'Still hope for established media in disrupted world'

Richard Edelman, president and CEP of Edelman, a public relations firm, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Richard Edelman, president and CEP of Edelman, a public relations firm, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Published Jan 17, 2017

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Trust in the media was at an all-time low, but despite the threat of “self-referencing” and fake news there was still an important space for the established media.

This was one of the themes which emerged at a session at the 47 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

In the session the Future of Media and Information, Richard W Edelman, president and CEP of Edelman, a public relations firm, said a recent study conducted towards the end of 2016 across 28 countries had shown trust in media had plummeted to levels usually associated with political leaders.

He said established media were increasingly being seen as part of the elite and that people were rather opting for “self-referencing”, and refusing to read that with which they disagreed.

This entailed getting their news from various other sources, with the study showing that 60% of people preferred machines or searches, as opposed to trusting the judgement of an editor.

He said the study had shown that with the exception of two of the countries in the survey, trust in media was below 50%, an historical low.

“The world has been turned upside down,” he said. “It has become a world of self-referencing.”

However, Mathias Dopfner, CEO and chairperson of Axel Springer, one of Europe’s largest digital publishing companies and owner of such titles as Bild, said there was cause for concern but he was also very optimistic.

He said there was a general discomfort to the elite in general, across politics, business and the established media, but said a site such as Business Insider which within a decade since launch had established an audience of 120 million people – way beyond any establishment media model – was very encouraging and reassuring.

On the issue of fake news, which featured so highly during the US election race, Dopfner said fake news was nothing new and had always been present. He cited the old telephone exchange as examples of people obtaining news from sources not necessarily regarded as authoritative.

Disruptive technologies such as Facebook had always taken place and he said as long as these were not regarded as media companies or platforms, but rather a means of connecting people, this all formed part of a “healthy ecosystem”.

African News Agency

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