences, what new kinds of journalism can enrich their lives, is needed.

What is clear is that as devices, connections, and file compression improve and as older generations with a preference for traditional television are replaced by younger generations who use digital media far more than they use television, television news providers will increasingly need to think about what their role is in a changing environment. They can - and many probably should - continue to serve an ageing audience on traditional platforms. But how do they reach younger audiences? The cases we have discussed here have not necessarily hit upon the best way to do that, but what they have shown is a willingness to embrace new opportunities and to experiment with how best to seize them.

The need for experimentation is for us the most important conclusion from this review of what is happening to television news. We know traditional television is important but eroding. We know online video is growing rapidly and will continue to become more important as digital media become ever more important. And we know that finding the right way forward between these trends will require constant adaptation and a willingness to change, to try things out, to fail, and to learn from failure without losing sight of the underlying urgent need to change. Not setting aside significant resources for experimenting with new formats and forms of distribution is effectively a decision to not prepare for the digital future. The fact that no one knows precisely how to react effectively to the developments we have discussed here does not reduce the urgency of reacting to them. This is a significant challenge for traditional broadcasters whose culture does not usually support an iterative 'launch, learn, re-launch' approach to new projects and for public service media that face a greater degree of political scrutiny of new initiatives.

So far, many legacy broadcasters have tended to approach the rise of online video in the same reactive, defensive, and pragmatic way most newspapers approached the rise of the internet in the 1990s and 2000s (see e.g. Boczkowski 2004). Given the incentives to serve existing users, the challenging business of digital media, and the uncertainties involved in trying to navigate a rapidly changing environment, this is understandable. But it is also very dangerous. An incremental approach is not necessarily the right approach to a revolutionary situation. If you change more slowly than the environment in which you operate, you fall behind.

Successful Experimentation?

How can television news providers move ahead? In her research on innovators in digital news, Lucy Küng (2015) has identified seven features innovative digital news organisations have in common: (1) a clear sense of purpose, (2) unequivocal strategic focus, (3) strong leadership, (4) a pro-digital culture, (5) deep integration of digital technology talent and editorial talent, (6) digital operations with a high degree of autonomy from legacy operations, and (7) an early start relative to their competitors. (Interestingly, Küng notes that an early start is less about first-mover advantage than about developing an organisation that embraces adaptation and innovation and that is accustomed to learning from experimentation, including frequent failures.) All of these features enable continuous adaptation to a constantly changing environment.

Very few traditional television news providers have all these features in place, or even a majority of them. Many of them are still unsure about what their purpose is in an increasingly digital media environment, what to focus on, and how to integrate digital talent into news production (Sehl et al 2016). A significant number of the people who work in this field still regard digital media with a mix of scepticism, fear, and incomprehension rather than see them as a set of challenges to be confronted and opportunities to be seized.

Television news providers need to overcome these barriers to be able to deal with change, including the continued erosion of traditional television viewing and the continuing rise of online video and digital media. The wider television industry needs to overcome them to face its biggest battle, which is yet to come. It will involve a fight for attention, for brand visibility, for control of content, and for access to the data that help one understand the audience and unlocks commercial opportunities. Above all, it will be a fight to offer differentiated content in the most convenient way as consumers embrace new technologies and develop new habits and expectations. Television still captures more of people's attention than even the biggest digital players - in January 2016, Facebook reported that its 1 billion monthly global users now watch a total of 100 million hours of video every day, and Netflix reported that its 75 million global subscribers stream on average about 116 million hours of video every day. [41. http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/27/facebook-grows/, http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/netflix-hits-75-million-streaming-subscribers-stock-jumps-1201683114/ By comparison, the US population alone watches more than 1,000 million hours of television every day. It is clear that the dominant digital players - Google TV, Apple TV, and Amazon TV, among others - all see this as an opportunity, as do video-on-demand services like Netflix, video-sharing sites like YouTube, and social media sites like Facebook, as well as a range of smaller start-ups. But none has yet conquered the online video market, and for most, news is peripheral to their vision.

This is perhaps the biggest challenge for television news - how to reinvent its core social and political mission in a new environment and find ways of resourcing it. The question should not be what will traditional television news. Nothing will. The question has to be how can we move television news as we know it?

List of terms

References

Barnett, S. 2011. The Rise and Fall of Television Journalism: Just Wires and Lights in a Box? London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Evans, B. 2015. 'Mobile Is Eating the World', http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/6/19/presentation-mobile-is-eating-the-world.

Lotz, A. D. 2014. The Television Will Be Revolutionized , second edition. New York: NYU Press.

Meeker, M. 2015. 'Internet Trends 2015', http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends.

Sehl, A., Cornia, A., Nielsen, R. K. 2016. 'Public Service News and Digital Media' . Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Westlund, O., Weibull, L. 2013. 'Generation, Life Course and News Media Use in Sweden 1986-2011', Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook 11 (1): 147-73. doi:10.1386/nl.11.1.147_1

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In this report, we analyse what is happening to television news. We map recent changes in traditional television viewing, the rise of online video, and a range of examples of how different organisations are working with new forms of television-like news developed for a digital environment.

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Have you thought about Freedom of the Press in Kuwait?

