tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/broadcast-media-16826/articlesbroadcast media – The Conversation2022-02-03T14:26:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1757572022-02-03T14:26:48Z2022-02-03T14:26:48ZBurkina Faso: the key role played by the media in the latest coup<p>The dust appears to have settled following the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60164531">recent coup</a> in the west African state of Burkina Faso. A televised statement on January 31 named Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba as interim leader and said that the independence of the judiciary as well as freedom of speech and movement <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/31/burkina-faso-restores-constitution-names-coup-leader-president">had been restored</a>. The Patriotic Movement for Preservation and Restoration – the name chosen by the interim military government – would, a spokesperson said, ensure “the continuity of the state pending the establishment of transitional bodies”.</p>
<p>The coup played out while the authors were in Ouagadougou, Burkina’s capital, researching local radio’s vital role in the country and organising a new training course on journalism, communication and conflict. We observed at close quarters how the media – both mainstream and social – influenced the way events unfolded. </p>
<p>Across much of Francophone western Africa, the control of the media – once an exclusive tool for governments – now appears increasingly disputed thanks to the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47734843">internet</a>. It has become an increasingly important factor at the core of power and politics.</p>
<p>On Sunday, January 23, Ouagadougou woke to the sound of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/23/world/africa/burkina-faso-mutiny-gunfire.html">gunfire</a>. Rumours circulated, ranging from localised mutiny in military camps to a complete military takeover. Later that morning, a government communique issued via Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/sophie_douce/status/1485168576357187587?s=21">denied the coup</a>. Sunday evening saw a short distraction when the <a href="https://www.eurosport.com/football/africa-cup-of-nations/2022/burkina-faso-v-gabon-africa-cup-of-nations-live_sto8728057/story.shtml">national football team defeated Gabon</a> in the African Cup of Nations, but a government-imposed curfew curtailed public celebrations. </p>
<p>On Monday morning, the People’s Movement for Progress – the political party of then-president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré – issued a desperate, yet largely ignored, <a href="https://lefaso.net/spip.php?article110699">call to arms</a>, widely circulated via social media to the population and the international community to counter the ongoing attempt to destabilise the republican institutions. But by now, the military had seized the national TV broadcaster, <a href="https://www.rtb.bf">Radio Télévision du Burkina</a> (RTB) and later used it to announce the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/24/burkina-faso-army-says-it-has-deposed-president-kabore">change of regime</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Soft’ power grabs</h2>
<p>Burkina Faso’s political situation has been turbulent since 2014 when a popular uprising <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/31/burkina-faso-president-blaise-compaore-ousted-says-army">brought an end to</a> the 27-year authoritarian regime of former president Blaise Compaoré. In September 2015, elements of an already divided military – the elite guard that had supported Compaoré – tried to unseat the transitional government and reinstate the former president. The regular army regained control and Kaboré, a former banker who had been prime minister from 1994 to 1996 and president of the National Assembly from 2002 to 2012, was democratically elected president in November 2015, pledging to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60112043">unite the country and the military</a>. </p>
<p>But his administration saw the <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/burkina-faso/254-social-roots-jihadist-violence-burkina-fasos-north">growing presence</a> of jihadist and other armed groups in the border regions with Mali and Niger, resulting in widespread instability in those areas. The most recent coup was led by officers who demanded the sacking of some army chiefs and better resources to fight extremists.</p>
<h2>Hard and soft power</h2>
<p>Military takeovers tend not to rely solely on “hard” weapons to take power, but must also use “soft” weapons, such as the media. Taking control of a national broadcaster, for example, is often as important as taking control of the parliament buildings and is usually one of coup plotters’ top priorities. In this way, new regimes can silence their opponent’s voice and ensure control of the main communication tool, enabling them to establish their control in the eyes of the population at large.</p>
<p>This can happen with or without the support of the public. In 2014, for example, during the uprising against Compaoré who was planning to change the constitution to run for a fifth consecutive term of office, the public not only supported the insurrection but actively participated in ransacking the National Assembly building and RTB, the national media, both symbols of state power. </p>
<p>In contrast, in 2015, when the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/25/burkina-faso-foiled-military-coup">aborted coup</a> by Compaoré’s presidential guard did not have popular support, media outlets were used as channels to mobilise against the coup. In response, the military rebels ransacked their offices and physically abused journalists in a failed attempt to prevent their newly acquired power being undermined. </p>
<h2>Rise of social media</h2>
<p>In the run-up to, and during, the recent coup, both sides have tried to use social media to shore up their position. Following rapid broadband internet take-up in recent years, penetration <a href="https://www.burkina24.com/2021/11/30/burkina-faso-un-taux-de-penetration-internet-de-508-en-2020/">now reaches more than 50% of the population</a>. <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/burkina">Facebook</a>, which is accessed by more than 75% of internet users, is particularly popular.</p>
<p>Between <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/24/burkina-faso-coup/">November 2021</a> and the <a href="https://www.lexpress.fr/actualites/1/monde/burkina-des-soldats-encagoules-ont-pris-position-devant-la-television-nationale-journaliste-afp_2166699.html">January 23 coup</a>, the mobile internet was shut down by the authorities several times to combat what it referred to as misinformation and quell increasing unrest. It was a highly unpopular attempt to block this increasingly popular tool for public mobilisation. </p>
<p>Internet access was restored by the coup leaders on the second day of the coup, January 24. They recognised the power of the internet and used the switch-on first to garner favour with the public by giving it back the social media access it had been deprived of, and second, to inform the population of its takeover and establish legitimacy in the eyes of the people. </p>
<p>The seizing of the RTB offices, surrounding the building with tanks and troops at 9am the same day meant that the military was able to broadcast the success of its takeover via both mainstream and social media outlets. Kaboré, meanwhile, was under <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-23/gunfire-heard-at-military-camp-in-burkina-faso-capital-reuters">military guard</a>, preventing him from accessing the airwaves. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://twitter.com/rochkaborepf/status/1485614809940910080?s=21">tweet</a>, allegedly originating with Kaboré appeared at 2pm, calling on the military plotters to relinquish power. Whether or not it came from the beleaguered former president, it failed to mobilise any support for him.</p>
<p>From start to finish, the media – both mainstream and social – played a key role in the seizing of political power by the military. And, as more and more people in this Francophone nation gain access to social media, the more powerful it will become as a tool to mobilise support, something that is becoming an increasingly familiar story around the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175757/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Heywood receives funding from Elrha, and UKRI ESRC GCRF</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emmanuel Klimis receives funding from Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles (ARES), Belgium. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lassané Yaméogo and Marie Fierens do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The authors were in town to set up a journalism course. Instead they witnessed a coup d'état.Emma Heywood, Lecturer and Researcher in Journalism, Radio and Communication, University of SheffieldEmmanuel Klimis, Lecturer and Researcher in Politics, Université Saint-Louis - BruxellesLassané Yaméogo, Docteur en sciences de l'information et de la communication, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)Marie Fierens, Researcher, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1531572021-01-15T13:17:39Z2021-01-15T13:17:39ZThat time private US media companies stepped in to silence the falsehoods and incitements of a major public figure … in 1938<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378853/original/file-20210114-15-1klvmrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C6243%2C3635&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Father Coughlin's bully pulpit.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/father-charles-coughlin-delivers-a-radio-speech-circa-1930s-news-photo/96792593?adppopup=true">Fotosearch/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In speeches filled with hatred and falsehoods, a public figure attacks his enemies and calls for marches on Washington. Then, after one particularly virulent address, private media companies close down his channels of communication, prompting consternation from his supporters and calls for a code of conduct to filter out violent rhetoric. </p>
