October 17, 2024 October 17, 2024 by Irene Hell
Over 800 media outlets including Reuters, the Washington Post, Zeit Online and AFP supported this year’s World News Day, which coincides with the UN Day for Universal Access to Information on September 28th. “Journalism is our society’s safety net, said David Walmsley, founder of World News Day and editor-in-chief of the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail. This safety net has cracks and is hanging by a thread almost everywhere in the world – and with it all free societies.
That’s why Walmsley is sounding the alarm. It is supported by the World Association of News Media (WAN-IFRA), the World Editors Forum, the Canadian Journalism Foundation and the Daily Maverick. “Attacks on journalists – including murders – are reaching record levels,” observes Walmsley. Unpunished. The murderers of Mexican journalists who denounce the crimes of the drug mafia or those who carry out arbitrary executions of journalists in Iran almost always go unpunished. Added to this is the brutal hunt for reporters in war zones.
But the cruel toll makes brave reporters around the world even more determined: “You can kill the journalist – the messenger – but not Story. Others will report,” says Walmsley.
Journalists are fair game
“The press banner no longer protects – it is a target,” says Dima Khatib, editor-in-chief of AJ+, the social media platform of the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera, in conversation with M. At the WAN-IFRA Women in News event End On May 15 in Copenhagen, organized by Dimitra Letsa, a head of Google’s News Partnerships, Khatib handed out black T-shirts with a photo of a slain colleague. Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in Jenin in the West Bank, presumably by a shot from the Israeli military. The taboo that press employees, as well as Red Cross aid workers, are not allowed to be shot at has been broken. “These are dark times for journalists. “In the last eight months, 143 colleagues have been killed in Gaza,” lamented Khatib, who was awarded this year’s WAN-IFRA Women in News Editorial Leadership Award.
“Pink Slime” and a broken business model
„“The floor is shaking and the walls are collapsing,” says John Ridding, managing director of the Financial Times (FT), describing the emotional situation in the executive suites of many publishers. During his talk at the 75th annual meeting of the World Association of News Media (WAN-IFRA) in Copenhagen, he shows statistics from the FT’s revenues. He played Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” to the graphics that strike mercilessly like lightning into the “underworld” of red numbers. Advertising revenue, reach and circulation – the lifeblood of almost all news publications – are collapsing shockingly around the world.
According to a study by the World Advertising Research Center, aggressive players such as Meta, Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet grab 44 percent of the global advertising budget. For the traditional media, which previously had the whole cake for itself, only a meager 25 percent remains.
Companies that work with artificial intelligence (AI) are taking advantage of the panic to suck up the valuable archives and press content, the gold of media companies, if possible at bargain prices – or even better for free. The FT, Axel Springer and many others have already sold to Open AI.
Although Bertelsmann has made billions in profits over the last few decades with top media outlets such as STERN, Geo, Capital, etc., as well as its former cash cow RTL, the company is reacting to the crisis with mass layoffs. Fear, a catastrophic loss of talent, exclusivity and spirit, is driving the former media flagships further and further into the shallow depths of insignificance.
A few Hamburg media houses away there is reason to celebrate. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group leverages profits from the Golden Age of Print to continue to deliver quality journalism. “This allows our employees to focus on long-term goals,” said Stefan von Holtzbrinck, Holtzbrinck’s CEO and major shareholder.
Successfully. “Die Zeit has increased its sold circulation by 40 percent in the last two decades,” informed Zeit Online boss Jochen Wegner at the WAN-IFRA Congress. With his “Friends of Time” community, he and Zeit Print editor-in-chief Giovanni di Lorenzo managed to attract 350,000 attractive, predominantly young, subscribers.
Loss of sovereignty of opinion
Communication technologies have developed more rapidly in the last few decades than in 4,000 years before. Newspapers, radio and TV have lost their monopolies on the dissemination of information – and with it the sovereignty of interpretation.
Anyone with an internet can currently fill social networks with absurd content, virtually anonymously, uninhibited and without protection from themselves or society. With the help of AI, it is cheap and child’s play to generate deceptively real texts and images – almost always without consequences. Serious journalism, which first checks claims for their veracity, has been so weakened by mass layoffs and the worldwide “death of newspapers” that an extremely dangerous new fake news epidemic is spreading almost unhindered on the Internet: “Pink Slime”.
Pink slime is the American slang word for disgusting rotten meat that restaurants sometimes mix with their ground meat. Lobby groups and populists are using “Pink Slime” as a new weapon of disinformation. So-called pink slime websites call themselves the “Boston Times” or “Chicago City Wire” and look like established news portals. AI-controlled, they spread blatant lies, hatred and slander with the aim of destroying political opponents, especially before elections like now in the USA.
A very dangerous development. Because serious media are finding it increasingly difficult to fulfill their previous guardian function for truth and justice. Free societies are in danger. That’s why the Allianz Foundation, together with the Rudolf Augstein Foundation, founded the Media Forward Fund, which donates 6 million euros for innovative media concepts.
“Save journalism!”
Just like Claude Bellanger, the French publisher and resistance fighter who founded the World News Media Association in Paris in 1948, shortly after World War II, his successor Vincent Peyrègne believes that a free press can prevent fascism, wars and dictatorships. As head of WAN-IFRA, he has succeeded in building a powerful, committed community of journalists with his 3,000 committed members, including the who’s who of the international media. Peyrègne does everything to ensure that history does not repeat itself. However, this can only be achieved if reputable media receive subsidies and donations that do not gag and allow journalists their freedom.
Peyrègne demands: “Save journalism! Support free and independent media everywhere!”