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Have you thought about Freedom of the Press in Kuwait?

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I invite you to read this and let me know what you tnink. Is it true, biased?

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Media operate in a restricted environment. Journalists and social media users deemed to have insulted the emir or Saudi Arabia often face prosecution, and the government sustains efforts to stifle criticism of its actions and policies.
Key Developments

In January 2015, police arrested several bloggers for allegedly insulting Saudi Arabia or its monarch.

Also in January, authorities suspended the publishing license of the newspaper Al-Watan as well as the business license of its owner; the following month, a court upheld the suspension of the newspaper.

In June, legislators passed a cybercrime law that includes restrictive measures for freedom of expression on the internet.

Legal Environment: 20 / 30
Freedoms of speech and the press are protected under Articles 36 and 37 of the constitution, but only "in accordance with the conditions and in the circumstances defined by law." Although the 2006 Press and Publications Law also extends some important protections to the media, it forbids criticism of the emir, the disclosure of secret or private information, and statements calling for the overthrow of the regime. Penalties for criticizing Islam draw up to one year in prison and fines of up to 20,000 dinars ($66,000). Both the author of prohibited content and the editor of the publication may be held criminally liable for any violations. Article 25 of the criminal code penalizes public criticism of the emir, with penalties of up to five years in prison. Violations are reported frequently, as any citizen may initiate charges against an individual who they believe has committed an offense under these laws.

In June 2015, legislators passed a cybercrime law that includes restrictive measures for freedom of expression on the internet. Under Article 6 of the law, online insults of religious figures and criticism of the emir can result in prison sentences and fines. While such provisions already existed in the media and penal codes, the cybercrime law made explicit that digital media are also covered. Article 6 also bans criticism of the judicial system, statements that could damage Kuwait's relations with other countries, and the publication of classified information. Article 7 criminalizes the urging, through information technology, "to adopt creeds that aim at destroying the basic statutes of Kuwait through illegal means." In December, legislators debated another law to regulate online media.

The government continued to use these restrictive measures against journalists and private citizens in 2015. In January, popular blogger Mohammed al-Ajmi was arrested for posting offensive tweets about Saudi Arabia. The same month, several other bloggers were arrested for allegedly insulting the king of Saudi Arabia. In February, an appeal court increased a four-year prison sentence given to blogger Saleh al-Saeed by a lower court to a six-year sentence. Al-Saeed's conviction stemmed from tweets in which he accused Saudi Arabia of impinging on the territorial integrity of Bahrain and Kuwait. The Court of Cassation upheld the increase of his sentence in June.

Kuwait does not have any legislation guaranteeing the right to access official information.

All publishers are required to obtain an operating license from the Ministry of Information (MOI) to launch daily newspapers, and the 2006 press law requires capital of at least 250,000 dinars ($826,000) for the establishment of a paper. However, the MOI's regulatory power is subject to some limits-the ministry must issue a license or provide an explanation for its refusal within 90 days of application, and refusals can be appealed in court. Media licenses, once given, may not be revoked without a court order. The authorities monitor online communications for defamation and security threats, and the Ministry of Communications (MOC) blocks websites that are suspected of "inciting terrorism and instability."

In 2014, the government adopted a law creating the Commission for Mass Communications and Information Technology to regulate digital communications in the country. The MOC oversees this new agency, which has sweeping regulatory powers over companies that provide phone, internet, cable, and satellite services. The commission may grant or revoke licenses without explanation and can direct providers to censor undesirable content that "harms public order." The law also penalizes the communication of "immoral messages" on digital platforms with prison terms of up to two years. Critics voiced concerns that the law defines the commission's powers in broad and vague terms, and does not provide for judicial review. The commission had not begun operating at the end of 2015.
Political Environment: 23 / 40
Kuwaiti authorities have arbitrarily revoked the licenses of media outlets on several occasions in recent years. In January, the government rescinded the publishing license of the newspaper Al-Watan and the business license of its owner. The outlet and its parent company appealed the decision but, despite some favorable interim rulings, were ultimately unsuccessful. International media watchdogs decried the revocations as politically motivated, claiming that the government was acting in retaliation to increasingly critical coverage by Al-Watan.
Economic Environment: 16 / 30
International news is widely available, and a number of foreign media outlets maintain bureaus in Kuwait. News sources originating outside Kuwait must be reviewed by the MOI before circulation. The MOI screens all imported media for morally offensive content and controls the publication and distribution of all materials classified as informational.

The MOI can censor all books, films, and periodicals that it deems to be morally offensive. However, in practice, the ministry does not regularly interfere with or restrict access to news, and the Kuwaiti media sector is considered more critical and outspoken than many others in the region. More in-depth reporting and a greater diversity of opinions appear in newspapers than in broadcast media. Nevertheless, given the restrictions in media legislation and the government's intolerance of critical reporting, journalists on all platforms continue to practice self-censorship, as failure to do so often results in reprisals. In addition to legal and regulatory penalties, journalists and media outlets occasionally face physical harassment.