<p>Sound familiar? Well, this was 1938, and the individual in question was <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/charles-e-coughlin">Father Charles E. Coughlin</a>, a Nazi-sympathizing Catholic priest with unfettered access to America’s vast radio audiences. The firms silencing him were the broadcasters of the day. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.radford.edu/content/chbs/home/comm/faculty/bios.html#par_text_11">a media historian</a>, I find more than a little similarity between the stand those stations took back then and the way Twitter, YouTube and Facebook <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/insurrection-at-the-capitol/2021/01/12/956003580/facebook-removes-stop-the-steal-content-twitter-suspends-qanon-accounts">have silenced false claims</a> of election fraud and incitements to violence in the aftermath of the siege on the U.S. Capitol – noticeably by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/style/trump-twitter-ban.html">silencing the claims of Donald Trump</a> and his supporters. </p>
<h2>A radio ministry</h2>
<p>Coughlin’s Detroit ministry had grown up with radio, and, as his sermons grew more political, he began calling President Franklin D. Roosevelt a liar, a betrayer and a double-crosser. His fierce rhetoric fueled rallies and letter-writing campaigns for a dozen right-wing causes, from banking policy to opposing Russian communism. At the height of his popularity, an estimated <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/holocaust-coughlin/">30 million Americans</a> listened to his Sunday sermons.</p>
<p>Then, in 1938, one Sunday sermon crossed the line. On Nov. 20, he spoke to listeners on the subject of the recent antisemitic Nazi rampage in Germany <a href="https://theconversation.com/kristallnacht-80-years-on-some-reading-to-help-make-sense-of-the-most-notorious-state-sponsored-pogrom-103633">known as Kristallnacht</a> – during which mobs of Nazis burned down 267 synagogues, destroyed 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses and arrested 30,000 Jews. <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/11/12/502448492.html?pageNumber=4">Worldwide condemnation quickly followed</a>. An editorial in the St. Louis Globe, for example, stated: “We stand in horror at this outbreak of savagery.” </p>
<p>Coughlin saw things differently. He blamed Jews for their own persecution and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529709391688">claimed in the sermon</a> that the Nazis had actually been lenient. Only a few synagogues were burned, he lied, adding: “German citizen Jews were not molested officially in the conduct of their business.” And communists, not Jews, were the real targets of the Nazi mobs, according to Coughlin. </p>
<p>In the wake of these obvious lies, a New York radio station decided to break with Coughlin. “Your broadcast last Sunday was calculated to incite religious and racial strife in America,” said <a href="http://pdfs.jta.org/1938/1938-11-27_196.pdf">a letter from WMCA radio</a>. “When this was called to your attention in advance of your broadcast, you agreed to delete those misrepresentations which undeniably had this effect. You did not do so.” </p>
<p>Other radio stations in major cities like Chicago and Philadelphia also canceled Coughlin’s broadcasts. Neville Miller, the president of the <a href="https://www.nab.org/">National Association of Broadcasters</a> backed them up, saying that radio could not tolerate the abuse of freedom of speech. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A demonstration near the German ocean liner SS Bremen in New York, after Hugh Wilson, the American ambassador to Germany was recalled in the wake of Kristallnacht." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378854/original/file-20210114-14-yhx11g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378854/original/file-20210114-14-yhx11g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378854/original/file-20210114-14-yhx11g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378854/original/file-20210114-14-yhx11g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378854/original/file-20210114-14-yhx11g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378854/original/file-20210114-14-yhx11g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378854/original/file-20210114-14-yhx11g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New Yorkers take to the streets after Kristallnacht.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstration-near-the-german-ocean-liner-ss-bremen-in-new-news-photo/81037166?adppopup=true">FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Coughlin claimed that <a href="http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/11/28/98213278.html?pageNumber=1">he’d been misrepresented</a>, and that his intention had only been to stir sympathy for Christians persecuted by Communists. The Nazi press crowed at what they saw as American hypocrisy, saying Americans were “not allowed to hear the truth.” Meanwhile, Coughlin’s followers began <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1938/12/26/archives/fewer-coughlin-pickets-protest-at-radio-station-over-ban-is.html">showing up and protesting at radio stations</a> where his broadcasts had been cut off. </p>
<p>FDR <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZIjICgAAQBAJ&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=To+permit+radio+to+become+a+medium+for+selfish+propaganda+of+any+character+would+be+shamefully+and+wrongfully&source=bl&ots=-iH7jwypu6&sig=ACfU3U05MWEcKwfD6qCEN7XxTt-UB8YMCA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjv4pnLhJzuAhVSi1kKHeTIDZYQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=To%20permit%20radio%20to%20become%20a%20medium%20for%20selfish%20propaganda%20of%20any%20character%20would%20be%20shamefully%20and%20wrongfully&f=false">anticipated the controversy</a>. “To permit radio to become a medium for selfish propaganda of any character would be shamefully and wrongfully to abuse a great agent of public service,” he said the day before the Kristallnacht sermon. “Radio broadcasting should be maintained on an equality of freedom which has been, and is, the keynote of the American press.” But Roosevelt did not want to take action. </p>
<p><a href="https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/t/thompson_d.htm#:%7E:text=Dorothy%20Thompson%20(1893%2D1961),Herald%20Tribune%20from%201936%2D1941.">Dorothy Thompson</a>, a newspaper columnist who had been expelled from Germany by the Nazis a few years before, asked her readers: “Have you been listening to the broadcasts of Father Coughlin?” He was clearly a threat to democracy, she said, and the FCC itself should take him off the air. </p>
<h2>Sidelining Coughlin</h2>
<p>Coughlin’s radio empire continued eroding that winter and into the spring. With his pickets still protesting at radio stations, the National Association of Broadcasters <a href="https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1770&context=asc_papers">changed its code</a> to promote “fair and impartial presentation of both sides of controversial issues.” The code was originally established in 1929 to address issues like fair advertising practices. The revisions in 1939 prevented radio stations from selling air time for presentations from single speakers like<br>
Coughlin. Naturally, Coughlin claimed that his rights were being violated, even though he tried to justify his own violation of other people’s rights. </p>
<p>By the middle of the 20th century, this would become known as the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1341168">paradox of tolerance</a>. Philosophers like <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/">Karl Popper</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/">John Rawls</a> would insist that, at some point, a society’s tolerance should not be allowed to threaten its own survival. </p>
<p>For Americans who were unsure of how to deal with Coughlin, the paradox was solved by the advent of World War II. In January of 1940, the <a href="https://reuther.wayne.edu/files/UP001842.pdf">FBI caught 17 of his followers</a> in a Nazi spy ring, and soon after, calls for more understanding of Nazis were flatly treasonous. </p>
<p>After the war, the idea that radio listeners should hear two sides of every controversy evolved from self-regulation by the broadcasting industry into the government’s “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-fairness-doctrine-in-one-post/2011/08/23/gIQAN8CXZJ_blog.html">Fairness Doctrine” of 1949</a>, which required broadcasters to allow responses to personal attacks and controversial opinions. It was enforced by the Federal Communications Commission and upheld in Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC in 1969. </p>
<p>Then, with the deregulatory era of the 1980s, the Fairness Doctrine was abolished as the abundance of cable TV and radio was said to have <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/955/fairness-doctrine">“eroded” the rationale</a> for regulation. And yet, as it turned out, the expected abundance morphed into one-sided talk radio and social media echo chambers. These worked, as did Father Coughlin, to undermine tolerance and democracy. </p>
