Weaponisation of media
Media as corporate mouthpieces
And the urgent need for new Regulation.
Main media has been destroyed by the internet. Media property after media property has been failing commercially as viewer eyeballs shifted from pedigreed publications like Business India or India Today to media curators like Daily Hunt or In Shorts. Paid ad supported media gave way to user generated content and finally to ai produced fiction which evaporated the chasm between fact and fiction.
Yet at the same time, for a generation gone by, main media was a habit. A lot of homes still subscribe to newspapers and ai produced junk has send people scampering for the reliability of trusted media names.
But the trusted media names have all got sold out. The Washington Post which helped create the brand “Warren Buffet” is now the private property of Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos also runs Amazon – the worlds largest sellor of counterfeit goods, besides hosting a lot of the world’s websites and running the third largest digital ad platform. Closer home, the Ambanis own Network 18 and the Adanis own NDTV. All of them create some illusion of autonomy for the media properties by creating some smoke and mirror structures to meet the letter of the law.
When corporates take over media properties, they run them like their private fiefdoms. The corporates themselves are run like proprietorship firms of the promoters – with little need for transparency, governance or ethical behaviour.
The poor reader is left with little choice – between unknown unverified content on social media (most probably also sponsored), curators aggregating biased advertorial junk from corporate owned main media masquerading as news and direct news from main media which is sold by the word to make up for falling advertising revenue. Print has to bear two tsunamis – eyeball cannibalisation by digital and text replacement by video. The third tsunami which was around citizen journalism has hit a new credibility wall with ai generated “god knows what”.
All this creates a new urgent need for Regulation. Washington Post can write any junk and some people will believe it. It will mould public opinion and influence elections. It is a matter of time before Donald Trump goes after Jeff Bezos. And any sensible government in India will eventually want to censor corporate controlled media.
The moot question is “how do you do it?”. The answer lies in technology. One has to crowdsource regulation. It doesn’t make sense to leave it to the judgement of x people. They will somehow get compromised. You need a structure which is beyond being influenced or compromised.
The brand of relevance is no longer that of the media house. But that of the journalist. But how will the journalist make a living ?? You can price as free but you can’t produce for free.
The only answer is consumer supported non-profits. Who can aggregate such journalists ? Maybe properties like The Print or The Guardian.