Six Arabic-language and two English-language newspapers circulate in Kuwait and are all privately owned, largely independent, and diverse in their reporting. Private media have relatively transparent ownership and their own presses, and they are free to set their own prices. A small number of private radio and television stations are available for audiences in Kuwait, and satellite dishes are common. Although the advertising market remains limited, it continues to grow, partly due to an increase in the number of advertising agencies in the country. Wage levels for journalists at both state and private outlets are not high enough to discourage occasional bribery to influence coverage. Relatively low salaries have also dissuaded Kuwaiti nationals from pursuing journalism as a profession; many local media workers are noncitizens.

Approximately 82 percent of the population used the internet in 2015, and the government continued to debate how best to regulate this increasingly popular medium. Authorities require all internet service providers (ISPs) to install and operate systems to block certain types of political websites, in addition to websites carrying material that is deemed anti-Islamic, extremist, or pornographic. However, the blocking policies are not always clear or consistent. Internet café owners are required to record the identities of their customers and must disclose this information to the MOC upon request.

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Media operate in a restricted environment. Journalists and social media users deemed to have insulted the emir or Saudi Arabia often face prosecution, and the government sustains efforts to stifle criticism of its actions and policies. Key Developments In January 2015, police arrested several bloggers for allegedly insulting Saudi Arabia or its monarch.

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Press Ownership is often linked to political affiliation. Read this.

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Press Ownership is often linked to political affiliation. Read this.

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Everyone agrees that newspapers play a crucial role in British democracy, even if they disagree what that role is.
Tom London is a London-based writer and blogger
Everyone agrees that newspapers play a crucial role in British democracy, even if they disagree what that role is.

This week the Press Gazette published the results of the National Readership Survey. I have used these results - for both print and online - to draw up tables with readerships and information about owners and political orientation. Almost 78 per cent of our press is owned by a handful of mostly foreign-based billionaires.

Our newspapers like to paint their own role as heroic - they are the brave defenders of democracy who hold our elected representatives to account. Watergate is the archetype of this kind of journalism and it does occur now and again in the UK but it is rare.

Too often, far from protecting our democracy, our papers subvert it. In his Inquiry, Lord Leveson quoted some lines from Tom Stoppard's Night and Day. Milne: "No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable." Ruth: "I'm with you on the free press. It's the newspapers I can't stand."

In a free press, the nature of the newspapers matter very much.

The nature of a paper is set by its owner. Press barons wield far more power and influence than all but a very few MPs and have, unsurprisingly, used it to further their own interests.

Since 2010, the barons have pushed the highly contentious argument that there is no alternative to austerity (for other people, not for them or those close to them), and have largely ignored the stories which historians will doubtless note - the widening social divisions and the swelling numbers at food banks, the 21st century's soup kitchens.

Newspapers exercise power and influence in a number of ways. It is not just that they have a megaphone which lets them dominate the public debate. They also have privileged access to politicians. And one of their most powerful forms of influence is the ability to effectively set the political agenda for the other media and more widely, in parliament, the workplace, the kitchen and the pub.

In the terms of political theory, the press barons impose the elite's cultural hegemony. As Martin Kettle has argued, the answer to the old 1970's question - 'Who governs Britain?' - is now, in important respects, the press barons. The most recent example of their power - and arrogance - is how they have contemptuously ignored the Leveson Inquiry findings and the subsequent decision of the elected House of Commons.

Newspapers put great store by the concept of editorial independence. Sometimes, it is a reality. The Lebedevs, for example, own papers - the Independent and the Evening Standard - which take markedly different political stances.

Too often, however, editorial independence is a sham. Proprietors choose editors who they know share their views. Editors know well what is expected of them without the need for a proprietor to actively interfere.

Rupert Murdoch's candour at the Leveson Inquiry was revealing. He said that if someone wanted to know his opinion on a subject they should just read the leader in the Sun.
UK press weekly print and on-line readership (for papers over 1 million) in March 2013
Over a quarter (27.3 per cent) of the press is owned by Lord Rothermere and 24.9 per cent by Rupert Murdoch - between them these two men have over 50 per cent of the printed press.

Over three quarters (77.8 per cent) of the press is owned by a handful of billionaires. There are only 88 billionaires among the 63 million people in the UK and most of the barons do not even live in the UK.

I am no fan of Michael Gove's fact-based curriculum, but it is true that knowing certain facts is key to understanding. All students of British politics need to know who owns our press.

Like this article? Sign up to Left Foot Forward's weekday email for the latest progressive news and comment - and support campaigning journalism by making a donation today.

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Everyone should know who owns the press - for the sake of our democracy

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Everyone agrees that newspapers play a crucial role in British democracy, even if they disagree what that role is. Tom London is a London-based writer and blogger Everyone agrees that newspapers play a crucial role in British democracy, even if they disagree what that role is.