<h2>Stepping in</h2>
<p>There’s not much that separates, on the one hand, the mad fanaticism that held Jews supposedly responsible for their own persecution in 1938 and, on the other, the fevered delusion of 2020: that Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/13/ali-alexander-capitol-biggs-gosar/">victory was stolen</a> or that the president is on a mission to expose a <a href="https://theconversation.com/qanon-and-the-storm-of-the-u-s-capitol-the-offline-effect-of-online-conspiracy-theories-152815">satanic pedophile ring consisting of liberal politicians and media elites</a>. </p>
<p>In both cases, a relatively new medium was harnessed to inject hateful ideas into American society for political gain. And in both cases, private business had to step in when the consequences became evident.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Kovarik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Broadcasters silenced Father Charles Coughlin in 1938, just as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have shut down pro-Trump incitements to violence in 2021.Bill Kovarik, Professor of Communication, Radford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1481432020-10-30T12:50:44Z2020-10-30T12:50:44Z100 years ago, the first commercial radio broadcast announced the results of the 1920 election – politics would never be the same<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366504/original/file-20201029-15-3l6n31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=115%2C290%2C3175%2C2345&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When Frank Conrad broadcast the results of the 1920 presidential election, he had no idea that politics would be forever transformed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/wilkensburg-pa-the-little-broadcasting-set-over-which-the-news-photo/515298970?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Only 100 people were listening, but the first broadcast from a licensed radio station occurred at 8 p.m. on Nov. 2, 1920. It was <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dt20ra.html">Pittsburgh’s KDKA</a>, and the station was broadcasting the results of that year’s presidential election.</p>
<p>When the man responsible, Frank Conrad, flipped the switch for the first time, he couldn’t have envisioned just how profoundly broadcast media would transform political life.</p>
<p>For centuries, people had read politicians’ words. But radio made it possible to listen to them in real time. Politicians’ personalities all of a sudden started to matter more. The way their voices sounded made more of a difference. And their ability to engage and entertain became crucial components of their candidacies.</p>
<p>Television, followed by social media, would build off this drastic shift in a way that forever transformed American politics.</p>
<h2>And the winner is…</h2>
<p>In the 1890s, radio signals were transmitted over long distances for the first time, work for which engineer <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1909/marconi/facts/">Guglielmo Marconi</a> received the Nobel Prize in 1909. By the 1910s, amateur radio operators were transmitting their own voices and music, but few people had radios, and no revenue was generated.</p>
<p>In 1920, employees of inventor and industrialist <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/westinghouse_hi.html">George Westinghouse</a> hit upon an idea to boost radio sales by providing programming that large numbers of people could tune in to.</p>
<p>The man who made it happen was <a href="http://www.nmbpgh.org/conrad_project/historical_background/conrad.htm">Frank Conrad</a>. A Pittsburgh native whose formal education had ended in the seventh grade, Conrad would go on to hold over 200 patents.</p>
<p>Realizing that radio could cover the presidential race, he scheduled a broadcast for Election Day 1920.</p>
<p>That night, from what would become the nation’s first commercial radio station, Conrad broadcast the result of <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1920_Election/">the 1920 U.S. presidential election</a> that pitted Democrat James Cox against Republican Warren Harding. Conrad received the election returns by telephone, and those who listened in by radio knew the outcome – a <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/world-war-i-and-1920-election-recordings/articles-and-essays/from-war-to-normalcy/presidential-election-of-1920/">Harding landslide</a> – before anyone could read it in a newspaper the next day.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A two-door garage near Pittsburgh was home to the first broadcast radio station." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366505/original/file-20201029-17-xfnai7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366505/original/file-20201029-17-xfnai7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366505/original/file-20201029-17-xfnai7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366505/original/file-20201029-17-xfnai7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366505/original/file-20201029-17-xfnai7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366505/original/file-20201029-17-xfnai7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366505/original/file-20201029-17-xfnai7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">KDKA operated out of Frank Conrad’s garage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/filed-3-15-1924-station-kdka-the-pioneer-in-radio-news-photo/514699304?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Channeling a different kind of politics</h2>
<p>In 1964, media theorist <a href="https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf">Marshall McLuhan</a> famously declared that “The medium is the message,” meaning that the kind of channel through which a message is transmitted matters more than its content. </p>
<p>Impressions of politicians – along with their approaches to campaigning – changed with the advent of radio.</p>
<p>For centuries, the principal medium for mass political news was the printed word. When Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas participated in a series of <a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/debates.htm">nine debates</a> for a U.S. Senate in Illinois in 1858, in-person attendees numbered in the thousands, but millions followed the debates through extensive newspaper accounts nationwide. The candidates were expected to make arguments, and each of the debates lasted three hours.</p>
<p>By the 1930s, politicians could address citizens directly through radio. The Great Depression prompted FDR’s <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-fireside-chats-roosevelts-radio-talks">fireside chats</a>, and during World War II Winston Churchill spoke directly to the people via the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/october/winston-churchills-first-wartime-broadcast">BBC</a>. FDR’s press secretary lauded radio, saying “It cannot misrepresent or misquote.” But McLuhan later described it as a “<a href="https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/cctp-748-spring2018/2018/03/21/hot-media-vs-cool-media/">hot</a>” medium, because broadcast speeches could incite passions in a way that also made possible the rise of totalitarians such as Mussolini and Hitler.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366541/original/file-20201029-17-au7d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366541/original/file-20201029-17-au7d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366541/original/file-20201029-17-au7d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366541/original/file-20201029-17-au7d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366541/original/file-20201029-17-au7d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366541/original/file-20201029-17-au7d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366541/original/file-20201029-17-au7d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marshall McLuhan famously observed that ‘the medium is the message.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-du-sociologue-canadien-marshall-mcluhan-en-1974-news-photo/956680600?adppopup=true">Francois BIBAL/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Television takes over</h2>
<p>With time, politicians started dabbling in using entertainment to get the attention of voters. In the radio era, stars like Judy Garland <a href="https://theconversation.com/showbiz-politics-through-campaign-songs-candidates-become-stars-40043">belted out songs</a> on behalf of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.</p>
<p>Once television arrived, political strategy shifted even more in the direction of spectacle. RCA had experimented with television broadcasts in the 1930s, but in 1945 there were fewer than <a href="http://factsfornow.scholastic.com/article?product_id=gme&type=0ta&uid=10806729&id=0285953-0">10,000 TV sets</a> in the U.S. By the 1950s, the major broadcast networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – were up and running. </p>
<p>In the 1952 election, the Eisenhower campaign started working with ad agencies and actors such as Robert Montgomery to craft the candidate’s <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/teacher-resources/recasting-presidential-history/presidency-television-era">TV personality</a>. More than ever before, a finely honed image became the key to political power.</p>
