Caribbean media reckoning

Recent media collapses in the English-speaking Caribbean have drawn attention to the vulnerabilities of an industry that has actually been quite problematic in our neck of the woods for many years - in the colonial era and beyond.

There is even a view that the tardy introduction of newspapering in T&T in the late 18^th century - linked as it was to introduction of the printing press – fell prey to a deliberate attempt at slowing the displacement of human labour through contrived delays in the introduction of mechanised processes.

There is a controversial study I cited in a 2017 article to commemorate 100 years of this newspaper which contends there had indeed been a connection between changing sugar technology and the trade in enslaved Africans.

If you get a chance have a read at https://wesleygibbings.blogspot.com for my take on this or download a copy of  ‘Changing Sugar Technology and the Labour Nexus: the Caribbean’ by Peter Boomgaard and Gert J. Oostindie.

In T&T, we entered the newspaper business later than most of our regional neighbours in 1799. For purposes of current concerns, I think we should consider that mechanisation had been as important to the introduction of newspapers as were the opportunities and trials of automation, followed by digitalisation and artificial intelligence.

The survival of formal media has thus always been problematic in the face of technological changes. Today, however, the virtual space and universal digital capacity present unprecedented challenges.

Mention of this dynamic has been a common feature of recent closures in both print and broadcast media under the cover of “industry pressures.” It was invoked when Newsday explained its dissolution – “this is an industry under severe pressure.”

The directors of Guyana’s Stabroek News expressed their own rendezvous with closure more provocatively: “The model of reportage that this paper has cultivated in its lifetime is out of step with the algorithmic formulae that now control the circulation of news online. Balanced coverage is not good click-bait.”

Cayman Island’s iEye News, which also shuttered this month, was not a hard copy newspaper with the print overheads of Newsday or Stabroek News but was an attempt at independent, professional journalism online. Publisher Colin Wilson referred to “sustainability challenges.”

Digicel meanwhile explained that by closing down Loop News last year, it was “reorienting” its business “from consumer media toward enterprise-level digital services.” In other words, the financial yields from its digital news service were insufficient to address the company’s broader commercial concerns.

An identical explanation was forthcoming in August when Sportsmax – also operated by Digicel with all its telecoms credentials - ceased broadcasting. So, this is not only about the availability of “technology.”

This lengthy preamble is intended to suggest that old-fashioned legacy media are not the only casualties of recent digital advances, and accompanying implications for creation and delivery of competitive content.

This era also marks disruptions in online media through the entry of new players in the news and information market – many (not all) of them amateur participants devoid of commitments to professional standards, including high production values and journalistic integrity, but big on entertainment value, propaganda, the salacious, and controversy.

These alternatives on offer are typically short on traditional characteristics. Instead, they include fake “news” sites that appear and disappear in tandem with political conditions (including elections), paid and unpaid propagandists, online trolls, bots, and the use of AI manipulated content - the most difficult of all to detect.

Add to these, regimes of prior censorship imposed via broadcast licences and cyber legislation, strategic litigation by the powerful (labelled by the press freedom community as strategic litigation against public participation - SLAPP), “media capture” by partisan commercial and political interests, international “big-tech” malpractice, and plain old fashioned censorship … or muting of the microphone.

People such as prolific T&T technology correspondent, Mark Lyndersay, have written thousands of words on the digital challenges, as there are dimensions to the operations of the legacy media industry that remain relatively unexplored and unaddressed by the affected themselves.

The 2021 UNESCO-supported Media Viability study of Jamaica conducted by the Media Institute of the Caribbean also offers wholesome starting points: “There are many areas outside the control of media houses that impact viability and sustainability, including the economic, legal and regulatory environments, global big tech organisations and changing media consumption patterns.”

However, the MIC study also identifies a key function of legacy media as “protector(s) of the public interest.” There is no shortage of the exogenous, but internal adjustments require far more attention. There is a lot at stake here, people. We should note who mock and cheer the failures and ask from whom they would prefer receive life-changing news and information.