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This is an Academic Article so it may be difficult for some of you to read and understand, nevertheless it is an important reliable document of how Unscrupulous Governments use their control of the press to crush political dissent. Try to read the Abstract, which is a brief summary of the article 

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This is an Academic Article so it may be difficult for some of you to read and understand, nevertheless it is an important reliable document of how Unscrupulous Governments use their control of the press to crush political dissent. Try to read the Abstract, which is a brief summary of the article 

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Lecturer II, Department of Mass communication, Elizade Universiy, Ilara-Mokin Ondo State, Nigeria

*Corresponding Author:

Ali A
Lecturer II, Department of Mass communication
Elizade University, Ilara Mokin Ondo State, Nigeria
Tel: 08060287043
E-mail: [email protected]

Received Date: December 09, 2014; Accepted Date: January 20, 2015; Published Date: January 27, 2015

Citation: Ali A (2015) Media Ownership and Control Versus Press Freedom in a Democratic Africa. J Mass Communicat Journalism 5:239. doi:10.4172/2165-7912.1000239

Copyright: © 2015 Ali A. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Visit for more related articles at Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

Abstract

The deregulation of the broadcast industry in Africa has helped politicians to advance their ambitions at the expense of the ethics of the profession of journalism. In Nigeria, there are prevalent cases of the state media being used by government to run political campaigns of only the political parties of the ruling class. This is the same story where private media organizations are owned by chieftains of some political parties in the country. Such media (both print and electronic) are used as propaganda machineries by these party chieftains and also used as media for carrying out negative reports about the party in power. Many African countries have similar situations. This paper looks at how the ownership of media organizations across the continent has interfered with the standards of professionalism in journalism. The paper will use the social responsibility theory and the libertarian theory to serve as theoretical framework. The paper will dwell more on the role of ownership in the media coverage of some African countries from 2011 to 2012 and try to make comparison with what is obtainable in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Keywords

Media ownership; Press freedom; Mass media

Introduction

The development in media technology around the world has made it a necessity for governments around the world to rely on the mass media as a strong medium of passing information across to the people. Africa is not left behind in this approach. As the world focuses on the broadcast media, countries have been trying to catch up with this pace. Different countries have set up their own radio and television stations to promote their image both locally and internationally. Cammaerts and Carpentier said "the importance of media in terms of democratic practices and fostering a democratic or civic culture can hardly be denied. However, the way in which these democratic roles are articulated varies from necessarily ideologically laden, as it is embedded in distinct theoretical traditions, on at least two levels."

The relevance of the mass media in stamping control on the corridors of power cannot be over emphasised. During the days of tension in Cote d'ivoire 2011 that led to the ouster and incarceration of the former Ivorien president, Laurent Gbagbo, the national media were constantly used to disseminate information to the country. It was the same story during the coup detail in Mali. The junta had to rely on state media to tell the public that they are in full control of happenings around the country. Mtimbe and Bonin [ 1] said, "communication is central to the success of development and democracy."
Media ownership: A global perspective
"He who pays the piper calls the tune'' is a common statement in the media. Ownership has continued to play an influential role in the editorial policies of media organisations. It is so bad in some media organisations that the ethics of journalism are exchanged with the opinions and decisions of the proprietors of the organisation. McQuail [ 2] while writing on the influence of ownership on mass media content said, " there is no doubt that owners in market based media have ultimate power over content and can ask for what they want to be included or left." This is against the ethics of journalism. The influence of media ownership is felt more by government owned media organisations especially in Africa. In countries like the United States of America and Britain, there are laws meant to check the excesses of owners. In Britain, there is limited (if any) influence on the content produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation by government. According to McQuail [ 2], Meyer's survey evidence confirmed that US journalistic ethics frowned on owner intervention, although editors reported a fair autonomy in practice." Contrary to this survey, Schultz's study of Australian journalists showed strong support for the fourth estate role but also a recognition that it was often compromised by commercial consideration and owner pressure. According to a report compiled by Media Development and Diversity Agency in South Africa, control of any media company can be divided into three: Shareholdings and equity, general management and editorial control. According this report, "There are codes of good practise that govern how media controllers (editor and station managers) interact as laid out by regulatory bodies." But how many media owners stick to these codes? In Africa, government has continuously used the state owned media to crush the voice of the opposition. Many governments have used these media to their advantage during presidential elections campaigns across the continent, especially if the government in power is contesting. In such cases, the opposition would have to turn to God for a miracle. Melody in Meier, stated that "in addition to ownership concentration of the mass media industry, content provision, packaging and distribution have also become a standardised production and marketing process in which the messages communicated are contained and directed in both quantity and quality to meet the economic imperatives of media owners." Giddens in Meier said, "The media have a double relation to democracy. On the one hand the emergence of a global information society is a powerful democratising force. Yet, television, and the other media, tend to destroy the very public." Within the context of supporting democratic transitions, the goal of media development generally should be to move the media from one that is directed or even overtly controlled by government or private interests to one that is more open and has a degree of editorial independence that serves the public interest.
Media and democracy
McQuail [ 2] stated that "the earlier mass media of press and broadcasting were widely seen as beneficial (even necessary) from the conduct of democratic politics." Considering the fact that those who have the resources to own media organisations will always have the upper hand in terms of prominence in the news, McQuail [2] said "the typical organisation and forms of mass communication limit access and discourage active participation and dialogue." Government control of print and broadcast media in many African countries leave little scope for discussing opinions and therefore, public debate. According to a document produced by the Office of Democracy and governance in the United States of America in 1999, access to information is essential to the health of democracy for at least two reasons: First, it ensures that citizens make responsible, informed choices rather than acting out of ignorance or misinformation. Second, information serves a 'checking function' by ensuring that elected representatives uphold their oaths of office and carried out the wishes of those who elected them. In Africa, the perceived significance of the mass media in strengthening democracy on the continent led to the African Charter for Popular Participation in Development and Transformation, which was developed in Arusha, Tanzania in 1990. According to Mtimbe and Bonin [ 1], "The Charter called for : the emergence of a new era in Africa - an Africa in which democracy, accountability, economic justice and development for transformation become internalised and the empowerment of the people, initiative and enterprise and the democratisation of the development process are the order of the day." While in some countries, the antagonistic relationship between government and the media helps in shaping the democracies of these countries, it is not so in most African countries, where most governments see criticisms from the media, no matter how constructive they may sound as a direct attack on their administration. As a result of this perception, most of these administrations have devised means to curtail the excesses of the media which in most cases are against the fundamental human rights on freedom of expression. Journalists within these countries have been sent to jail, or detained without trial or even beaten up or humiliated by wives and families (direct and indirect) of these leaders. In fact, some media houses have even been forced to close down because of remarks made that sound unpalatable to the administration in power. Ocitti [ 3] said, "to African leaders, however, the freedom the media was demanding was to be placed within their own power positions and a wider context of national unity." Hence, governments in power spend money on state media and those who do not have any invest heavily to have one on ground so that they would use such media as tools of propaganda and image making to cover for poor performance in office. According to Ocitti [ 3], "The Benin National Conference, the interim parliament that drew up a new democratic constitution, certainly thought the media had done a commendable job educating the public on their democratic rights. At the end of the conference, the delegates publicly acknowledged the role of journalists in the restoration of democracy in Benin, a gesture that paved the way for a parliamentary bill guaranteeing press freedom in Benin." Though this was done during the regime of Martin Kerekou, people would have expected that he will be such a person that will have respect for the ethics of journalism and freedom of expression. But he was fast to blame the media when he lost the presidential election. The ex president was quoted as saying," It was because of journalists that everything has turned out so badly." Ocitti [ 3] also described the cat and mouse relationship between the media and the Ugandan president's administration thus: "At the height of a public debate on political pluralism in Uganda, Museveni, in an unprovoked outburst, labelled journalists criminals." The Ugandan president who has continued to recycle himself in power was quoted as saying, "Two types of criminals interest me in Uganda, common criminals and journalists." Ocitti [ 3] gave the names of the following as African leaders that have imprisoned, demeaned and even killed journalists while in power "Togolese president Gnassingbe Eyadema, Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Sudanese President Omar el-Beshir, Cameroonian President Paul Biya, Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu, Mozambican President Joachim Chisano and the late General Sani Abacha of Nigeria, to name but a few." He further said "Throughout the continent, parliamentary bills are being enacted to restrict the activities of journalists even further. Somewhat surprisingly, this includes countries like Namibia and Botswana, which have historically exhibited the values and conducts of democracy."

