July 8, 2023
Ever since the Online News Act became law in June, my newsfeed has been drowning in articles about the media. I get it. We rely on people who earn their living by spreading the news to keep us informed, and in the face of what seems to be an existential threat to their industry, of course they are going to ensure the story about them gets prominent play.
This has been happening for a while. Legislation that would require tech companies to pay for content was introduced in Parliament in November 2020, the culmination of a process that began with the 2017 federal budget which signalled that the government would undertake “a new approach to growing Canada’s cultural sector.”
I’ve followed the ongoing debate and mostly processed it through three lenses.
Firstly, how will this affect freedom of speech? (I’m pro-free speech, even when it has messy results.)
Secondly, how is technology transforming the way we gather and receive news, and who are the winners and losers? (I'm pro-progress, though I recognise the pain that goes with job-loss and economic disruption. But there’s always been an adaptation period as workers learn to make cars instead of horseshoes. Most do so successfully. Others end up competing for one of the few farrier jobs that are left or adjust to another industry.)
The third lens is one I wrote about a few months back. Does the industry of journalism (rather than any specific journalist or outlet) need to be treated differently than other industry sectors? Or to phrase it differently, does the media’s status as the “fourth estate,” which contributes so uniquely to our democratic health, put that industry in a different category? (To summarise my qualified answer: the survival of the media in some form is important, but however we get there, government is certainly the wrong institution to try and shape its survival.)
The multi-chapter analysis by Paul Wells, entitled “The End of Media” (on his substack, mostly behind paywall) prompted a reflection that goes beyond this, and which prior to this week, I hadn’t really considered. He frames this media disruption as a harbinger of potentially broader social change. On the one hand, this isn’t new. We’ve all thought about how the advent of the iPhone in recent decades has not only changed communications, but the shape of human relationships, and it may be even rewiring our brains.
Wells, however, goes beyond that, crediting a 1987 talk by Elihu Katz (20 years before the iPhone) on the impact of new technologies eliminating previously relied upon intermediaries. Citing examples as diverse as television evangelists, Hitler, the Pope, modern political parties, and the Reformation, Wells’ point is that when technology allows message-senders to “go over the head” of previously relied upon intermediaries to reach their intended audiences directly, disruptive social change happens. It isn’t as if there is no longer an intermediary; it is just that the intermediary is now a different technology instead of a person (and by extension, the persons who program that technology.) The impact spills over into other spheres. Extending this to the present situation, the logic suggests that the current discussion isn’t so much about a change in journalism as a transition in the previously intermediary function of journalism from a guild of professionals to a technology.
Wells develops the argument further, citing a 2015 book by British historian Andrew Pettegree entitled Brand Luther. I read this book a few years back, appreciating it for documenting Luther’s early usage of the printing press as a means of communication and how that was much more than simply a technological innovation. Luther wrote for the common people in conversational German, a writing style totally unlike anyone else at the time, catalysed at least in part by an available new technology. He was attentive to the aesthetics of the book and marketing tactics, and can be credited for being ahead of his critics in communications techniques. Wells notes that while he wasn’t intending “to equate precisely the layoffs at Bell Media with the 95 Theses,” the centuries of upheaval that proceeded from the Reformation included both high points and low points (some of which is determined by perspective, although most would agree that Bach’s cantatas rank pretty high, just as the civil wars rank pretty low) and may have parallels to what is occurring now. “By this point, the monk with the printing press had no more control over the effects of his actions than did the Pope in Rome. It’s impossible to predict what will happen, for good and ill, once people start doing their own research.” The prospect Wells projects is of a disruption much bigger, and much less predictable, than what most others are talking about.
Wells’ citation of Pettegree prompted me to look him up. I learned that not only was he an accomplished historian of the Reformation but also an authority on the history of news, books, and advertising. I’m still just partway through his very interesting 2014 book, The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself, but far enough to consider two tentative conclusions. First, while the function we know as journalism has always existed, the form in which it has taken place has varied significantly over time. For most of it, neither people nor institutions were doing what today we would call news media. I wonder if in a decade or so, we will be saying the same thing. Second, lasting social change is always multi-sectoral in nature, and just as Luther’s theological convictions prompted changes not only in the church but in politics, economics, culture, and technology, so there are likely to be much broader spill-over impacts of the present media transformation than are obvious today. The discussions regarding media and technology are so intertwined it’s difficult to distinguish them. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) developments are a mixed bag which is not yet engaged with all the moral and ethical considerations common to journalism, the pace of change is hard to keep up with, much less to understand or critically evaluate. However, Wells’ musings confirm that even when the deluge seems overwhelming and not always coherent, it is worth continuing to pay attention to it.
