Freedom isn't free
The Internet has created as many problems as opportunities for professional journalists. On one hand, we now have a potential audience of billions of people for our stories - on the other, all these people expect to read these stories without paying for them.
This is the dilemma currently being confronted by one of the world's most powerful and influential media owners: Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. At a recent workshop run by the US Federal Trade Commission on journalism and the Internet, Murdoch singled out aggregators and misguided government intervention as the principle threats faced by the press, rather than the Internet itself.
Murdoch published a version of his speech under his own byline, entitled ‘Journalism and freedom' on wsj.com today which, funnily enough, is free to access without the usual pay-wall. In attacking aggregators for effectively stealing expensively produced content and questioning the US law that prevents a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same market, Murdoch's self-interest is apparent, but he made some good points nonetheless.
Referring to "our friends online", Murdoch said: "...there are those who think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production... And their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not ‘fair use.' To be impolite, it's theft."
He then moved his sights onto the growing clamour for state assistance for the news media, lest we should be left without any. "When the representatives of 13 former British colonies established a new order for the ages, they built it on a sturdy foundation: a free and informed citizenry," said Murdoch. "They understood that an informed citizenry requires news that is independent from government. That is one reason they put the First Amendment first."
Murdoch has many opponents and critics, but he is the person most conspicuously trying to tackle the problem of maintaining quality journalism in an age when advertisers and consumers are reluctant to pay for it. If this trend continues, and an alternative revenue stream is not found, where will we get our informed, objective commentary?
