For decades, U.S. media companies have limited the content they’ve offered based on what’s good for business. Recent decisions by Apple, Spotify, Facebook and YouTube to remove content from their platforms follow this same pattern.
In all of our overlapping personas – friend, employee, audience member and citizen – digital platforms have become the means to our ends. We use them to keep up with friends, to work out where we are going and to choose goods and services.
How technology companies make money is a good question for digital media users of any age. It lies at the heart of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s inquiry into the power and profits of Google and Facebook, the world’s two most ubiquitous digital platforms.
Between 1957 – the year Ghana won independence from British – and 1992 the country had three civilian heads of state interspersed with several military rulers. But that year it finally embraced democratic rule and adopted a constitution. One of the areas of protection the new constitution offered was the independence of the media and of expression. But are these enforced? And has the media felt their positive impact?
A huge story of abuse, murder and exploitation, involving senior figures in the establishment. A confirmed police investigation into allegations the authorities describe as 'credible and true'. Lives and reputations are at stake, the headlines are lurid and compelling. But what if it isn't true?
Founding Father John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” But this is no longer Adams’ America, where facts were unalterable.
Coverage of the Christchurch terrorism by Australia’s television channels raised “serious questions” about whether they had breached the television codes of practice, according to the broadcasting regulator, the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA). However, it has declined to make specific findings that the codes were in fact breached. Instead, it proposes to discuss with the television industry whether the codes are adequately framed to deal with the kind of material generated by the atrocity, especially the footage from the terrorist’s bodycam.
When he founded the blog CapitalWeather.com 15 years ago in Washington DC, Jason Samenow was working for the US government as a climate change analyst. A full-time media career was probably the last thing on his mind.
Too often, journalists find themselves accused of being traitors when they file difficult and controversial stories about their country, stories that can lead to embarrassment, disgrace and even short term damage to national reputations. But the truth is their work can make a democracy stronger, not weaker, proved they go about their business in a careful and ethical manner.
To stem the rising influence of fake news, some countries have made the creation and distribution of deliberately false information a crime.