Over the years big tech platforms have revolutionized the media industry by becoming a major source for distribution of news. While this has enabled access to a wider audience, media organizations have yet to figure out their relationship with the big tech companies.
鈥淒uring the last five years newsrooms and big tech have become close,鈥� Emily Bell, Director of Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University said.听 鈥淢aybe they are our friends, but they suck at it at the moment, and they are all about control of the news environment.鈥�
Bell was speaking during an expert panel discussion entitled 鈥�, organized on the second day of the IPI鈥檚 virtual to discuss how modern journalism is shaped by big social media platforms and the issues and challenges that come with this.
Bell, a British academic, journalist and leading thinker, commentator and strategist on digital journalism, was joined by Emre K谋z谋lkaya, IPI Turkey National Committee Vice Chair and the project editor of journo.com.tr, a non-profit platform for the country鈥檚 next-generation journalists. The discussion was moderated by the co-founder of Subtext, David Cohn.
Bell and K谋z谋lkaya said that in the last few decades journalism had been fundamentally re-shaped by the big digital platforms such as Facebook and Google as traditional media outlets lose advertising revenue to internet giants, who had now taken on the roles of publishers globally.
Discussing that would require听these companies to pay media organizations for the use of their news content, the pair said the grants would actually be a fraction of what media companies should receive. Bell said the problem social media giants had created for the news industry could be solved with the relatively small amounts of money they would provide.
During the discussion, both K谋z谋lkaya and Bell shared their views on how media organizations should take big tech companies鈥� money and use it. According to Bell, this will create new challenges regarding a lack of transparency.
Is really being built with journalists and audiences in mind? What are the right, ethical protocols to develop AI applications? We need a honest conversation of what will work and what not in terms of news reporting
鈥� IPI – The Global Network for Press Freedom (@globalfreemedia)
Talking about this issue in Turkey, K谋z谋lkaya explained how the Google News Initiative (GNI) Fund supports a pro-government newspaper, H眉rriyet. This puts government in the equation between big tech and journalism, as the host David Cohn pointed out.
K谋z谋lkaya said the problem with this is related to lack of public pressure. 鈥淧eople do not know how their algorithms work. When there is no pressure, companies do seek for good relations with the governments, as Google and Facebook have with Turkish government. Facebook is eager to remove content when the government asks for it,鈥� he pointed out.
Discussing the involvement of big tech companies in spreading information; 鈥渢hey started to set the talking points,鈥� Bell underscored. 鈥淲e need to focus on a strategy about what information design looks like, so as to separate misinformation from quality journalism. Deciding on what kind of information society we want and then pushing them for a regulation is the key for a solution鈥�, she said.
鈥淲e need to teach young people problems with the digital media,鈥欌�� K谋z谋lkaya added.
Where did it all go wrong? Cohn asked. K谋z谋lkaya said it started with the founding of Google and Facebook. 鈥淲hen the share button was added to Facebook鈥檚 mobile phone platform, it all went crazy,鈥� Bell added. 鈥淐ollecting as much data as possible became the new norm, the quality of the publishing lost its importance.鈥�
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