schiffrin7_TED ALJIBEAFP via Getty Images_newsroom

如何拯救本地媒体

Feb 10, 2021 Anya Schiffrin

纽约—2019年，新冠危机再度证明了广泛搜集清晰、可靠及准确情报的重要性。在整个疫情期间，世界各国人民都在依赖可靠的新闻来源，协助他们不仅了解病毒本身，还有它所带来的经济和社会后果。但搜集、核实和传递上述信息的人却承受着前所未有的压力——这增加了一种风险，那就是，当下一次危机来临时，我们将很难找到可靠的新闻来源能够加以利用。

新闻业并没有面临需求下降，这一点与其他在疫情期间遭受打击的行业不同。相反，据尼尔森估计，居家隔离——比方说在危机期间——可以导致媒体消费增加近六成。而且，事实上，在2020年，美国的媒体消费达到了历史最高水平；而新闻节目则构成了上述增长的主要部分。

同样的趋势正在世界各国上演。一项疫情期间对整个北亚地区媒体消费的研究发现，随着对2019年新冠疫情担忧情绪的不断传播，日本对数字新闻来源的使用率大幅攀升。而在台湾和韩国，新闻频道则是电视收视率增长的主要受益者。

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j. von Hettlingen Feb 14, 2021

Anya Schiffrin highlights the “desperate” times for journalism and calls for “bold” action. The news industry “has been struggling since well before the pandemic.” Since 2000, nearly half of newsroom jobs - more than 20,000 of them - have disappeared. Revenues have plummeted by almost $20 billion. Titles continue to be shuttered, and layoffs are a regular occurrence, according to a November 2017 review by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Due to heavy job losses, freelance journalist Kaamil Ahmed warned last spring against a “media extinction event” in the “developing world,” fearing the risk is “acute even in advanced economies like the US.” While the changing fortunes of the news industry had focused mainly on large metro and national newspapers, less attention is paid to regional and local newspapers, that have a weekly or daily print circulation of under 50,000.
Yet since last year, while other industries “have suffered during the pandemic, journalism is not facing a drop in demand.” Covid-19 was the catalyst for the “importance of broad access to clear, reliable, and accurate information. Throughout the pandemic, people all over the world have depended on reliable news sources to help them understand not only the virus itself, but also its impact on their economies and societies.”
In the US media consumption reached “historic highs in 2020; news programming comprised a major component of the increase.” This trend could be observed across the globe. The author says, despite surging demand for media consumption, “shrinking revenues crippled many local newsrooms in 2020.” Fortunately, initiatives are underway in many countries “that could help to bolster newsrooms.” They make up of “private funding, public subsidies, new business models, and support from tech platforms. All are helpful, though over the long term, some will prove more important than others.”
Private funding is a short-term remedy. Although “organizations like the Google News Initiative, the Pulitzer Center, and Internews, as well as government agencies, have set up emergency assistance funds during the pandemic. But, as the surge in applications for such assistance shows, individual grants are not enough.” A sustainable solution would be “a more wide-ranging, comprehensive, and internationally focused strategy – a kind of global Marshall Plan for journalism.”
This plan is taking shape, with “recognized media-development experts” beginning to “coordinate donors, scale up funding, and support media institutions and outlets.” They “have been promoting a billion-dollar International Fund for Public Interest Media, which would deploy government development aid to support journalism in the Global South.” Given the ever-changing media landscape, “no one-off initiative” - however large - “will be enough to keep local news viable in the long term.”
Another initiative “aimed at transforming America’s roughly 6,700 privately owned newspapers into more community-grounded and financially independent institutions… creating a nonprofit replanting fund that would identify candidate publications and reorganize their corporate structures to make them financially independent and more responsive to community needs. Direct public funding also has a role to play in supporting local journalism.” The author cites countries like Australia, Norway, and Singapore, that “have a track record of regarding journalism as a public good.”
The US has always seen a “weaker record of supporting independent journalism” due to journalists’ wariness of "government involvement,” a Local Journalism Sustainability Act, introduced in July 2020, seeks to assist local newspapers through federal tax credits for subscriptions. Designating journalism as a public service profession and government purchased advertising are other ways the authorities could support journalism. “The bill already has 78 co-sponsors.”
A Local Journalism Initiative would require Big Tech to address the “thorny issue” of how it could repair the damage inflicted on the news industry. This “would establish a budget of $100 per person to support local nonprofit journalism, with communities voting on which outlets receive funding. Under this plan, the government would channel funds – raised by a small tax on ads sold by highly profitable tech companies – through the US Postal Service.” The problem is that people are not willing to pay for quality information, driving them into the arms of fake news websites.
Governments all over the world are following closely Australia’s “proposed new framework to diminish the power imbalance between media outlets and tech giants. The country’s competition authority, headed by economist Rod Sims, has drafted a code that, if passed, would require Google and Facebook to pay for the news they carry, with prices to be set by arbitration.” Only by changing news media's core structures of ownership and control, can journalists be able to defend news as a public good.
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Michael Public Feb 11, 2021

