For a long time we have heard ubiquitously “the journalism is in crisis”. Away were the years of glory, when people opened a newspaper, tuned the radio or learned the tele with a firm hope of finding a reliable panorama of what had happened in their communities, their countries and around the world.
Today we look at any news, or open any news portal, and quickly escape. The main channels live in a state of permanent catastrophe, constantly putting on screen the poster of “Allerta” or “Last Moment”, even by everyday small ones. Sites do not usually offer new coverage, they only dedicate themselves to repeat the same information and often with a delay of days since the fact occurred.
The contrast with the past is notorious. Just search YouTube for some video of historical covers such as the takeoff of the Apollo 11, the fall of the Berlin Wall or the beginning of the Gulf War – with the iconic Bernie Shaw reporting from the ground “the skies on Baghdad have been lit”. These covers intrigued, moved, commoved. The news is buzzing, tired, confused.
The Middle Crisis
The media crisis escapes a mere subjective appreciation. The most notorious indicator is the widespread loss of trust in the industry globally. According to Statista, in the middle of 2022, distrust was the norm. In the United States, only 26% of adults trust France 29% in the UK 34% in Mexico 37% in Japan 44%. In our country, only 35 in 100 adults rely on the media.
In addition to the figures, the effects have a concrete and daily impact on people's lives, especially in democratic societies. The lack of confidence in the information one uses to form opinions and make decisions contributes to increase polarization, increase social distrust and reduce community cohesion, generating extremely harmful and conflicting political coexistence spaces.
We cannot analyze the phenomenon from the exclusive point of view of the means. We lack another great actor: social networks. These platforms, despite their many benefits, have beaten the scenario. The algorithms, which seek to maximize the time we spend in the applications, do no more than introduce into bubbles or resonance boxes that limit our worldview to pre-existing beliefs or interests.
Fake News
Another aspect is the majority nature of the content that exposes us. It is not necessary to do a deep research to note that reality is not the object of preeminent consumption in these spaces. The over-idealized images are the currency. Anxiety and depression generated by the constant bombing of aspirational goods affect the mood and psyche of those who consume this content.
Focusing on what's up for us, we need to mention the elephant in the room: the fake news. Distinguishing the truth has become difficult. Confidence in institutions, media and people has been severely resilient. The consequences are unpredictable, but –previably – negative. A 2018 study by MIT scientists found that on Twitter fake news is 70% more likely to be shared and that real news takes 6 times more to reach people.https://news. mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308
Too much information
Another question is the noise, understood as what makes it difficult to find the information a search for. The amount and variety of content – between news, opinions, comments, jokes, memes, complaints, advertising, etc. – makes it difficult to be so close to home. Not counting bots and spam. Chaos does not help to understand, only sows confusion.
So everything, citizen journalism is more effective than ever. We often see good coverage of what happens at the other end of the world relatively quickly, and many new professionals approach the networks to expose their work. The problem? All this information is lost in many interactions, hidden after opinions and comments without substantial, unorganized and contextless support. Although we have intriguing perspectives, it is difficult to cross with complete stories.
We just got a real face. The tyranny of the single POV (single point of view). This is added that only some events achieve enough virality to become trendy and appear in our feed. Many stories run out of spectators. Indifference is dangerous for those who live the facts and for those who do not cross them, but are directly or indirectly affected by the ramifications.
and with whom Elon Musk decided to fight publicly after his purchase on Twitter. From the most basic aspect, and mathematically cold, the means face a double problem, high costs and low yields. On the one hand, doing good journalism is expensive, in terms of human resources and technical instruments. On the other hand, audiences are less willing to pay for information.
To solve this problem, most resorted to a number of simple strategies with the aim of improving their balances, in great strokes:
- Editorialize: identify with an ideological space, adopt an affinity editorial line and appeal to audiences with the same bias.
- Subscriptions: limit access to content to those paying a monthly or annual fee.
- Click-baiting: capture online traffic by strambotic titles to generate visits and increase revenues by digital advertising.
The result of these strategies, except for some, is evident: less confidence, less audience, less income. The vicious circle continues. You rarely do good journalism, you do what you can. The media ends up fighting for migas and people get at the mercy of misinformation.
In short, social networks did not democratize journalism, anarchize it; and the means lost quality, cedidos terra or were delivered to spurious interests and tribal thoughts. Who pays the broken plates? People standing, who have to form opinions and make decisions with incomplete, biased or directly incorrect information. This has political, social and economic effects of great enverging; to what is added a worrying individual psychological effect, starting from boredom and oversaturation, to widespread distrust, which further harms the pillars of our coexistence.
We must get the news to be interesting again; let us be impressed by reality. If we do not accept it, and make an effort to objectively understand, then it is difficult to generate the positive changes that this world needs.
Searching Modern Solutions
Of all this reasoning, and several more ideas, eWire emerged: the future of the news, a platform that seeks to bring people to the place of events, allowing them to participate in what is happening around the world since the comfort of their homes, with the emotion intact and greater certainty in the truthfulness of what they are consuming.We began to develop it in 2021, defending us to democratize journalism without sacrificing credibility. The essence of its operation is the generation of horizontal interactions between users, allowing those in geographic proximity to collaborate covering and checking news together, similar to how Waze detects the presence of obstacles or delays on a given route.
This not only gives greater degree of verification to information, since other nearby eWirers support the existence of events, but allows to see different views and follow the development of events from beginning to end. Complete and dynamic stories focused on concrete facts; hence the reference in our name to the traditional news cable.
In order to encourage a healthy coexistence among users, we incorporate a credibility score that visifies in a traffic light the degree of reliability of the information that brings the user according to their previous behavior. We also add a map that allows you to explore what is happening near you and around the world in an entertaining way.
The fruit of dessert: we reward good journalistic work. eWire has an integrated marketplace that allows registered media to acquire coverage with a different degree of exclusivity. The ticket is automatically deposited to the user who covered the news in a virtual portfolio of your choice. This not only encourages good journalism, but reduces coverage costs for the media and relies on your audience by converting them into content providers.
We are just beginning, there is much to do yet, the margin of perfectibility is huge and the long way. There is enough to correct and improve, so we need the confidence and patience of our first eWirers. Above all, we need your continued complaint, criticism and constructive suggestion.
I believe deeply in our mission: to change the world, showing it as it is. So I invite them to download eWire and go out telling the stories that happen around him. In other words, Dan Rathers, Courage!
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