Table 1 represents a summary of African leaders with record of abuses on journalists. Over a decade after the names on this table were published, abuses on journalists and media organisations are still on going in several countries in the continent. Just recently, three Al Jazeera journalists were jailed by the Egyptian government. A female Ethiopian journalist, Reeyot Alemu has been in detention since 2011. According to the media watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), by the end of 1998, out of the 118 journalists in prison around the world, Ethiopia had twelve, sharing that number with China; Sierra Leone, which in 1997 had no journalist at all in prison, had eleven by the end of 1998; Nigeria, despite making a move towards democracy, still had seventeen by the end of the year. This figure as shown in Table 2 indicates that the number of journalists jailed by the end of 1998 in the three African countries in the table accounts for 34 percent of the total number of prisoners in jail by the end of 1998 the world over. By the time other African countries with one or two prisoners in their jails are added, Africa would have accounted for close to 40 percent of the total figure if not more.

Table 1: African Leaders with Record of Maltreating Journalists (1980-1998).

Table 2: Breakdown of Journalists Jailed in Africa By the End of 1998.

This situation has not improved in the last one decade. More governments within the continent are devising more repressive means to gag journalists in clear violation of the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Countries like Egypt, Eritea and Ethiopia have high cases of jailed journalists. Table 3 provides figures of journalists in detention in 2013 and 2014 as published by Committee to Protect Journalists. The table corroborates the fact that the number of journalists jailed within the country is increasing instead of reducing. Within just one year, the number of journalists in the country has increased from 40 to 63. This is in a continent that over 90 percent of its countries are claiming to be democratic.

Table 3: Breakdown of Journalists Jailed in Africa in 2013 and 2014.

The office of Democracy and Governance in the United States while trying to define the media in governance said, "If the media is to have any meaningful role in democracy, then the ultimate goal of media assistance should be to develop a range of diverse mediums and voices that are credible, and to create and strengthen a sector that promotes such outlets." The office further said, "A media sector supportive of democracy would be one that has a degree of editorial independence, is financially viable, has diverse and plural voices, and serves the public interest." This clearly shows that the media in Africa have a lot of catchups to do, considering the fact that media owners hardly give room for editorial independence in their organizations.
The media in Africa as a tool for propaganda
Government owned media in Africa have continued to be used by incumbent governments to deceive their people on projects they have not been able to accomplish after several years in power with nothing to show for the years. According to Anaeto and Solo - Anaeto [ 4] "the national communication policy in Nigeria spells out the following:

1. The social order within the news media process and communicable needs of the society and how appropriate resources can be organised and harnessed.

