In the light of the post-Trump fallout, the Singapore Press Holding (SPH) news of them going to be nationalised as well as Defense Politics Asia (DPA) undergoing restructuring/reorganisation – with thousands upon thousands of journalists and writers losing their job, fake news & click baits flooding the media space – I can’t help to deeply consider, what exactly is the future of the news media.

HISTORY

We have to consider and remember a time where internet is not a thing. How do people get news about the world and their country? Through newspaper, radio, TV and magazine. Each of these medium plays a specific part in the media landscape pre-internet.

For radio, news can be propagated wirelessly to all, rich and poor, young and old – as radio is generally not expensive – and its largely the main source of major news for the populace. TV only exist in homes of the people who are more well to do, not until the 80s before the majority of the population in Singapore start to own TV and watch news on the prime time news. But in 30mins, the news had to be fully reported – we can easily imagine, the news are snippets, headlines and only the most important/major news will be reported.

For extensive news, the number one go to is still the newspaper. As circulation of newspaper is geographically limited, each major newspaper around the world does have monopoly or a huge share of the pie, without no competition from abroad. Whereas magazines plays the “documentary” role, writing about more opinion and abstract pieces, and can be circulated further abroad, as it does not need to be as timely as what newspaper are meant to propagate.

INTERNET

However, the advent of internet and the growth in internet usage pits all the major newspapers around the world against each other. Newspaper subsides online news articles with the earnings from the printed ones… but with the convenience of getting news on the internet, especially free, and only the news you are interested in – traditional printed newspaper started its long decline.

JOURNALISM IS UNDER THREAT

With print circulation, that promises a more or less fixed income for the press, allowing them to invest in good journalists/reporters get the news and do investigations – in order to provide better insight, and thus higher perceived value in the newspaper – boosting it circulation – thus boosting their revenue.

However, today, in the internet age, alot of the articles are not earning newspaper any form of revenue. For many media outlet, income comes exclusively from online advertising. And in order to justify their advertising pricing, they need to show the numbers, of their reach, their circulation… this chase for numbers of views resulted in more and more clickbaits headlines… and eventually, with Trump’s presidency, it outright descended into fake news, misinformation, and made-up stories – just to continue to push a certain narrative in order to get the same demographic and subset of people whom had click their previous article, to continue to click and share their new article.

Like everyone, people just keep doubling down and keep doing what they think/believe works. And this is what happening the media outlet.

GOING BACK TO BASICS

So what should news be? What is the soul of journalism? Why did we have newspaper at the first place?

Newspaper exist because people want to know what is happening, and they want to know the truth. People want to be informed, so that they can make informed decision in every aspect of their lives. Magazines then add on to that, providing deeper food for thought that allow people to wider their perception of the world (which news cant do that, since news tends to report on tragedies) – allowing people to travel the world without actually travelling.

However, news today is corrupted. It is injected with too much opinions, adjectives, and subjective context. Depending on which media you read, you can literally believe there is a parallel universe existing in the real world where there can be opposite realities and description of the same thing at the same time. This biasness failed what journalism is supposed to be – become more like propaganda than journalism.

People as a result, cannot make informed decisions – because their decisions is now informed by misinformation or biased information. The view of the world is skewed and colored by the worldview of those writers. There is no integrity, there is no neutrality.

As a result, more and more people are straying away from mainstream news outlet – thus resulting in the rise of alternative media and independent news/journalism – because people are DYING to know what is the real truth.

FUTURE OF NEWS

While my research led to articles explaining that the future of news is more technology, more AI, more customisation to the individual….. I think that is wrong.

I believe that will just lead to more silo-ing of people and perspective – people will become more and more ignorant about the world; more and more corrupted by the prescribed media narrative…

I think, the truth future of news, is to return to the root of journalism and news – it is to become neutral, independent and holistic reporting of what is happening. News outlets should also start to report more on their local news – for example SPH, which is a Singapore based media. No one else is going to report about Singapore, except Singaporean media outlets. If SPH don’t do it – who would? Singaporeans do not only care about world events – they want to know more about what is happening around them and in their neighbourhood.

News media need a revolution. The earlier, the better.