<p>By 1960 there were <a href="http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/150/1930.xhtml">46 million TVs</a> in use across the U.S., setting the stage for <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/09/behind-scenes-first-televised-presidential-debates-nixon-jfk-1960/">66 million people</a> to view the first televised presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Kennedy was quite telegenic, but Richard Nixon showed up to their first debate looking pale, wearing a suit that contrasted poorly with the set, and sporting a five o’clock shadow. Most who listened to the debate on the radio thought Nixon had won, but a large majority of <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-debate-that-changed-the-world-of-politics">television viewers</a> gave the nod to Kennedy.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Are politicians simply creatures of mass media?</h2>
<p>Today, social media have helped to further transform political discourse from reasoned argument to attention-grabbing images and memes. Politicians, who now compete with hundreds of other media channels and outlets, need to capture voters’ attention, and they increasingly turn to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-40103906">ridicule and even outrage</a> to do so. </p>
<p>Some might regard modern politics as fulfilling a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Marshall_McLuhan.html?id=oMBn4mwLP_MC">McLuhan prophecy</a>: “The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be so much more powerful than he will ever be.” </p>
<p>Increasing reliance on broadcast and social media makes it more difficult to focus on the merits of arguments. But visual drama is something nearly everyone can relate to instantly.</p>
<p>Could Donald Trump have been elected president in 1860? Could Abraham Lincoln be elected president today? </p>
<p>We’ll never know. But if we take McLuhan at his word, we must seriously consider the possibility that both men are the creatures of the mass media of their day.</p>
<p>Democratic societies neglect the effects of new forms of media on the quality of political discourse at their own peril. </p>
<p>Government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” – as Lincoln put it – can thrive only when voters are informed by a truly robust exchange of ideas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148143/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For centuries, people largely read politicians’ words. But with the advent of radio, the ability of politicians to engage and entertain became crucial components of their candidacies.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1257172020-01-05T18:53:21Z2020-01-05T18:53:21ZBroadcast turns 100: from the Hindenburg disaster to the Hottest 100, here’s how radio shaped the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306019/original/file-20191210-95153-gsbx18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C0%2C2982%2C2281&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The famous Hindenburg tragedy was heard around the world via recorded radio journalism.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Hindenburg_burning.jpg">Wiki Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eighty-one years ago, a broadcast of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds supposedly <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth-the-infamous-radio-broadcast-did-not-cause-a-nationwide-hysteria.html">caused mass hysteria</a> in America, as listeners thought martians had invaded New Jersey.</p>
<p>There are varying accounts of the controversial incident, and it remains a topic of fascination, even today.</p>
<p>Back when Welles’s fictional martians attacked, broadcast radio was considered a state-of-the-art technology. </p>
<p>And since the first transatlantic radio signal was transmitted in 1901 by <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/guglielmo-marconi">Guglielmo Marconi</a>, radio has greatly innovated the way we communicate. </p>
<h2>Dots and dashes</h2>
<p>Before Marconi, German physicist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Heinrich-Hertz">Heinrich Hertz</a> discovered and transmitted the first <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E46ZU2rsupA">radio waves</a> in 1886. Other individuals later developed technologies that could send radio waves across the seas.</p>
<p>At the start of the 20th century, Marconi’s system dominated radio wave-based media. Radio was called “wireless telegraphy” as it was considered a telegraph without the wires, and did what telegraphs had done globally since 1844. </p>
<p>Messages were sent in Morse code as dots and dashes from one point to another via radio waves. At the time, receiving radio required specialists to translate the dots and dashes into words. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nazis-pressed-ham-radio-hobbyists-to-serve-the-third-reich-but-surviving-came-at-a-price-90510">Nazis pressed ham radio hobbyists to serve the Third Reich – but surviving came at a price</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The more refined technology underpinning broadcast radio was developed during the first world war, with “broadcast” referring to the use of radio waves to transmit audio from one point to many listeners. </p>
<p>This year, organised broadcast radio turns 100. These days it’s considered a basic technology, but that may be why it remains such a vital medium. </p>
<h2>SOS: the Titanic sinks</h2>
<p>By 1912, radio was used to run economies, empires and armed forces. </p>
<p>Its importance for shipping was obvious - battleships, merchant ships and passenger ships were all equipped with it. People had faith in technological progress and radio provided proof of how modern machines benefited humans.</p>
<p>However, the sinking of the Titanic that year caused a crisis in the world’s relationship with technology, by revealing its fallibility. Not even the newest technologies such as radio could avoid disaster.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299151/original/file-20191029-183112-tfezxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299151/original/file-20191029-183112-tfezxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299151/original/file-20191029-183112-tfezxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299151/original/file-20191029-183112-tfezxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299151/original/file-20191029-183112-tfezxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299151/original/file-20191029-183112-tfezxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299151/original/file-20191029-183112-tfezxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299151/original/file-20191029-183112-tfezxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A replica of the radio room on the Titanic. One of the first SOS messages in history came from the ship.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wiki Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some argue radio use may have increased the ship’s death toll, as the <a href="https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Navigation/Community/Arcadia-and-THP-Blog/April-2018/How-Amateur-Radio-Sunk-the-Titanic">Titanic’s radio</a> was outdated and wasn’t intended to be used in an emergency. There were also accusations that amateur “<a href="https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/ham-radio.htm">ham radio</a>” operators had hogged the bandwidth, adding to an already confusing and dire situation.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the Titanic’s <a href="https://www.rd.com/culture/sos-meaning/">SOS</a> signal managed to reach another ship, which led to the rescue of hundreds of passengers. Radio remains the go-to medium when disasters strike. </p>
<h2>Making masts and networks</h2>
<p>Broadcast radio got traction in the early 1920s and spread like a virus. Governments, companies and consumers started investing in the amazing new technology that brought the sounds of the world <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRp2u8d7lrg">into the home</a>.</p>
<p>Huge networks of transmitting towers and radio stations popped-up across continents, and factories churned out millions of radio receivers to meet demand. </p>
<p>Some countries started major public broadcasting networks, including <a href="https://www.bbc.com/timelines/zxqc4wx">the BBC</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/npr-is-still-expanding-the-range-of-what-authority-sounds-like-after-50-years-124571">NPR is still expanding the range of what authority sounds like after 50 years</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Radio stations sought ways around regulations and, by the mid 1930s, some broadcasters were operating stations that generated up to 500,000 watts. </p>
<p>One Mexican station, <a href="https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ebb01">XERA</a>, could be heard in New Zealand. </p>
<h2>Hearing the Hindenburg</h2>
<p>On May 6, 1937, journalist Herbert Morrison was experimenting with recording news bulletins for radio when the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ4XsHRZmpw">Hindenburg airship</a> burst into flames. </p>
<p>His famous commentary, “Oh the humanity”, is often mistaken for a live broadcast, but <a href="https://apnews.com/f9119c33266f4c5386cb6748787d79de/'Oh,-the-humanity!'-Hindenburg-anniversary,-broadcast-marked">it was actually a recording</a>. </p>
<p>Recording technologies such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85ZZrxihw8">transcription discs</a>, and later <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0sdVuX06sQ">magnetic tape</a> and digital storage, revolutionised radio. </p>
