Mainstream media are supposed to be dying. Bloggers, tweeters and other social media commentators are taking over while so-called legacy media outlets such as The New York Times or The Guardian seem like yesterday’s news. This has been the seductive logic of many stories proclaiming the rise of the citizen journalist and the independent voice. The thing is, it isn’t true.
WikiLeaks, the example of citizen journalism par excellence, has actually been proving just how powerful the mainstream media remain.
Julian Assange started WikiLeaks with a big dream: He wanted to release raw information to the public on the Internet and then let a world-wide network of citizen journalists have a go at it, parsing the data and unearthing the thousands of stories hidden among the revealed government communication. He wanted to start a new age of scientific journalism – an age where the raw information underlying the news stories is freely available and the evidence is easily checked.
This was a seductive dream, but it fell on its face. To get the story out, Mr. Assange needed to go to the mainstream media and make a deal. He needed to ally WikiLeaks with five leading mainstream news organizations – The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Der Spiegel – to use the voice of authority they offer.
WikiLeaks needed the mainstream media news brands’ credibility and reputation for critical editorial opinion. The public, confronted with a deluge of data, needed a trusted voice to parse it and make choices about what was important and what could be ignored. Even search engines don’t work when you don’t know what to look for. In simple terms, the old notion of mainstream media as gatekeeper is not only still alive, in fact it is crucial for getting the news out to broad publics.
Now, you could argue that this is the result of a lack of critical media literacy on the part of the public. Another argument could be that the public has been so anesthetized by the mainstream media that it is too soundly asleep to mobilize around the opportunity presented by WikiLeaks. The answer to these problems would be better education and incentives for greater citizen engagement.
These arguments don’t really hold water. A quick glance at how news aggregation sites such as reddit.com
Providing insight and analysis requires training. Just as an engineer or a medical doctor needs special tools and a particular theoretical understanding of physics, biology or chemistry, so too do journalists need to understand the function and theory of communication to effectively communicate the news. Journalism, and its sister profession of public relations, produce experts who know how to interpret news and get a story out. And they do so within organizations that have earned a reputation for trust and credibility through decades (or even centuries) of successful reportage and editorial.
In a rapidly evolving world of instant communication and the deluge of user-generated content over the Internet, there appears to remain one constant: trust. This is where the mainstream media and classically trained journalists have an advantage: People trust reputable newspapers, reporters and columnists. That trust is based on both an emotional connection and an evidentiary one – it’s not so easily replaced by machine-edited services such as Google News.
In the end, the mainstream media face not extinction but transformation. What news aggregators like The Huffington Post or Drudge Report provide is a model for this potential transformation. They blend instant access to a wide variety of sources of information with a particular editorial perspective. The mainstream press will have to pursue this direction as well to survive. Reporters and publishers shouldn’t see this as a daunting prospect, but as one of the most exciting new possibilities for innovation and engagement offered to them in the history of the fourth estate.
WikiLeaks has served as one of the most public demonstrations of the validity of the mainstream media, ever. Now it is up to the most innovative publishers, editors and reporters to capitalize on the opportunity to renew their organizations and pull the news industry into the 21st century.
Alex Sévigny is an associate professor in the department of communication studies and multimedia at McMaster University.
