News, by its very nature, is ever-evolving. Consequently, the ways in which it is gathered and disseminated are also changing continuously. But how are these shifts affecting news itself? This is the question that the Digital News Report 2024 published by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism tries to find answers to. This exhaustive report — it was conducted across six continents — dwells on what it terms the “crisis” pervading the global news media ecosystem today. The ‘crisis’ is multi-pronged: there has been a rise in misinformation and a resultant decline in trust in the media. This has been worsened because of attempts by politicians and vested interests to capture the news-creating process. Additionally, the financial sustainability of the traditional media and, in turn, its independence are under threat.
While these concerns have become more acute, they are not new. The new elephant in the room though is Artificial Intelligence. Even as media organisations increasingly use AI to automate processes such as transcription, copy-editing and layout in the hope of substantially reducing costs and curating content to make it more appealing for audiences, the report shows that a majority of people would still prefer human journalists to be in the driver’s seat. Interestingly, data from India — limited to the English-speaking, urban constituency — bucks this trend. A staggering 42% of Indians are comfortable with news content produced using AI with little oversight as opposed to 10% of people in the United Kingdom and 23% in the United States of America. This is surprising given that 58% of Indians are also worried about fake news. The data raise concerns that Indians may not yet have a clear picture of how AI functions and contributes to the creation of fake news. A similar ignorance of technological deception is evident in the fact that 81% of Indians consume their news from videos — this is consistent with global trends — and trust videos over print under the assumption that the former cannot be doctored. This is in spite of the many deep fake videos of celebrities and even of the prime minister which were circulated in recent times. There is thus a need to sensitise Indians about the pitfalls of AI. Moreover, the media should be transparent about how it uses AI since 72% of people worldwide revealed that their trust in the media hinges on transparency on how news is gathered and made.
Equally important is how news is disseminated. All over the world, more and more people are getting their news from platforms like YouTube (54% of Indians get their news here), WhatsApp (48% of Indians rely on forwarded messages for news) and TikTok. These platforms are not only difficult to monitor for fake content but, more importantly, they are also eating into the revenue of traditional media. Not only are traditional media’s resources being used without compensation but platforms like YouTube are also luring away advertisers from traditional media. This increases its reliance on government ads and severely impacts the independence of the media and diminishes public trust. It is a vicious cycle.
Dishearteningly, these changes, the report suggests, are here to stay. The besieged traditional media therefore needs to evolve, much like news creation and news dissemination themselves, to survive.