<p>Broadcasts could now be stored and heard repeatedly at different places instead of disappearing into the ether. </p>
<h2>Transistors and FM</h2>
<p>In 1953 radios got smaller, as the first all transistor radio was built.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299154/original/file-20191029-183103-1b1q81i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299154/original/file-20191029-183103-1b1q81i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299154/original/file-20191029-183103-1b1q81i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299154/original/file-20191029-183103-1b1q81i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299154/original/file-20191029-183103-1b1q81i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299154/original/file-20191029-183103-1b1q81i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299154/original/file-20191029-183103-1b1q81i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299154/original/file-20191029-183103-1b1q81i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1960 ad for a pocket sized Motorola transistor radio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wiki Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukDKVHnac4">Transistor circuits</a> replaced valves and made radios very cheap and portable.</p>
<p>Along with being portable, radio sound quality improved after the rise of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3M4cqAMWQs">FM broadcasting</a> in the 1960s. While both FM and AM are effective ways to modulate carrier waves, FM (frequency modulation) offers better audio quality and less noise compared to AM (amplitude modulation).</p>
<p>Music on FM radio sounded as good as on a home stereo. Rock and roll and the revolutionary changes of the 1960s started to spread via the medium.</p>
<p>AM radio was reserved for talkback, news and sport. </p>
<h2>Beeps in space</h2>
<p>In 1957, radio experienced lift-off when the USSR launched the world’s first satellite. </p>
<p>Sputnik 1 didn’t do much other than broadcast a regular “beep” sound by radio. </p>
<p>But this still <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0937239/?ref_=nm_knf_t1">shocked the world</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHCeLvy5z-I">especially the USA</a>, which didn’t think the USSR was so technologically advanced. </p>
<p>Sputnik’s beeps were propaganda heard all round the world, and they heralded the age of space exploration. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5M-QinwmdKc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The launch of Sputnik 1 started the global space race.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, radio is still used to communicate with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNEDNOQnwD8">astronauts and robots</a> in space. </p>
<p>Radio astronomy, which uses radio waves, has also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K6P014XXmQ">revealed a lot about the universe to astronomers</a>.</p>
<h2>Digital, and beyond</h2>
<p>Meanwhile on Earth, radio stations continue to use the internet to extend their reach beyond that of analogue technologies. </p>
<p>Social media helps broadcasters generate and spread content, and digital editing tools have boosted the possibilities of what can be done with podcasts and radio documentaries. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/radio-as-a-form-of-struggle-scenes-from-late-colonial-angola-128019">Radio as a form of struggle: scenes from late colonial Angola</a>
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<p>The radio industry has learnt to use digital plenitude to the max, with broadcasters <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/series">building archives</a> and producing an endless flood of material beyond what they broadcast. </p>
<p>This year marks a century of organised broadcast radio around the world. </p>
<p>Media such as movies, television, the internet and podcasts were expected to sound its death knell. But radio embraces <a href="https://radio.garden/">new technology</a>. It survives, and advances.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125717/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Hoar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the USSR launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1 didn’t do much other than regularly “beep” over the radio. Yet, this simple sound is associated with the beginnings of space exploration.Peter Hoar, Senior Lecturer, School of Communications Studies, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1152332019-04-23T04:33:55Z2019-04-23T04:33:55ZEthnic media are essential for new migrants and should be better funded<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270324/original/file-20190423-15194-mjo8lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An annual indexation freeze in funding introduced by the Liberal government in 2013 has cost the sector almost A$1 million.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/498395695?size=huge_jpg">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The fact that the community ethnic and multicultural broadcasting sector didn’t receive additional funding in the latest budget reflects a misunderstanding of the important role of ethnic media in Australian society.</p>
<p>Ethnic print and broadcasting have a long history in Australia, dating back to at least 1848 with the publication of <a href="http://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=1475">Die Deutsche Post</a>. </p>
<p>Early foreign language broadcasting featured on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14443050609388075">commercial radio in the 1930s</a>, and throughout the middle of the 20th century. This was before the boom days of the 1970s, when both the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) and community radio were firmly established.</p>
<p>Today, along with SBS, more than 100 community radio stations <a href="https://www.nembc.org.au/about/">feature content in over 100 languages</a>. There are also ethnic media organisations that broadcast or print content in English.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1107592068925276165"}"></div></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/media-and-social-responsibility-at-a-time-of-radicalisation-45428">Media and social responsibility at a time of radicalisation</a>
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<h2>How ethnic media are funded</h2>
<p>Much like mainstream print, ethnic newspapers receive little if any direct government funding. They rely on advertising dollars, as well as occasional small grants.</p>
<p>Ethnic broadcasting is primarily funded through two streams:</p>
<ul>
<li>government funding of SBS </li>
<li>funding of community ethnic broadcasters through the Community Broadcasting Foundation (<a href="https://cbf.org.au/">CBF</a>), which is itself funded federally. </li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://www.radioinfo.com.au/news/budget-leaves-ethnic-community-broadcasting-short-funding">According to</a> the peak body of ethnic community broadcasting in Australia, the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council (<a href="https://www.nembc.org.au/">NEMBC</a>), an annual indexation freeze in funding introduced by the Liberal government in 2013 has cost the sector almost A$1 million. That’s approximately 20% of their total support.</p>
<p>A significant fund of <a href="https://www.radioinfo.com.au/news/budget-leaves-ethnic-community-broadcasting-short-funding">A$12 million</a> over four years has been granted to the community broadcasting sector. But this is generalist funding rather than aimed at ethnic broadcasting specifically. It’s directed towards assisting community stations to transition to a digital signal, the production of local news in English, and management training.</p>
<p>The NEMBC is also in its third year of a new <a href="https://www.nembc.org.au/advocacy/concern-for-community-broadcasting-funds/">competitive grants</a> process introduced by the Community Broadcasting Foundation. </p>
<p>According to the NEMBC, many ethnic broadcasters are facing a precarious funding environment. This is due to the lack of specialist funding, the costs associated with transitioning to digital broadcasting, and the complexity of the Community Broadcasting Foundation grants process.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whitewash-thats-not-the-colour-of-the-sbs-charter-40837">Whitewash? That's not the colour of the SBS charter</a>
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<h2>Why it’s important</h2>
<p>The difficulties facing ethnic broadcasting impact the unique contribution it can make to modern Australia. And it’s a problem that extends beyond policy – media funding for <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-abc-didnt-receive-a-reprieve-in-the-budget-its-still-facing-staggering-cuts-114922">public service</a>, community and ethnic broadcasting is regularly under siege. It’s also a broader social issue. </p>
<p>Ethnic media are often thought of as either quaint services for nostalgic migrants, or as dangerous sources of ethnic segregation. For many, the role of ethnic media rarely, if ever, extends beyond a specific cultural, ethnic or linguistic community.</p>
<p>What’s missing from this image is the role of ethnic media in facilitating successful migrant settlement. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1440783316657430">Research</a> shows that ethnic media can facilitate feelings of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Dialogues-Indigenous-Community-Broadcasting/dp/1841502758">belonging and social participation</a> among first and subsequent generation migrants. Ethnic media connect migrants and culturally and linguistically diverse Australians with other social groups, as well as with their own local communities.</p>
