At its core, the paid news debate raging in India is about media trust. Apart from concern about election time paid news, there is growing cynicism about what the media puts out. It is now standard practice to create news events to provide publicity to films before openings. Controversies are created to nourish the media and titillate interest in non-events. The supernatural and the bizarre are commonly presented as ‘fact’. Newspapers mastheads are reworked to suit advertorials and a whole new gamut of approaches are fashioned to redefine news and blur transparency between news, views, publicity and advertisements.
So is India alone in coping with these distortions of accepted journalistic practice? Not at all. The 7th Asia Media Summit in May this year in Beijing saw this issue come up. The Summit links members of the broadcasting industry from Asia-Pacific, Africa, the Arab countries, Europe and the Americas.
Of particular interest to those present was a presentation by the Chairperson of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Maurice Newman, which drew on the Pew Research Center’s findings on Public Trust in Media. The findings point out that in the USA trust in media is at a new low with a large number of Americans saying that reporting is ‘inaccurate, biased and shaped by special interests’.
He said only 29% respondents believed that organisations got their facts straight and 74% said that reporting on political or social issues was biased. He added that most Americans got their news from satire and comedy programs - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report.
Credibility ratings for the major broadcast and cable television outlets in the US have fallen somewhat in recent years, due in large part to increased cynicism towards the media on the part of conservatives and Republicans. CNN no longer enjoys the top spot as the most credible TV news source; it is now in a statistical tie with CBS's 60 Minutes.
The Pew Centre report shows that from 1996 to 2002, CNN was viewed as the most believable broadcast or cable outlet, but its ratings have fallen gradually over time. Today only 32% of those able to rate CNN say they can believe all or most of what they see on the cable network. This is down from 37% is 2002, 39% in 2000, and a high of 42% in 1998.
Ratings for other major broadcast networks have declined as well. NBC News, ABC News and CBS News are rated about equally in terms of believability. Among those able to rate NBC News, 24% find the network highly credible, down from a high of 30% in 1998. ABC News has followed a similar pattern: 24% view it as highly believable, compared with 31% in 1996. In 1996 32% considered CBS News as believable while today only 24% do so.
A similar pattern of waning credibility can be seen for print news outlets in America which have registered "modest shifts downward across a broad range of print sources", according to the report. Two news organizations share the top spot in terms of print news credibility. The weekly news magazine U.S. News & World Report and the Wall Street Journal are viewed as highly credible by 24% of those who rate them.
In previous polls the Wall Street Journal stood well above the rest but that is no longer the case. In 1998 and 2000, 41% of those able to rate it said they could believe all or most of what they read in the Wall Street Journal. That number fell to 33% in 2002 and now stands at 24%.
Most of the other print sources tested in the poll received similar ratings for believability. Time magazine is viewed as highly believable by 22% of people rating it, and the New York Times gets a 21% rating. Newsweek and USA Today get a high rating from 19%; that is also the rating respondents give to their own daily newspaper. The Associated Press is viewed as highly credible by 18% of Americans who can rate it.
The trend now is for news organizations to build trust not through impartiality and objectivity but by producing a service that plays to a specific range of beliefs. Fox News serves conservative America while CNN serves the liberal audience. Partisan blogs too, increasingly, fulfill a growing need of news audiences in the US for partisan news. A new development in the business of media trust: you trust those who think like you.
So what does that bode for India? Our own newspapers have become increasingly partisan over the years, with identifiable ideologies. Media ownership has also created its own variables in defining news and positioning that creates trust. Political ownership of Indian media is growing. The performance of Doordarshan and AIR during the Emergency brought their credibility to a low and it got them branded as ‘official mouthpieces’ from which they have yet to recover.
Selective reporting and single source reporting can be a dangerous trend which does not help democratic processes. With everyone having the means to become a reporter and few checks and balances in place, the ‘facts’ in news can be layered with ‘opinion and fiction’. If India TV contributes to science through its imaginative and bizarre aspects of our lives and turns us ‘non-believers’ into ‘believers’ in the supernatural, it is testimony to the power of the media. Facts are distorted and we are left no wiser in these news stories reinforced with reconstructed images.
In other countries many channels which receive unsolicited news have set up a system to check and recheck stories. NHK receives more than 200 unsolicited news stories from citizens. These stories are checked for facts before accepting and transmission.
Similarly ABC, Australia, as a public broadcaster has accomplished this transparency through its editorial processes. Many public service broadcasters like ABC are bound by legislation to keep balance and impartiality in their news reports. To keep the process transparent a system of research and assessment in editorial content has been evolved with the help of academics. Assessment reports are published regularly. On-air news is supplemented with on-line material, additional videos, full interviews and transcripts that enable the public to have clarity. ABC research reveals that 85% of the public find their news balanced and objective.
Any takers for research and a test on trust for the Indian media?