Earlier this year, the world watched in consternation as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s increasingly autocratic regime closed Zaman, one of the country’s most prominent and critical newspapers, and reopened it overnight. The day before being shut down, a Zaman headline read, “The constitution has been suspended.” The following morning, the cover featured a smiling picture of the president. The visceral contrast served as a eulogy for Turkish democracy. While this episode was a particularly jarring example of the news industry’s vulnerability to autocratic tendencies, it’s far from the only threat to a vigorous press and a diverse and independent media. Besides serving as evidence of creeping authoritarianism, the deterioration of press freedom weakens democracy in and of itself. But threats to the press today even go beyond authoritarian regimes. Economic pressures arising from technological disruption in the news industry have also become a strong undermining influence, pushing media into the hands of plutocrats and leaving local newspapers teetering on the brink of financial ruin.
The relationship between a free press and a smoothly functioning liberal democracy is a long and intense one. A key pillar of democracy is the ability to criticize the government and inform citizens of government actions. Yet the press’ role goes beyond government: Its paramount function is to hold private and public officials accountable. The United States’ history is filled with such moments: from muckrakers uncovering industrial abuses of power to Washington Post reporters unraveling the Watergate scandal. Former Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald and others’ report on NSA surveillance activities is perhaps the most notable recent act of journalism in this significant lineage.
In light of this societal contribution, it’s alarming that press freedom around the world has been declining for some time now. Freedom of the Press 2015, a report by the nongovernmental organization Freedom House, determined that “global press freedom declined in 2014 to its lowest point in more than 10 years” and that the “rate of decline also accelerated drastically.” A similar index put together by Reporters Without Borders parroted Freedom House’s work, recording a “drastic decline in freedom of information in 2014” and a downward-bound long-term picture.
These dangers are by no means new: As far back as 2000, commentators feared that newspapers faced a “long-term decline due to the rise of electronic media, economic pressures based on a loss of advertising share and increasing costs of production and distribution, and falling sales.” A report from the UK Parliament encapsulated the causes and results of these shifts best. First, it showed that in 2010, the proportion of people who said newspapers were their main source of news was just 40 percent of what it was in 2005. Second, the quarterly advertising expenditure in regional newspapers had fallen from around $1.13 trillion to just above $424 billion. In response, editorial columns across the world have published myriad lamentations. Subsequent indirect effects have primarily manifested in twin developments: consolidation of media ownership, often in the hands of the astronomically wealthy, and the decline of local and regional newspapers.
Media consolidation is hardly a surprise given the dire financial straits the industry faces. Merging firms or organizations to gain better returns to scale and cut costs has become the typical response to such market pressures. However, changes in ownership can precipitate both changes in control over content and the media’s declining ability to disseminate a range of views and perspectives.
Editorial independence is especially a concern when new owners are prominent figures with ulterior motives. Wealthy media magnates are hardly a novel phenomenon — Bloomberg, Berlusconi, and Murdoch are a few names that come to mind — but when the uber-wealthy begin to buy up large swathes of the media across a range of countries, it becomes all the more concerning. The archetypal example of this trend may be Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the flailing Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. But he’s far from the only one and, compared to other moguls, less concerning due his non-ideological stance. For example, Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson’s purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal has prompted questions over whether it will be used to promote his political agenda. In fact, soon after the acquisition, the top editor at the Review-Journal stepped down. Just this year, a senior-ranking Bloomberg Politics staffer quit over concerns that the publication could not fairly cover a potential run by the company’s eponymous founder.
Further afield in the Czech Republic, Andrej Babiš’ acquisition of MAFRA Media Group meant that 64 percent of Czech newspaper readership was owned by just three businessmen. Even more alarming is Babiš’ position as the country’s finance minister and leader of its second-largest party. Similar to Adelson’s purchase, this conflict of interest prompted the editors of the most prominent newspaper under his control to resign. Similarly, Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev owns several of London’s most prominent dailies.
The distressed and vulnerable state of local and regional papers is another offshoot of these economic pressures. The parliamentary report noted this trend while highlighting the decline of advertising revenue to smaller newspapers around the UK. As evinced by the Las Vegas Review-Journal above, non-national papers in the US have been similarly squeezed. These wobbles are, as in the UK, largely the result of the advertising revenue drain from local publications and their inherently small customer bases. In effect, this dynamic has created a “winner-take-all economy” within the news media industry.
In many senses, this trend serves as a microcosm of the impact of technological forces across society and the labor market at large; the treasures at the very top become exponentially grander while the scraps at the bottom grow ever more meager. A report by Pew Research Center “found that just 30 national and international news sites — Vice, Huffington Post, Politico, BuzzFeed, and Mashable, among others — accounted for about 60 percent of all the new digital journalism jobs created over the past five or so years.” Meanwhile, in 2012, the American Society of Newspaper Editors recorded total newsroom employment nationwide as the lowest since 1978.
However, the loss of local publications cannot simply be measured in the number of jobs shed or newsrooms closed. Pew Research’s investigation on smaller news sources found that “they play a far more complex role in civic life than many Americans believe” and their reporting was most relied upon for issues such as local government activities, local jobs, art events, and real estate. The New Yorker echoed these findings by exalting the “value of a truly local newspaper with a rich collective memory and a staff of journalists who understand the city on a street-by-street level.” The newspaper that prompted this praise was The Boston Globe, the subject of “Spotlight,” this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture winner, for fulfilling the essential role of a local news sources exposing abuses of power in its community. While large, national operations may be capable of understanding the details and nuances of local government, they do not have the resources or capacity to publish articles about local issues in every city and town. As proven by the Boston Globe journalists and their story, effective accountability requires more parochial expertise and circulation.
New York Times media watcher David Carr once noted that “the persistent financial demands of Wall Street have trumped the informational needs of Main Street.” It’s perhaps an unfortunate personification of market forces, but it does eloquently evoke the tension at the heart of the news media’s recent travails: Today’s economic forces pose an undeniable threat to an ink-stained pillar of democracy. It may not match the sound of Turkish police knocking on the doors of Zaman, but a paltry profit margin can be as much of a menace to the press’ ability to effectively carry out its role. If there’s one thing the recent events in Turkey have made abundantly clear, however, it’s this: A free and diverse press should not be taken for granted. Without it, there will be no one to press those in power to keep the rest of us free.
Art by Justin Johnson