<p>On a more practical level, ethnic media are important sources of information. When advice is needed on a range of issues, from health care services to migration law, ethnic media play a vital role.</p>
<p>This is not a case of migrants staying in their linguistic “ghettos” and building separate ethnic economies. Rather, it involves seeking sources of relevant, and culturally and linguistically appropriate, information in order to live and thrive in Australian society.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/vIJQ7Asa7R","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>That might be providing advice on voting or taxation to migrants from Sudan. Or informing elderly German migrants of changes to aged care services. Ethnic media provide information that is attuned to the particular needs of their audience.</p>
<p>This is a service that mainstream media are largely unable to provide, with their focus on a broad audience. But without it, migrants potentially miss out on important information.</p>
<p>These are also services that benefit both recent migrant groups, such as those from Africa or the Middle East, and more established communities. For elderly Germans in South Australia, information today comes in the form of German broadcasting in Adelaide, with presenters and producers who understand the needs and histories of their audience.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/debate-on-free-speech-alone-means-little-for-minorities-30397">Debate on free speech alone means little for minorities</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Essential sources of vital information</h2>
<p>Ethnic media may also be valuable allies to relevant government departments and settlement service providers. My own ongoing work with ethnic broadcasters and community leaders indicates a level of dissatisfaction with the way government services are communicated to migrant groups from non-English speaking backgrounds.</p>
<p>Ethnic broadcasting is often able to capture the subtleties and nuances that one-size-fits-all government communication campaigns cannot. They are therefore in a unique position to effectively communicate government initiatives at a local, state and national level. </p>
<p>It is no surprise that what would become <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/a-brief-history-of-sbs">SBS Radio</a> was originally designed to inform migrants about the introduction of Medibank health insurance scheme. </p>
<p>It’s important that the services provided by the ethnic media sector, particularly those that cannot be measured in purely economic terms, are understood and supported.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Budarick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ethnic media outlets provide valuable resources for new migrants settling in Australia, but recent government funding decisions suggest they’re not valued as they should be.John Budarick, Lecturer in Media, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/943652018-04-04T10:45:24Z2018-04-04T10:45:24ZWhy are Sinclair’s scripted news segments such a big deal?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213022/original/file-20180403-189810-1r6o93m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sinclair Broadcast Group is under fire, following the spread of a video showing anchors at its stations reading a script criticizing 'fake' news stories.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sinclair-Broadcast-Group/efe8917e69304ec695b0b67d4a3c4555/10/0">Steve Ruark/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On March 31, <a href="https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490">Deadspin</a> produced a video showing a chorus of local news anchors delivering the exact same scripted speech to viewers.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/KOMO-fake-news-Sinclair-promos-12792032.php">The message</a> – denouncing media bias and fake news, calling it a problem that is “neither politically ‘left nor right’” – might seem innocuous enough. </p>
<p>But I study the media industry, and it really does represent a radical departure from how local television news has traditionally operated.</p>
<p>These news anchors all work for the same parent company, Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns <a href="http://sbgi.net/#About">193 local broadcast stations</a> across the country. </p>
<p>You might think that your local television stations – with names like WXYZ-TV, KXAN or KMOV – are owned by national networks like ABC or Fox. But that’s often not the case; they are merely affiliated with the national network. Most are owned by companies called “station groups” that have purchased a portfolio of stations in different cities with different network affiliations.</p>
<p>Tribune Media, Nexstar and Tegna are examples of <a href="http://www.tvnewscheck.com/tag/2017-top-30-station-groups">station groups</a>. Sinclair is the biggest.</p>
<p>It was once the case that most stations were local, independently owned businesses. But during the 1970s, these individual stations started to be absorbed by station groups, which were able to take advantage of new technologies to achieve economies of scale. Instead of performing all operations at the local level at every station, they found they could save money by centralizing many tasks, from buying and selling advertising, to designing the computer graphics that air during news segments.</p>
<p>Today, owning many stations and centralizing these back-end tasks are common in the broadcast business. What isn’t common is what the Deadspin video shows. As far as I know, no other station group has written news scripts and required local stations to deliver them.</p>
<p>In fact, it’s a practice that directly goes against <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Communications-Policy-Principles-Communication/dp/1572733438">U.S. broadcast policy</a>, which asserts that local stations should serve their geographic communities and be allowed to refuse content offered by national networks. Sinclair, however, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/media/sinclair-news-anchors-script.html">has dubbed</a> these scripts “must runs.” The company also produces complete news stories and commentaries that it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/sinclair-broadcast-komo-conservative-media.html">requires local stations to air</a>. </p>
<p>The script in the Deadspin video has fueled a partisan backlash, and many <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc">have pointed out</a> that Sinclair’s “must-run” content often advances a conservative point of view. </p>
<p>However, the most important part of the story isn’t the question of partisan bias. It’s that a national station group is forcing content on local stations. To many, what Sinclair is doing is precisely what U.S. broadcast policy is supposed to protect against: a single company advancing an agenda to a majority of the country using the public good of broadcast spectrum. </p>
<p>With Sinclair’s pending purchase of Tribune Media’s <a href="http://www.tribunemedia.com/our-brands/tribune-broadcasting/">42 stations</a>, the company’s reach is only poised to grow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Lotz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s worth looking at how local news stations have traditionally operated.Amanda Lotz, Fellow, Peabody Media Center; Professor of Media Studies, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/592932016-07-20T10:08:37Z2016-07-20T10:08:37ZThe 2016 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee you’ve never heard of<p>When the National Baseball Hall of Fame holds its <a href="http://baseballhall.org/hof/class-of-2016">2016 induction ceremony</a> on July 24, the names of the two player inductees – Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza – will be recognized by even the most casual baseball fan. Serious fans (and most New Englanders) will celebrate the Boston Globe’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Shaughnessy">Dan Shaughnessy</a>, the recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for baseball writers. </p>
<p>But the fourth name on this year’s list, <a href="http://baseballhall.org/discover/awards/ford-c-frick/2016-candidates/mcnamee-graham">Graham McNamee</a>, winner of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_C._Frick_Award">Ford C. Frick Award</a> for broadcasters, will resonate only with devoted historians of the national pastime. In “<a href="http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Crack-of-the-Bat,676325.aspx">Crack of the Bat</a>,” my history of baseball on the radio, I reviewed McNamee’s seminal contribution to the popularization of World Series broadcasts. </p>
<p>Most other Frick winners have been honored during their lifetimes. (Vin Scully won in 1982 and is still broadcasting today.) But McNamee hasn’t broadcast a game in 75 years; he died at 53 in 1942, when television was only an experiment and radio was just over two decades old. </p>
<p>McNamee’s long wait for recognition raises two questions: Who was Graham McNamee? And why did it take 74 years for the Hall of Fame to honor his contribution to baseball broadcasting?</p>
<h2>The right voice at the right time</h2>
