Business | General
World media has lost all credibility
Journalists will lose credibility unless they do more to question what governments are doing, a leading commentator told the congress.
- By Daniel Bardsley, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:32 May 3, 2009
Dubai: Journalists will lose credibility unless they do more to question what governments are doing, a leading commentator told the congress.
In a stinging attack on the world's media particularly in his native United States Time Warner Inc senior adviser Norman Pearlstine called for greater scrutiny of events in the Middle East.
For example, he said the media had failed to question whether it was right to exert pressure on Iran not to develop nuclear weapons when other nations such as India and Pakistan already had them.
Similarly, he said the US media had not done enough to ask why the September 11 attacks happened, partly because many of the country's journalists were based in New York and had allowed their personal experiences of events to cloud their reporting.
"The media response was a level of jingoism and lack of questioning of our government that was quite different to what went on in the Vietnam War. We have lost some of our own credibility," he said in a speech to delegates titled "Remaining Credible in an Incredible World".
He said that many television stations were losing the objectivity that is necessary for reports to be taken seriously.
Like an enemy
"On Rupert Murdoch's Fox TV we see more and more opinion masquerading as news.
"CNN has given up its most important news hour to a journalist who's happiest being a commentator appealing to narrow national interests rather than globalisation," he said. This trend towards opinion instead of objectivity has made journalists increasingly vulnerable during conflicts because they are no longer seen as "credible figures who can tell a story". This is partly why more than 60 journalists have died in Iraq, Pearlstine said.
"Journalists are seen as the enemy," he said.
Pearlstine said another factor causing standards of reporting to suffer was financial pressure.
"Because of changes in the business model, we've had fewer resources to cover the stories," he said. These changes in the business model were most relevant to newspapers, which were particularly under threat from the internet. A decline in the amount of classified advertising was hitting some newspapers particularly hard, Pearlstine said.
"Newspapers will remain good businesses because there's still an ageing population that's comfortable with them, but the best times for newspapers have gone.
"There is tremendous pressure on editors to try to do more with fewer resources," he said.
Magazines he said had not been as badly affected as newspapers by changes in technology.
"Magazines have never been timely or publications of record and have not relied on classified advertising," he said.
He described magazines as being "want to reads" in contrast to newspapers which were "have to reads" and this he said meant that magazines had responded more rapidly to changes in the industry.
But he added: "Magazines have however been slow to embrace the
internet."
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