on media


Reasons for hope and pride amid the tumult


Raymond Snoddy anticipates a better future after a testing year I


t has been a year like no other for journalists and journalism for reasons almost too obvious to mention.


Many journalists have lost their jobs and the already stretched finances of media groups have been further hit by the Covid-induced recession. Commercial broadcasters, for


example, suffered a 40 per cent drop in advertising revenue and, with daily deaths still high, there is little reason to be jolly for now. There is, however, reason for


journalists to be proud about what they have achieved this year and the high quality of the remote newspapers and news programmes they have produced. It has come at a high personal cost.


An international survey by journalist John Crowley, carried out with the help of journalist and statistician Andrew Garthwaite, found that more than three-quarters of journalists had suffered some form of stress from working in lockdown. Only 38 per cent viewed remote working as a positive experience. To add to the irony, Crowley was one of those who lost his job. At least most listeners and viewers


have learned once again to value the importance of verified facts and trustworthy news, and audiences have trended upwards, even though there is not always an equal willingness to pay. Even if the Covid-19 vaccines do their stuff and a sort of normality returns after Easter or at least by the summer, that will not be the end of the economic blues for the media sector. The Office of Budget Responsibility


has warned that, without a deal, the hit from Brexit to the UK economy could


be even worse than the impact of Covid-19. A deal of any sort would still cut GDP by four per cent – something that could suppress advertising budgets for the foreseeable future. There are, however, some reasons to be cheerful, if not actually jolly. The most extreme threats to the BBC as it approaches its centenary year seem to have gone with the departure of BBC-hating Dominic Cummings and his cronies.


BBC director-general Tim Davie


believes that the spectre of decriminalisation of the licence fee, which could have posed an existential threat to BBC finances, has been lifted at least for now. Newspapers that have concentrated on building a subscription base, from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the Financial Times, have prospered in the time of Covid. At the FT, which had an international staff of journalists to track ‘the biggest story’ around the world, subscriptions rose by seven per cent year-on-year to 1.1 million, 950,000 of them digital. There will always be those who will


believe that Donald Trump won a landslide victory in October but the clear-cut victory of president-elect Joe Biden might just represent the high water mark for populism and populist politicians around the world. The motives of Rupert Murdoch, who


dumped Trump overnight from all his media outlets – including Fox News, which did so much to create the Trump phenomenon in the first place – are of course entirely cynical. Murdoch is only interested in winners who might be useful to him, not losers such as Trump. One hosepipe of irrationality will


have been partiality turned off, even though the true believers are already migrating to ever more extreme right-wing outlets. There is a sense, which may be


irrationally optimistic, that the battle against fake news and conspiracy theories from climate change scepticism to anti-vaxxing can be sidelined if not actually defeated. Journalists will be at the heart of that battle to reclaim sane public discourse. Very late in the day – but they did at last get there – there were kick-backs on American TV network news, when blatent lies met live rebuttals. Even Twitter started to post warnings


“ ”


over the factual inaccuracies of Donald J Trump. There is even the pleasing prospect that Trump, when he loses his head of state Twitter ‘protection’, might be booted off the social media site for repeated violations of its codes. There is also hopeful talk of public service broadcasters like the BBC getting together with leading international newspapers to promote fact-checking and intensify the battle against false news.


There will still be an urgent need for


Newspapers that have concentrated on building a subscription base have prospered in the time of Covid


innovation in both broadcasting and newspapers. For newspapers, the challenge will be to get newsrooms operating again although there will continue to be more remote working than in the pre-Covid world. Broadcasters will have to intensify their online offerings to compete with the streamers and reflect changing viewing habits. But at least, as we head for our three-family Christmas reservations, there really are reasons to be cheerful if not jolly,


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