px2146c.jpg Pedro Molina

Don’t Save the Press

Faced with a crisis of survival as new technologies lure away their readers and viewers, traditional news media – like bankers, car manufacturers, and solar electricity producers – are increasingly turning to governments for help. But, rather than preserving the press as we know it, the political system must become compatible with the new information and communication technologies.

LJUBLJANA - Throughout history, political leaders have supported existing communication technologies in order to defend the system in which they rule. Today, too, governments may be tempted to protect newspapers and public TV on the pretext of “saving democracy as we know it.” But efforts to block technological change have been futile in the past, and they would be unwise today. Instead, the political system (and the media) must adapt to the new reality.

Faced with an existential crisis as new technologies lure away their readers and viewers, traditional news media – just like bankers, car manufacturers, and solar electricity producers – are increasingly turning to governments for help. But, such is the undertone, their cause is nobler. The media are a cornerstone of democracy. Left to the blogs and tweets, without journalists to report the news, how can citizens decide what politics to support?

Such thinking reflects an age-old fear: as Plato put it, citizens would get “information without proper instruction and, in consequence, be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” It is a fear that has echoed down through history ever since, from the Catholic Church cursing Gutenberg’s movable type to the Victorian bourgeois complaining of the newly discovered freedom of the press.

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