(Non-)Objective Media

Just as with statistics, it seems one can also apply to the media the saying that there are lies, damned lies, and media. Although a piece of news is in itself a reflection of an event, the path by which this news reaches the reader's or listener's field of view can be ambiguous.

Until now, the media as the fourth estate was perceived more theoretically. References to manifestations of soft power were also often mocked. But the events of March 2014 in Crimea and the events subordinate to them indicated quite concretely that by manipulating information, it is possible to quite significantly tune the masses of people towards some pre-planned campaign.

A. Pabriks also understood this, and was one of the first on the social network Twitter to call for discussion about the creation of a Russian-language "objective media" [4].

Every company's, including a media outlet's, great challenge - making money. At least enough for the media outlet to be able to sustain itself. A media outlet's greatest achievement (especially an online media outlet) is not its circulation but its advertising sales volume. In turn, advertising prices are determined not so much by the target audience as by visitor numbers. In other words, the greater the visitor traffic (and potential clickers), the more expensive the advertising and the greater the media outlet's profit accordingly. And here the question arises:

why would a media outlet write, for example, about a festival at Ludza Castle Hill?

The second problem - media owners. Since 2007, delfi.lv has belonged to the Estonian media group "Ekspress Grupp", while in 2014 apollo.lv and tvnet.lv belong to the Estonian holding AS Eesti Meedia. It remains only to speculate about who stands behind (and owns) these companies. TV3 and LNT belong to the Swedish group Modern Times Group. Similar ownership can be traced in printed media as well. True, it seems the printed media are the last bastion in terms of objective media that have not yet buckled under the whip of profit.

At a panel discussion "Science and Media" organised by the like-minded group "SkepticCafe" on 29 August 2012, the insight emerged that no Latvian media outlet is capable of sustaining itself financially without external support. And here the question arises:

what values should media outlets cultivate at all, and why?

The Path of News to the Reader

The classic model:

A news reporter, upon learning of an upcoming or occurred event, rushes to the scene, gathers information, conducts interviews, prepares a photo report and does everything possible to obtain as much information as possible - but rarely more than is needed for the next day's issue or the evening news broadcast.

A journalist, in turn, by analysing events, public interest and reactions to events, conducts deeper research, travels to the scene if necessary, surveys those involved and ascertains the views of specialists in the field. In other words, examines the topic from different viewpoints and from the interests of the parties involved.

An editor selects those pieces of news which in their judgement will increase the media outlet's popularity and credibility, naturally taking into account the media owner's specific wishes (for example, to devote more articles to sport, etc.).

The reader reads the news and, if they have additional information, can contact the editorial team or journalist to provide so-called feedback, in the hope that the journalist has not yet lost interest in the topic.

Reality:

Very many media outlets do not even have their own news reporters and news is mostly obtained from news agencies (for example, LETA, BNS, ITAR-TASS, Reuters, etc.). Media outlets may also have no photo reporter of their own, and photo materials or news illustrations are embellished with graphic materials sourced from photo agencies (for example, LETA, F64, etc.). Since the use of each photograph entails costs, media outlets resort to using freelance reporters - a person with a camera who goes to a specific place and photographs something. Hence also the result that articles use illustrations showing "something" rather than a photograph that itself already tells a story and merely enriches the article.

Online media outlets, it seems, have no "investigative" journalists at all, since rarely can the average reader read more than one computer screen page. However, to avoid the online media outlet appearing altogether impoverished in content, an article is occasionally borrowed from the "serious" press on, so to speak, mutually beneficial terms.

Unlike a printed media outlet, which has limited space, an unlimited number of news items can be placed online. The editor, of course, must ensure the media outlet attracts more users and - most importantly - that advertising sells well.

"Arranging" Articles and Features

However strangely it may sound, in their objective subjectivism, media outlets permit the phenomenon of "arranging". It works as follows: if you have something to say and have material, you contact the media outlet's journalist - better yet, the editor - and try to persuade them to publish it. In the simplest form, one can send a notice of an upcoming event, but there are also tales of "serious" PR agencies sending such a notice by courier together with a "small" souvenir and after a little while enquiring whether the addressee has received it.

One might think that PR agencies employ super-people with n-th recipes for elevating an event, politician or something else to unprecedented heights; in that case one must conclude that these agencies mostly consist of people who know how to get the needed article or feature into a media outlet. This is in practice quite handy, but the main thing is that people will read it and think this news is something supremely important since the editor has placed it there. True, all of this also costs something.

Censorship

Unfortunately, this is a reality, especially when it concerns the media outlet's sponsor or a political force with which the media outlet has concluded an agreement. For example, LETA and Delfi will never write anything bad about Riga City Council Mayor Ušakovs. The same applies to Russian-language media outlets. Fortunately, this love is not set in stone and as the political situation changes, media preferences also change. This is how black PR works. While the politician holds power, submitted articles are censored or rejected, and journalists in this period also, miraculously, have little or no interest in the topic. The moment something changes - all the floodgates are opened. It is possible that holding the floodgates is also a special service of the media.

An interesting phenomenon is the disappearance of news. A piece of news published in some online media outlet is no longer findable after some time, and only Google's cache serves as evidence of its former existence. One small and perhaps insignificant example: the video of Godmanis's New Year address, in which the Latvian people were called to huddle together like penguins, is no longer findable anywhere.

Freedom of Expression

Freedom of expression is often wrongly invoked when a media outlet chooses to publish one kind of news while consistently ignoring another. Freedom of expression, insofar as it does not contradict the law, is:

the right to freely (openly) express one's views.

But this does not oblige anyone - including a media outlet - to listen to these views. Freedom of expression allows the media outlet to express itself more freely, but this in no way affects the subjectivity of the media outlet (editor, journalist). Moreover, a media outlet is a commercial company which, unlike a state (education, healthcare) institution, may also have no national or family values whatsoever, for example.

But if that is so, then objective journalism is a myth!

because the media outlet's primary goal, as a company, is to earn money.

Photo: iinuu.lv

References:

[1] On the understanding of the term freedom of expression and its correspondence with the English term freedom of expression - http://likumi.lv/doc.php?id=71770

[2] Pabriks: Swedish media do not promote the consolidation of European values in the Baltic states - http://nra.lv/latvija/95551-pabriks-zviedru-mediji-neveicina-eiropeisko-vertibu-nostiprinasanos-baltijas-valstis.htm

[3] Zanders: On media responsibility - http://www.diena.lv/latvija/viedokli/zanders-par-mediju-atbildibu-14052163

[4] Baltic and Polish MPs call for creation of a European TV channel in Russian - http://www.lsm.lv/lv/raksts/latvija/zinas/baltijas-un-polijas-deputati-aicina-veidot-eiropas-tv-kanalu-kri.a82816/