Rethinking News Media
Ideals, Ownership, and Control
News media serves many ends: profit, community, entertainment, social awareness. etc. Most people, when asked about the purpose of news media would say something similar, that news media helps keep people informed, connected, and aware of things surrounding them. Some might also say a free and independent news media is important for the flourishing of our democratic system. Despite this, there is a disconnect between the idealized version of news media and how news media is actually organized. Presently, the bulk of news media is organized through private ownership with a motivation neither towards informing, connecting, or making aware, the people of our society, nor towards the maximization of our democracy’s institutional health, but rather towards profiteering as directed by their private shareholders. The way we organize news media prevents it from ever living up to its ideal.
News media as an institution should exist entirely as a tool to support the vibrancy of our democracy and community through the propagation of informative, well-composed, and well thought out news coverage. However, news media is a (mostly) privately-owned, for-profit, institution, and this is not directly compatible with our idealist view of news media as it stands today.
The Role of Media in Democracy
It’s helpful to take a step back and define some terms. By Democracy, I mean a system of governance where individuals vote on policies and/or representatives they prefer. Democracy as a system requires a coinciding set of institutions to enable it to flourish since Democracy seems to have some potentially inherent problems. One of those problems, which varies in impact, is how informed a Democracy’s participants are. Democracies likely do not flourish to their full potential because people do not come out of the womb with a robust understanding of policy or the world around them. People must be educated throughout their lives on all manner of topics and social norms, and this education enables people to take a more intelligent and rational view of political and communal issues. Therefore, the institutions by which we order and receive this education are very important. For instance, an equitable education system to inform children about history, government, literature, and so on, allows people a broader understanding of the world, which might enable them to make more informed decisions about the policies and politicians on their ballot. Another key institution tasked with informing the public is the news media.
News media, as broadly encompassed, is a source of information and entertainment for people. Socially, we value entertainment because it brings us some sense of joy and representation, but we also value the information we receive from news media. On a regular basis, most people don’t have the time to dive into primary sources, sift through historical archives, or conduct their own investigative journalism. The news media is, therefore, entrusted to provide this work as a service to society. This work, specifically, would include the filtering of information into what is most important, relevant, and/or demanded and then presenting this information in a consumable medium for the average person.
A few reasons we value the news media’s information production are (1) some of us might inherently value being informed, (2) this media might be immediately crucial to propagate, like emergency warnings or infrastructure outages, and/or (3) it is instrumentally important to have a generally informed public for the sake of our community and democracy. The understanding of news media as a key institution in promoting democracy and personal rights goes way back. The 1776 Virginia declaration of rights states: “… the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”
Naturally, we could imagine two otherwise identical societies, but for a single difference. Society A passes a law which allows for the jailing of journalists and the banning of press coverage on the whims of the political party in power, while Society B has protections for journalists and free flow of information. Society B likely sees a more robustly informed public, who are generally better and more vigorous participants in democratic institutions, and a Democracy with a relatively informed public who participate more vigorously in democratic processes, is a relatively healthy democracy. Now that we have a decent framework at play, we can identify some structural problems with our current news media environment.
The Tension of our Current Media System
The information propagated by news media, and its form of propagation, is not entirely (or even majorly) the information/form which maximizes the health of our democracy. Rather, broadcast and print decisions of news media are the decisions which maximize the profits of its organization. This is not entirely true, as non-profit media organizations exist, and public investment in news media also exists, but amongst the most major media institutions we have, they are almost entirely for-profit and privately owned institutions. This profit motive creates the first tension in our news media structure. A news organization which attempts to maximize profits is not operating exactly the same as a news organization attempting to maximize the health of our democracy. For instance, it might be more prudent to dedicate the entirety of prime-time news hours to informative analyses of new government policy and political/economic conditions, but that might not grab as many eyeballs, and it certainly wouldn’t maximize profits relative to a dramatic expose of a well-known celebrity. And this general incentive, in aggregate, likely means worse democratic health, as people are less exposed to the most relevant information they might need to most effectively participate in our Democracy.
