"What is most striking in INMA's study is not something new, but rather the speed and gravity of the storm enveloping all of us. Print is vanishing. Digital gatekeepers - big tech platforms like Google, TikTok and Meta - decide not just what news we see, but also what gets buried. Non-democratic actors target news organisations. Truth competes with invented narratives, as social media - sometimes inspiring, often poisonous - becomes a relentless engine of disinformation."
"For many years, as an editor of national newspapers in Belgium and the Netherlands, then as publisher and chief executive of Mediahuis Ireland, I have told colleagues, students and industry leaders that these risks are real. But to be honest, I thought they were more or less abstract. I believed that journalism was able to reinvent itself, adapt and hold its place in democratic society. I believed that if we want to survive we only had to work harder, be more trustworthy, become better."
Real reporting and analysis are being suppressed, threatening democracy by enabling fake news and corrosive effects. Print media is rapidly disappearing while major digital gatekeepers such as Google, TikTok and Meta control visibility and bury journalism. Non-democratic actors target news organisations and social media amplifies invented narratives and disinformation. Journalists often display shallow expertise, strong biases, oversimplified stories and visible personal opinions, and newsrooms can lack sufficient accountability and transparency. Efforts have been made to improve quality and transparency and to raise standards while overseeing the platform shift from print to digital, but significant systemic challenges remain.
Read at Irish Independent
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]