2. Organisational and infrastructural facilities for the expression of worldview that advance the country's vision of life as well as the ethical and moral values.

3. A regulatory mechanism that will uphold the freedom of expression and of the press, as well as ensure that the freedom are not used in projecting values contrary to essential basis of society.

In Nigeria, the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), the two state media institutions have been used by government to sing its praises. The government has capitalised on the wide reach of these media to propagate its messages of propaganda to the people. Jowett and O'Donnell [ 5] define propaganda as "the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist." McQuail [ 2] while trying to give an all-encompassing definition of propaganda said, "in our time, the primary association of propaganda is generally with conflict between states and currently the war against terrorism, but the term can be applied to almost any area where communication is planned to achieve some goal or influence." McQuail [2] further said " the mass media are now regarded as essential to successful war propaganda, since they are the only channels guaranteed to reach the whole public and have the advantage (in open societies) of being trustworthy." It is based on this line of thought that the mass media is being used in Africa as a propaganda tool to brainwash the unsuspecting public especially during political campaigns and awareness campaigns on newly introduced but none functional government policies. McQuail [2] further explained that the historical and present day examples of propaganda in action indicate that there is no single formula, since all depends on the contingent circumstances. "The record also shows that free and independent media can almost as easily be vehicles of well managed propaganda as the media in the hands of autocratic states." This statement suggests that propaganda is not a monopoly of government owned media organisations. With the deregulation of the broadcast media around the globe, new private radio and television stations are being established in many African countries. A closer look at these media organisations further reveals that some influential people in the society who are nursing the ambition of contesting elections or acting as godfathers establish such media organisations with no primary intention of upholding the ethics of journalism, but with the primary aim of using the media to fight the government in power through propaganda and sometimes hate messages. Odunlami [6] captured this correctly when he said, "Many publishers have ludicrously compromised the principles or ideas upon which their media were initially established. For reasons which do not go beyond security or profit maximization, many a Nigerian publisher prefers to hobnob with the government and get juicy contracts in order to be part of the nouveau rich in Nigeria using their media as a tools." A study of the newspapers in Nigeria during the 2011 general elections reveal that the headlines in The Nation newspaper which is owned by a chieftain of the Action Congress of Nigeria, one of the political parties in the country, are more antigovernment but sympathetic to the Action Congress of Nigeria. Similarly, the Africa Independent Television (AIT) which is owned by a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party swung into action as soon as a former president of the country declared his intention to contest in the presidential election. Since the owner of the private television station openly declared his support for the former president, he was given more prominence and airtime as far as advertisements were concerned. While AIT was doing this to Ibrahim Babangida, the NTA was showing live transmissions of the incumbent president's campaign trail at the expense of very important projects that were going on all over the country. This scenario is common within the continent though the magnitude may differ.

Theoritical Framework

The following theories serve as backbone to this paper:

1. Libertarian theory

2. Marxist theory of capitalist media

3. Social responsibility theory
Libertarian theory
According to Odunlami [ 6] libertarian theory prescribes that an individual should be free to publish what he likes, holding and expressing his or her opinion freely. Folarin explained that libertarian theory advocates that the press must be seen as partner with government in search of the truth, rather than a tool in the hands of government. Odunlami [ 6] while commenting on the libertarian theory said "the theory serves as a good guide for media practitioners in their quest to help Nigeria grow."
Social responsibility theory
McQuail [ 2] summarised the main principles of this theory as follow