It's tempting to say that because sensationalist coverage is profit maximizing, people would simply consume a lot less media in a media environment dominated by informative news coverage. I’m sure it’s the case that if all media was dense policy analysis, less people would consume media in general, but it’s also obviously a case requiring balance between quality, consumability, and sensationalism. News media, in some part, should be entertaining, but news media, in some part, should also produce good, information-dense, content to best inform its viewers. I would argue this balance tilts far too much towards sensationalism and entertainment in our present system, in part because of the profit motive. There’s also a question as to whether a marginal decrease in media consumption in a world more dominated by informative news is good in and of itself, but that’s a story for another day.
It's also important to note that almost every aspect of the current market for news is highly unrepresentative of the typical person. On the consumer side, the typical cable news watcher, along with the typical social media user, skews higher income and more well education. This skew likely alters the type of information produced and platformed, leading to a disconnect with how politics is represented in media and how everyday people actually engage in and view politics. Part of this difference could be genuine disinterest amongst the poor and less educated, and part of this could also be the poor and less educated having less free time and money for this type of consumption.
In addition to the viewers of news media, the dollars flowing directly to news organizations are often highly skewed as well. A significant source of revenue for news organizations is some combination of subscriptions and advertising. These dollars originate from highly unrepresentative groups of people. After all, the executives at the various advertising agencies, and the individuals with enough disposable income to become paid members, are a couple groups of people which are much wealthier, higher-income, and educated, relative to the average person.
And then there is ownership. These news media organizations are privately owned. Sometimes they are owned by large media conglomerates with relatively distributed stock ownership like Disney or Comcast, and sometimes they are owned by people like Rupert Murdoch. A company like Disney can only be so resistant to market forces because the shareholders of Disney are essentially just interested in profit, but Rupert Murdoch, a very wealthy man with an agenda, can afford to take several years of losses in order to prop up a right-wing propaganda outlet like Fox News. Many on the right might point out liberal media outlets and social media platforms doing substantially the same. These criticisms often miss the forest for the trees: the problems in media aren’t necessarily discreet stories or community moderation decisions, it’s the entire structure of the media market. Profit-minded shareholders and agenda-minded wealthy owners are not the constituent groups who should largely oversee news media direction if we care about the news media as an institution which supports democracy through informing the public.
Whether it’s the consumption base itself skewing the actions of market producers or it’s a handful of billionaires with the power to move markets towards their own political agenda, these disconnects represent differences between the typical person and the typical person who influences news media. That is worth addressing because the news media will continue to fail more than otherwise at its job of properly informing the public when it must balance a profit motive, a skewed consumer base, and reliance on the wealthy for investment and advertising dollars. These structures bias coverage towards sensationalism and the niche issues of the wealthy relative to a more equitable system.
Some ways to address these problems
So, what can be done to reorient the news media more towards maximizing the health of our democracy? I would argue the ownership structure, profit motivation, and uneven consumption, should all be up for change.
Let’s start with ownership through an analogue. In the legal world, amongst various nuances, non-lawyers are generally barred from owning equity in law firms, and lawyers at law firms are generally not permitted to allow nonlawyers to direct or formulate their legal work/opinions. This is rule 5.4 from the American Bar Association, the ‘Professional Independence of a Lawyer’ rule. This is not entirely strictly adhered to, as alternative models and forms of capital are available to the legal profession under certain select circumstances. However, the rationale for this general governance framework, is that legal work is not necessarily meant to maximize profit, it is meant to maximize justice, and this noble cause might be corrupted should non-lawyer investors reorient a firm into pure profit maximization.
A similar mindset and policy understanding should exist in the news media. News media should be owned and controlled by some combination of professional journalists and consumers of news media. News media is not supposed to maximize profits, it should maximize, among other things, the health of our democracy by playing a crucial part in informing citizens. Producing this information is a similarly noble cause to practicing law, and the work of producing news coverage is likely best handled by professional journalists. Journalism is a technical profession, crucial enough to our Democracy that it is explicitly protected practice in the U.S. constitution.
