Media Reform Coalition

Category: Blog

The Future of Journalism

In this paper, just delivered to a conference in London, Angela Phillips paints a picture of a media sector transforming itself in innovative and exciting ways, held back by failing business models. Many myths are busted along the way: that journalism can be free, that user generated content brings down costs, that video is the way forward. So what’s the future? Will the survival of journalism increasingly depend on us giving away our private data? Or will we embrace the alternative: a simple online system that would allow us to pay for the content we want?

Lessons on press regulation from Ireland

Since 2008, complaints regarding Ireland’s press have been adjudicated by an independent Press Ombudsman, and a Press Council involving civil society, the National Union of Journalists and news publishers. This innovative body is an effective and credible new way to regulate the press, demonstrating that we don’t have to choose between state censorship and the kind of toothless self-regulation modeled by the now-defunct Press Complaints Commission. The following remarks were made by Séamus Dooley, Irish Secretary, NUJ at “Taking on the Media Barons” seminar at Congress House, London on March 17th 2012.

Hacking Book – How ‘serious’ media consigned Wikileaks cables to the shadows

Roy Greenslade continues his serialising of the ‘The phone hacking scandal: journalism on trial’, edited by Richard Lance Keeble and John Mair. This week’s installment focuses on a chapter by Justin Schlosberg examining the coverage given to the Wikileaks US diplomatic cables (AKA Cablegate).

James Curran’s speech to the TUC conference on Media Regulation

CCMR Chair makes an impassioned plea to engage with remedy rather than just indignation. He highlights the key CCMR proposals regarding ownership thresholds and new ideas for raising and investing new funds in support of public interest journalism.

Lamentable media coverage and state deception, the scandal of NHS legislation

Aeron Davies, professor of political communication at Goldsmiths, makes an empassioned lament of the media’s failure to adequately cover the politics leading up to recently passed NHS legislation. The article serves as a reminder that problems with the UK media are not limited to the tabloid sector.

Campaign for Real Journalism

Building on our briefing paper on Funding Models, we have produced two further briefs examining alternative avenues of support for public interest journalism. Investigative journalism and local news have faced the sharp end of resource cuts across platforms in recent decades yet they are also foundational to a media system that serves democratic ends. Identifying a range of precedents both domestically and internationally, these documents attempt to synthesise some of the many ideas that have been discussed to date into a set of focussed policy options. None of them should be viewed as definitive proposals or problem-free, but rather as pointers to further research and feasibility studies.