Media economics and the decline of news objectivity
- Autores: Mark Winston Brewin
- Localización: Breaking the media value chain: VII International Conference on Communication and Reality / coord. por Klaus Zilles, Joan Cuenca Fontbona, Josep A. Rom Rodríguez, 2013, ISBN 9788493695996, págs. 61-68
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
This paper proposes that, in the case of news media specifically, the most important lessons that can be learned may come from the past. Over the course of the last 100 years, most Western news media have moved toward a model in which an unapologetic partisanship, where readers were addressed as politically interested citizens, was gradually replaced by a more “objective” or neutral style that emphasized political neutrality and independence of party. In this latter style, the reader was addressed as consumer. Strong political opinions were avoided so as not to drive away potential customers. Although the shift was less observed in Europe than in North America, it was nevertheless present in many different national contexts to one degree or another. Harold Hotelling’s model of economic activity can explain to us why this happens; that is, why news outlets move to the perceived political center in order to maximize audience share. But the new media have shifted audience’s costs, which in turn shifts the parameters of Hotelling’s argument. Rather than attempting to get as big an audience as possible, the new media producer attempts to grab attention, and the way to do that is through partisan story-telling, not bland appeals to the mainstream. New media will pull the news back to the future, with partisan news sites increasingly replacing the mass media news style of the late 20th century.