<p>McNamee came to New York in the early 1920s to study singing, only to join the chorus of Gotham’s thousands of struggling vocalists. However, the city was also the center of a nascent network radio industry that had only just begun to generate substantial advertising revenues. </p>
<p>McNamee was in the right place at the right time, with the right voice. In 1923, he joined RCA-owned WEAF <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNBC_(AM)">(later WNBC</a> as a staff announcer. WEAF was the nation’s most popular station and ran the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/08/29/160265990/first-radio-commercial-hit-airwaves-90-years-ago">first-ever radio commercial</a>, a 10-minute ad for apartments in Jackson Heights paid for by the Queensboro Corporation.</p>
<p>Like all first-generation radio announcers, McNamee did every kind of programming: music, news events and sports. His first significant sportscast was a middleweight championship fight in 1923. While boxing had been broadcast before, stations usually used a ringside reporter who relayed the action by phone to an announcer at the station, who then broadcast the play-by-play to listeners. </p>
<p>McNamee, however, broadcast live from ringside. His breathtaking firsthand account of the contest as it unfolded before his eyes captivated listeners. Big-time, live, emotional sportscasts – just like McNamee’s – were beginning to sell a skeptical public on the new medium of radio.</p>
<p>Boxing was a start, but McNamee’s big break in sports came at the 1923 World Series. The previous year’s World Series had been called by legendary sportswriter <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Grantland-Rice">Grantland Rice</a>, but Rice loathed the assignment and refused to broadcast baseball again. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131152/original/image-20160719-7877-gf5z40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131152/original/image-20160719-7877-gf5z40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131152/original/image-20160719-7877-gf5z40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131152/original/image-20160719-7877-gf5z40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131152/original/image-20160719-7877-gf5z40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131152/original/image-20160719-7877-gf5z40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131152/original/image-20160719-7877-gf5z40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131152/original/image-20160719-7877-gf5z40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fans file into Yankee Stadium during the 1923 World Series, when McNamee got his big break.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Yankee_Stadium_1923_World_Series.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So in 1923, Rice’s colleague at the New York Tribune, W.O. McGeehan, took the mic on WEAF. But after two games he’d had enough. Like Rice, McGeehan found radio’s demand for a steady stream of words very challenging; the medium provided little time for composition and none for editing. So the newspaperman left his post in the fourth inning of Game 3, leaving the mic to his assistant, Graham McNamee.</p>
<p>A radio star was born. </p>
<h2>The naysayers emerge</h2>
<p>For the next eight years, McNamee became RCA’s voice of the World Series. As the Series’ broadcast reach expanded from the Eastern Seaboard to the Midwest and, finally, to the entire nation, McNamee’s fame grew exponentially. After the 1925 World Series, McNamee received 50,000 letters from fans of his broadcasts. Listeners loved his strong, pleasant voice and detailed, enthusiastic descriptions of the action, which allowed them to better visualize a game they could only see in their minds. </p>
<p>But not every baseball fan was a McNamee fan. From time to time, his attention would stray from the game and to the celebrities in the stands or a letter he had received. He’d be prone to forget the count and even the batter’s name. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Summer-Baseballs-All-Time-Announcers-ebook/dp/B001NEIODM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1468879732&sr=8-2&keywords=voices+of+summer#nav-subnav">According to baseball broadcast historian Curt Smith</a>, McNamee freely admitted to being “an entertainer first and broadcaster second.” </p>
<p>So as the novelty of World Series broadcasts faded, some baseball writers became less impressed with broadcasting’s first superstar. </p>
<p>After one game of the 1927 Series, columnist Ring Lardner famously observed, “I attended a double-header, the game [McNamee] was describing and the game I was watching”; a New York Sun headline read “M'Namee’s Eye not on the Ball: Radio Announcer Mixes Up World Series Fans”; and in a scathing criticism, the Boston Globe identified eight problems with McNamee’s call of the opening game, including forgetting to report balls and strikes and leaving the mic for several minutes to get a soft drink. </p>
<p>But most fans still loved McNamee’s style; plus they had few baseball broadcasts to compare with it. In the 1920s, not many teams – and none in New York, Philadelphia or Washington – regularly broadcast games. For most Americans, McNamee’s World Series calls were all they knew. </p>
<p>McNamee also added a number of other high-profile broadcasts to his resume: the inauguration of Calvin Coolidge, the 1927 Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-09-22/sports/sp-9617_1_long-count">“long count” heavyweight fight</a>, the 1927 Rose Bowl game and Charles Lindbergh’s return to New York after his solo transatlantic flight. </p>
<p>But by the end of the Roaring Twenties, many announcers began to specialize in covering the national pastime. They included Hal Totten, Quin Ryan and Pat Flanagan in Chicago; Ty Tyson in Detroit; Fred Hoey in Boston; France Laux in St. Louis; Tom Manning in Cleveland; and Harry Hartman in Cincinnati. Each developed his own unique style and vast, local followings. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, though he covered the World Series from 1923 to 1931, McNamee was only working a handful of baseball contests per year because New York teams rarely broadcast regular-season games. </p>
<h2>Famous for being the first</h2>
<p>Baseball broadcasting was passing him by. Major League Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis valued seasoned professional announcers and pushed NBC (RCA’s network) to move McNamee to pregame coverage for the 1932 World Series. Though McNamee continued to be involved in coverage of the Fall Classic – <a href="http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675046236_baseball-match_Detroit-Tigers_Chicago-Cubs_Detroit-Tigers-win">including narrating a newsreel of Game 3 of the 1935 World Series</a> – he’d been marginalized.</p>
<p>Given his initial fame and role in pioneering the coverage of baseball on radio, why has McNamee been overlooked for so long by the Baseball Hall of Fame?</p>
<p>All previous Frick winners have had long careers, usually with one team. Although some eventually had national profiles, most cut their teeth on the day broadcasts, slowly winning the adulation of a team’s fans. But McNamee was baseball’s broadcast primal star, famous for being the first but not necessarily the best. Longtime Braves and Astros announcer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Hamilton">Milo Hamilton</a>, himself a Frick winner, gave <a href="http://www.americansportscastersonline.com/mcnameearticle.html">a succinct explanation</a> for why McNamee wasn’t in the Hall of Fame: “He didn’t broadcast baseball long enough.” </p>
<p>But in 2013 the Hall of Fame launched a new system for selecting winners that alternates consideration of announcers from three eras. The era for this batch of inductees – the one ending in the mid-1950s – gave McNamee a second chance.</p>
<p>It’s taken the Hall of Fame some time, and many would call it long overdue. In his 1970 book <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bpFZAAAAMAAJ&q=the+broadcasters+red+barber&dq=the+broadcasters+red+barber&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-rcnv2P3NAhUCcz4KHbA5AMAQ6AEIODAF">“The Broadcasters,”</a> famous broadcaster <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barber">Red Barber</a> celebrated the medium’s pioneers, including Graham McNamee. </p>
<p>As Barber explained, what made them so great was “that nobody had ever been called upon before to do such work. They had to go out and do it from scratch. If ever a man did pure, original work, it was Graham McNamee.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59293/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Radio legend Graham McNamee was baseball’s first broadcast star. So why did it take 74 years for the National Baseball Hall of Fame to honor him?James Walker, Executive Director, International Association for Communication and Sport, Emeritus Professor of Communication, Saint Xavier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/582472016-04-25T05:34:41Z2016-04-25T05:34:41ZBad news: why TV is going the same way as print journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119833/original/image-20160422-17385-72po8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DeshaCAM</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Television news has been – and currently remains – the <a href="http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/state-of-the-news-media-2015/">most powerful platform in the world for news and information</a>. For more than 50 years, it enjoyed a privileged position in a low-choice environment with large audiences and high levels of trust. But of course the internet has changed that. We now live in a high-choice environment with rapid changes in technology and consumption to which TV news is having to adapt. </p>