When we talk about ‘ownership and control’, we are, practically speaking, talking about who owns the stock (equity) in these organizations, and who appoints the board of directors. I’m open to the exact nature of the constituency groups who should be allowed to own and control news media, as it’s difficult to say what the exact/necessary structure should be. Right now, I favor 100% journalist firm-level ownership and a 2/3rds and 1/3rd split between journalists and consumers on the boards of news media organizations. This would mean that journalists at each news firm would be the owners of each competing news organization, and each news organization’s consumers would have a voice in setting corporate policy of these organizations through their representation on the board of directors. This allows technical professionals to mostly manage the work of producing news while having to keep in mind the preference of their consumers in a more direct way than our current system.
This solution prevents the mega-wealthy from investing in propaganda networks to a much larger degree than we presently prevent such efforts since external investors could no longer own the news media. The wealthy could still gift large sums of money to content creators they favor who are not journalists, but they could not engage in a formal equity-based business relationship for news media production of this type.
Since we’re establishing a paradigm of what type of business can be owned in one way or another, and who can play a part in that ownership, it’s important to think about how we define ‘members of news media’, ‘journalist’, and ‘consumer of news media.’ Some examples seem clearer than others. Traditional news like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are obviously news organizations, engaging in information production and journalistic work.
What about members of the alternative media? Is Cenk Uygur producing information through The Young Turks news network? Probably, yes, but Cenk himself isn’t a trained Journalist. Should he be forced to sell his equity to the highest-bidding journalist? That could create a lot of negative coverage for such a policy at the very least, and at most it makes for a potentially counterproductively negative industry transition. I think the best way to smooth over some of these logistical problems is to talk about how we should tackle the inequality of news media consumption and financial support.
Consumers of news media should be empowered to consume and influence news media equitably. A great way to do this would be to give every adult a voucher they can allocate to whichever news media they like, and the pool of ‘news media’ would be those organizations who fulfilled the requirements I’ve outlined on a voluntarily basis. They would have to be organizations established within our bounds of ownership, including 100% ownership and management by trained journalists, transparency standards, and they would agree to allow consumers to appoint up to 1/3rd of their board of directors. They would also be barred from external sources of revenue to avoid influence from wealthy advertisers. Any investment capital they raised would have to in some form other than equity ownership, such as public investment, gifts, or debt.
Ideally, this pool of voucher money each adult distributes would be large enough to entice a significant number of market entrants. The government could also offer grants to existing news media that re-organized themselves on a voluntary basis. This would provide a credible alternative to the current profit-maximizing, privately owned, oligopolistic, news media. Everyday people would be tasked with allocating their voucher on an annual or monthly basis, and these new news organizations would still have to compete in the market for these dollars by seeking production efficiencies and generally doing quality work.
These journalist and consumer-led media alternatives are a credible alternative to our current system of news media organization, more centered on informative news coverage and the direct organization/consumer relationship. Journalists and consumers in this media ecosystem would not need to concern themselves with the demands of advertisers, billionaire owners, or profit-maximizing shareholders. Rather, journalists could focus more directly on informing the public based on their direct demands.
I’m under no illusion that this would end sensationalist news coverage all together or immediately create an ideally informed population, but it would allow journalists themselves the chance to appeal directly to a truly broad base of consumers. Our current system forces journalists to appeal to a relatively narrow base of news media consumers, advertisers, and wealthy shareholders at best, and, at worst, journalists are forced to appeal to the selfish political interests of a billionaire investing class.
Closing Thoughts
This is not a perfect set of solutions, nor would these solutions solve all problems in news coverage or political discourse. The application of these principles would likely be very complex and filled with understandable gray areas, but the perfect should not be the enemy of the good, and I think this shift in ownership, control, and consumption of news media would represent a positive shift in our news media environment. A broader base of consumers is likely preferable to a narrower base, and the importance of the responsibility of informing the public should probably be more controlled by trained journalists versus wealthy shareholders. Profit-maximization probably shouldn’t be the goal of news media, and assuming we care about the news media not as an addition to gross domestic product, but rather as an institution which is primarily meant to improve the health and functioning of democracy through informing the public, these reforms, either exactly or in this style, would improve things.