1. The media have obligations to society, and media ownership is a public trust.

2. News media should be truthful, accurate, fair, objective and relevant

3. The media should be free but self-regulated

4. The media should follow agreed codes of ethics and professional conducts

5. Under some circumstances, government may need to intervene to safeguard the public interest.

Media Ownership and Press Freedom in the United States and Britain

Article 19 of the1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." A strong democracy depends on information and knowledge. The more sources of information we have, the greater our knowledge. The greater our knowledge, the more intelligently we can select our representatives in government at all levels, and the better we can guide their decisions. In Africa, most state owned media are often used by the government as tools for propaganda. A report from the Common Cause Education Fund in 2008 said "media cannot play its role effectively unless it is independent from government influence. A variety of sources of information independent of each other is essential as well. On many issues, media outlets will to varying degrees reflect the interests of their individual owners." It should be noted however that the role of the media is not solely to make profits for the owning corporations. The media is to serve the public interest, and may make money while doing so. A closer look at the relationship between media ownership and democracy in countries known to uphold freedom of expression for decades will give us a clear light of how much work needed to make this union a strong one that will bring about political stability and democracy in Africa.
USA
According to McQuail [ 2] "The movement towards codifying journalistic practice had already started in the USA before the 1947 Hutchins committee report, and one of the first canons of journalism was published by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1923." In the United States, freedom of the press is clearly enshrined in the laws of the land. A report from the Common Cause Education Fund in 2008 said "The only industry explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution is the media. The reason is fundamental: In a healthy democracy, those who disseminate information must not be fettered in their role of holding government accountable. The founders of our country understood this and made sure that "freedom of the press" was clearly stated in the highest law of the land." The influence of ownership cannot be completely taken away from media organisations since those who set up such organisations did so with the aim of making profit. However, a free press will help in building the democracy of a country. Baran [ 7] said "our democracy exists on a foundation of self-governance and free and responsible mass media are essential to both democracy and self-governance. But media because of their power and the often conflicting demands of profit and service under which they operate are open to control." While emphasising on the need for a free press devoid of ownership or government control, a United States judge, Justice Tom Clark wrote saying "the free press has been a mighty catalyst in awakening public interest in governmental affairs, exposing corruption among public officers and employees and generally informing the citizenry of public events and occurrences..." the deregulation of the media has affected the way the media looks at issues. Baran [ 7] said "the difficulty of balancing the public interest and broadcasters' freedom is at the heart of the debate over deregulation and the relaxation of ownership and other rules for radio and television." The influence of ownership and control on the media differ from country to country. In the United States of America, Dominick [ 8] said "the United States and other western countries have a tradition of press freedom the government recognizes the right of media to present ideas to try to persuade the audience to some point of view." The media in the United States are usually more pro people than pro government, the information carried by these media are in many cases critical on government and its policies. This is something that is unheard of in Africa and other developing countries of the world. In Africa, the government uses state laws to suppress the views of a critical. Domonick [ 8] said "an examination of the press in the United States and Canada for example, would reveal a large amount of news about the local and national government, some of it unfavourable and critical." Under this atmosphere, the press acts as a watchdog, keeping a check on the activities of government and reporting to the public. This usually makes the government to be conscious of criticisms and to live up to their constitutional obligations.
The United Kingdom
According to Gripsrud [ 9], " broadcasting has usually required some form of statutory regulation." This statement can cover even the other media of mass communication. In the United Kingdom, Branston and Stafford [ 10] said "if the UK government decides to regulate, it must take account of European Union policy and the implication of the global media market. The author outlined the following six types of regulation that can be used by the different governments in the world:

1. Direct control by government

2. Delegation by government to an independent statutory regulator

3. Self-regulation by media producers

4. The general legal framework as a restraint

5. Market forces regulate

6. Audience pressure regulates

Though 4 to 5 on that list can be found in even authocratic governments, the United Kingdom practices 2. Branston and Stafford [ 10] said "this is the current system used in the UK for commercial radio, television and telecommunications with Ofcom as the regulator, established by an act of parliament." The independence of the British Broadcasting Corporation from government manipulation is something that developing countries need to copy.

Conclusion

Most Africans are fast at condemning government for using state media as agents of propaganda. Politicians in the opposition parties usually cash in on this common crime by African governments while trying to score cheap political points. But government is not the only culprit when it comes to the issue of ownership and control. Private media owners have also used their media to push forward their political ambitions or that of their political parties. The media are supposed to be used as tools for propagating developmental messages and media professionals owe a duty to society to report events in their correct perspectives and not coloring it to suite particular people or organizations. In a developing continent like Africa, the mass media remain the best option for government to bring development to the public. A close partnership between governments in Africa and the mass media will help development in the continent. There is need to put an end to this cat and mouse situation and focus on progress.

References

1. Mtimbe L, Bonin M (1998) What is Community Radio? A Resource Guide. AMARC Africa and Panos Africa.

2. McQuail D (2010) McQuail's Theory o f Mass Communication. Sage, London.

3. OcittiJ (1999) Media and Democracy in Africa, Mutual Political Bedfellows or Impecable Arch-foes.

4. Fellows Program Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Harvard University

5. Anaeto SG, Slo-Anaeto M (2010) Development Communication Principles and Practice.Lagos:StirlingHordenpublishers ltd.

6. Jowett G, O'Donnell V (2011)Propaganda and Persuassion. (5thedn) Sage: Beverly Hills, California

7. Odunlami IS (1999) Media in Nigeria's Security and Developmental Vision. Ibadan: Spectrum Books

8. Baran SJ (2014) Introduction to Mass Communication, Media Literacy and Culture. (8thedn) McGraw Hill, New York

9. Dominick JR (2004) Dynamics of Mass Communication: Media in the Digital Age. McGraw Hill, New York

10. Gripsrud J (2002) Understanding Media Culture. SAGE publications, London.

11. Branston G, Stafford R (2006) The Media Student's Book. Routledge, New York

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Media Ownership and Control Versus Press Freedom in a Democratic Africa

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Lecturer II, Department of Mass communication, Elizade Universiy, Ilara-Mokin Ondo State, Nigeria *Corresponding Author: Ali A Lecturer II, Department of Mass communication Elizade University, Ilara Mokin Ondo State, Nigeria Tel: 08060287043 E-mail: [email protected] Received Date: December 09, 2014; Accepted Date: January 20, 2015; Published Date: January 27, 2015 Citation: Ali A (2015) Media Ownership and Control Versus Press Freedom in a Democratic Africa.