1. Democracy is rulership by the people - there is, in theory, no ruling class.
2. Ruling means making decisions.
3. Decision must be made based on the truth, a decision based on lies is a bad decision.
4. The people need a reliable source of the truth - traditionally they turned to the press for this.
5. Now, the press no longer deliver this as it is not profitable, rather they must generate clicks and appease advertisers.
6. Ergo, if democracy needs the truth to function, like it needs a police force to function, it must pay for it the only remaining way possible, via a tax.
7. p.s. The tax should be directly raised in terms of the constitution and not allocated by the government. The leading members of this press should be appointed in the same way the senators are appointed - although not perfect - it is far, far better than letting the foxes appoint the guard dog + many more safeguards too numerous to list.
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Elizabeth Pula Feb 10, 2021

Addressing the relatively superficial business level issues of journalism and Media Commodity Content Platforms is not where the emphasis and focus needs to be at this time. The real focus is the total lack of ACCESS and PRIVACY rights that any and all citizens do NOT possess in any meaningful and legally enforceable manner by following any laws already on-the-books, especially in the US.

Everyone who uses the internet is totally vulnerable with no rights to control any of their individual data. Our data is being used, abused and sold left and right for any reason by any website and any MNE that owns the servers globally that "secure" data on their servers. Any user of the internet is only given a temporary access at the total WHIM of especially the owners of all the data global. Possession is 99% of the law. Who owns the data under that only premise that is the ONLY DEFINING premise that counts, especially now in reference to any BODY's data?

Here is an example of an experiential exercise to pursue if you have the time and the money to subscribe to Financial Times. If not, start reading the fine print of the terms and conditions even on the PS website. Every bit of data that is accumulated is OWNED by the platform. What is worse is that the inclusionary terms includes resell, and relicensing to whomever. whenever, and wherever into the future unknown and uncontrollable by any user that even accesses this website.

Email that I sent to the FTC:

There is no better example for the FTC to reference as an experiential exercise to reveal the fact that there is presently absolutely no REAL legal right to especially ANY financial, or personal privacy than to subscribe to the Financial Times. Prove for yourself, first hand, and on-line.

Establish a subscription, or reference an active subscription. Go through the steps to read an article, save an article, quote an article. Go through the steps to send an article to another person. Go through the steps to read an article yourself. What you read is monitored. When you read, and how long it takes for a read is monitored. Access to the content is totally controlled on the website. Etc. etc. etc. That is fine and an excellent money-maker and generator for all involved in their business associations with all aspects of the Financial Times. Do exactly the same for US citizens. Until the FTC does establish total control of REAL individual rights to access and dissemination of data, based on exactly what the Financial Times has done for Murdoch and friends, your day-to-day activities and political actions are totally contradictory to the US regulations, and US federal law.

Based on the “code" for the Financial Times website subscription, which is extremely secure and totally advantageous for retaining control of ALL ACCESS and ALL and ANY USE of data from their website, until the FTC examines the US legislation and re-establishes individual US citizen’s rights that EQUAL exactly what the Financial Times has established for Murdoch’s empire, the FTC is not acknowledging TITLE 13 US legal code.

In addition, until the FTC and SEC really start acknowledging the laws that are and were established to legally define and obligate business activities to acknowledge the rights to privacy and ultimately any rights to DO ANY FUNCTIONAL BUSINESS ACTIVITIES AS A PARTICIPATING CITIZEN within the society, any secondary and tertiary business solutions are only placating certain political affiliations and personal gain in disregard of present laws of the US.

The only losers are the children of today and tomorrow.

The real issue starts at the individual citizenry rights of ACCESS and individual CONTROL, and freedom of speech.

The internet is a LEARNING TOOL. Computers are LEARNING TOOLS. Computers are used for communication processing, from point A to point B, between HUMAN BEINGS.
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Elizabeth Pula Feb 10, 2021

Forget about saving the news. Better start focusing on saving the children. Today, with the direct attack on children at their most vulnerable:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9244435/School-Zoom-event-hacked-naked-foreign-men-private-parts-hands.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

Better start recognizing the global guerrilla warfare that is occurring especially for this next generation of children, especially in England and the US.
- Elizabeth Pula Feb 10, 2021
  
  Addendum: whoever established that attack knew exactly what they were doing and exactly why they were doing what they did. These children were deliberately attacked while focussed on learning. These children have been harmed in a most deliberate and unconscionable way and manner. These children were psychologically focused on learning and they experienced an attack that has done irreparable harm to each and every one of them at a most deep and terribly invasive level to their psyches, as reasonable human beings.
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