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Here is an interesting article which explores the potential influence of Press Ownership on Freedom of the Press

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Here is an interesting article which explores the potential influence of Press Ownership on Freedom of the Press

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Over the past decade global press freedom has experienced an alarming downward spiral. According to a report released this week by Freedom House, a U.S.-based think tank, only 14 percent of the world's population - one in six people - live in societies in which there is honest coverage of civic affairs, journalists can work without fear of repression or attack, and state interference is minimal. Far too often today, the media present a regime account of developments in which the opposition case is ignored, distorted, or trivialized. And even in more pluralistic environments, news coverage is frequently polarized between competing factions, with no attempt at fairness or accuracy.
By: Leon Willems and Arch Puddington
Especially troubling is that in an era when sources of information and interpretation are growing exponentially, the trends towards a more restricted and less ethical press is gaining ground year-by-year.

The reasons for the worrying state of press freedom are complex. But one of the most important, if least appreciated, are patterns of media ownership that are contributing to biased, unprofessional, and in extreme cases propagandistic journalism.

The best-known, and most dangerous, ownership model is the controlled business arrangements that are found, most notably, in Russia and Venezuela. Ownership is dominated by a combination of state entities, businesses tied to the state, and oligarch cronies of the leadership. In Russia, the state owns, either directly or through proxies, most major television networks, as well as national radio networks, important national newspapers, and national news agencies. It also controls many of the regional and local newspapers and periodicals across the vast country.

At its worst, oligarch cronyism enables the regime to develop a centralized information strategy that amounts to a modern form of propaganda whereby all important media are speaking a similar vocabulary, demonizing the same enemies, and presenting the same arguments in support of the leadership's actions. A propaganda model, we would stress, that is far more persuasive than were the stale and repetitive methods of the past.

A second model consists of media owners who, either out of fear or a desire to ingratiate themselves with the political leadership, fail to support and protect their journalists. On one level we see examples of this in societies like Mexico, where narcotraffickers and corrupt officials often determine not simply how an issue is to be covered but whether certain subjects will be dealt with at all. A second example is Egypt, where, despite an explosion of new news outlets after several 'Tahrir square' changes in government, media chiefs have competed as to who ranks as the most loyal supporter of the changing authorities, most lately the restoration of military rule.

A third case consists of the vertically organized conglomerates that control both media and non-media enterprises. Unlike traditional companies of even larger media conglomerates, family controlled or other, these new multi-faceted business conglomerate operations often have no principled commitment to news coverage as anything beyond a profit-generating part of the broader enterprise. Especially in settings where the political leadership employs economic leverage to influence press coverage, the conglomerate model is vulnerable to intimidation. A prime example of this phenomenon is Turkey, where press freedom is on the decline despite an impressive number of newspapers, journals, and television stations. In Turkey, media ownership is highly concentrated, with a few major private holding companies subtly applying pressure on editors and journalists at their outlets to refrain from coverage that could harm their broader business interests, including criticism of the government or potential advertisers. The state of media freedom has declined to the point where the latest Freedom House report describes the media environment as not free.

There are also worrying signs in democratic societies where legal protections for journalists are strong and overt political intrusion uncommon. In the United States, the major sources of television news are dominated by the conglomerate model. At the same time, there has been an explosion of internet media start-ups, polemical blog sites, and highly opinionated talk radio shows. The result is a two-tiered, and increasingly unequal, information culture. For a narrow elite who have the time and expertise, the market offers an unprecedented variety of high-quality news sources. For the rest, what passes for journalism is often little more than shrill polemics or tabloid sensationalism.

In the Netherlands, ranked highest in the Freedom House Press Freedom index for the first time this year, some worries remain. Local and regional media are hardly able to survive and hold municipalities and provincial authorities to account. Also the legal arrangements for source protection for journalists as well as legal protection of whistle blowers should be improved.

Worldwide the protection of journalists and the soft economic pressures on media are the critical spheres that threaten improvement of press freedom. Renewed commitment to advocacy, research and media development is needed to reverse the current trend.

To be sure, in the democratic world there is a recognition that media freedom conditions are under pressure. The internet is increasingly played host to genuine news sites and some newspapers that seem to be making headway at developing a model that can ensure financial stability in the new media age.

Unfortunately, the space for self-reflection and critical commentary is steadily shrinking in the world's authoritarian environments. Dmitry Kiselyov, the chief information strategist for the Russian government, has recently wondered aloud why in democracies the word, propaganda, has such negative connotations. That someone of Kiselyov's influence would defend state propaganda decades after Goebbels and Stalin departed the scene is indicative of the challenge that confronts freedom of expression and honest journalism.

Leon Willems is Director of Free Press Unlimited. Arch Puddington is vice president for research at Freedom House.

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How Media Ownership Threatens Press Freedom

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Over the past decade global press freedom has experienced an alarming downward spiral. According to a report released this week by Freedom House, a U.S.-based think tank, only 14 percent of the world's population - one in six people - live in societies in which there is honest coverage of civic affairs, journalists can work without fear of repression or attack, and state interference is minimal.

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Who Controls the Media? How much influence do Media Owners have on how the news is presented, on Government policy or indeed on Public opinion. This website explores the situation in the UK. 

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Who Controls the Media? How much influence do Media Owners have on how the news is presented, on Government policy or indeed on Public opinion. This website explores the situation in the UK. 

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Who owns the UK media? - Media Reform Coalition

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Download our latest ownership report on Who owns the UK media?