<p>These changes have been known and debated for more than a decade with <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/future-of-broadcast-tv-under-scrutiny-everyone-should-be-reevaluating/">warnings about the imminent end of scheduled TV</a> – so many take comfort from its continuing strength. But, as with many structural changes, the impact is often overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term. </p>
<p>Our new report from the <a href="http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/What%20is%20happening%20to%20television%20news.pdf">Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism</a>, suggests the long-term impact is about to hit TV news. The full force of digital disruption which has run through the newspaper industry is set to do the same to TV News. </p>
<p>Viewing in countries <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2015/the-total-audience-report-q3-2015.html">such as the US</a> <a>and the UK</a> has declined by 3%-4% per year on average since 2012. These declines are directly comparable to the declines in print newspaper circulation in the 2000s. If compounded over 10 years, the result is a decline in viewing of a quarter or more. The <a href="http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/tv-research/news/2015/News_consumption_in_the_UK_2015_report.pdf">average audience</a> of many television news programs is by now older than the average audience of many print newspapers. The decline in viewing among younger people is far more pronounced, both for television viewing in general and for television news specifically. Under these conditions, it seems improbable that TV news will remain the dominant force it was in the second half of the 20th century.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"650937686883176448"}"></div></p>
<p>In tandem, we see a <a href="https://contently.com/strategist/2015/07/06/the-explosive-growth-of-online-video-in-5-charts/">rapid rise in video viewing online</a> and on mobile driven by video-on-demand sites, streaming services and video sharing and social media platforms. And although services – including Netflix, iPlayer and Amazon Prime – have been good for TV drama or entertainment, news and current affairs have not found a clear place in this changing environment.</p>
<h2>New tricks</h2>
<p>The implications for journalism are potentially profound. Even as newspapers waned and digital media waxed in the 1990s and early 2000s, television remained the single most important and most widely used platform for news in many countries – and both private and public television news providers invested serious money in journalism serving international, national, and local audiences. But both the reach and the revenue will decline in the years ahead.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119821/original/image-20160422-17396-12uslh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119821/original/image-20160422-17396-12uslh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119821/original/image-20160422-17396-12uslh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119821/original/image-20160422-17396-12uslh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119821/original/image-20160422-17396-12uslh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119821/original/image-20160422-17396-12uslh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119821/original/image-20160422-17396-12uslh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">TV news must reinvent itself to keep audiences loyal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oleksiy Mark</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Video journalism has to reinvent itself for the age of social and mobile consumption. It faces deep challenges. What works on TV does not work on a mobile screen or as a silent autoplay video in a social media news stream. More significantly, the public interest ethos of much broadcast news in developed markets is far harder to demonstrate in a short clip or on a mobile phone. </p>
<p>Broadcasters are not necessarily the most important or most able players in such environments. Their formats, cultures and workflows are designed for different purposes. In the “click-and-share” world, pure digital players with fewer overheads, niche audience targets and new approaches have some major advantages.</p>
<h2>Age of algorithms</h2>
<p>There are many innovations being tried by broadcasters – and if one thing is clear it is that as yet there is no clear recipe for success. This of course does not take away the urgency of experimenting to find one. TV news broadcasters have many assets – <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/30/which-news-organization-is-the-most-trusted-the-answer-is-complicated/">including big, trusted brands</a>, creative talent and high quality content. But they have to find entirely new ways of putting those elements together to achieve traction online. </p>
<p>In doing so, they risk surrendering the strategic advantages of the past. Traditionally, big media’s strength came from control of limited distribution– whether it was a printing press or broadcast licence. Today, in the search for big online audiences and revenue, <a href="http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/media-owners-face-distribution-dilemma/1390010">control of distribution is being ceded to social networks</a> whose algorithms determine when, where and how media organisations’ content is seen. And they can change that overnight with little or no discussion, transparency or accountability. </p>
<p>So as TV news broadcasters experiment with digital formats (from <a href="https://www.instagram.com/bbcnews/">short sharable clips</a>, to longer form <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/tag/documentary">immersive films</a>, to live streaming or even <a href="https://corporate.sky.com/media-centre/news-page/2015/sky-news-takes-viewers-to-the-heart-of-the-story-with-virtual-reality-report">virtual reality</a> experiences) they also have to negotiate a new place in a media pecking order dominated by the technology giants. </p>
<p>The biggest battle for the television industry is yet to come. It will involve a fight for attention, for brand visibility, for control of content and for access to the data that helps one understand the audience and unlocks commercial opportunities. Above all, it will be a fight to offer differentiated content in the most convenient way as consumers embrace new technologies and develop new habits and expectations. </p>
<p>This is perhaps the biggest challenge for television news – how to reinvent its core social and political mission in a new environment and find ways of resourcing it. The question should not be what will replace traditional television news. Nothing will. The question has to be how can we move beyond television news as we know it?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rasmus Kleis Nielsen receives funding from Google’s Digital News Initiative.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Sambrook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The latest research shows that people are deserting TV for digital media. This is especially true of broadcast news.Richard Sambrook, Professor of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityRasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of Research, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/532142016-01-15T03:52:01Z2016-01-15T03:52:01ZAl Jazeera to close in America: the future will not be broadcast<p>Yesterday came the <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/1/13/al-jazeera-america-to-close-down.html">surprising announcement</a> that Al Jazeera America (AJAM), the not even three-year-old US news franchise of the Arab media giant, was shutting down. Come April this year, up to 800 journalists may be looking for work and <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/al-jazeera-to-shut-down-american-news-channel-1452713303">more than US$2 billion of Qatari government money</a> will have been spent on what many consider a failed venture.</p>
<p>While several factors were likely at play in Al Jazeera’s decision to close AJAM, it ultimately comes down to money. The collapse in global oil prices is having a particularly severe impact on the economies of the Persian Gulf, forcing the government of Qatar to do the same <a href="http://dohanews.co/spending-slashed-qatar-prepares-run-qr46-5-billion-deficit/">across-the-board belt tightening</a> as its neighbouring states. Al Jazeera’s Doha-based operations were last year hit by budget cuts and just today, Qatari petrol prices which are set and subsidised by the government were <a href="http://dohanews.co/qatar-increases-petrol-prices-from-midnight-tonight/">raised by 30-35% in a shock decision</a> that was surely not taken lightly.</p>
<p>As explanation for its closure, AJAM cited a “simply [un]sustainable” business model “in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace”. But it’s worth remembering that AJAM, like most of its 24-hour news competitors, was not launched to generate profit. The rolling television news business is largely about prestige and influence, and Qatar has demonstrated over 20 years that it is prepared to pay handsomely for those things. But with pitiful ratings and no real prospect of improvement, Al Jazeera and its benefactors seem to have decided that the cost of AJAM was not worth the tiny returns it generated.</p>
<p>Part of the reason AJAM failed in the US was its decision to pursue traditional broadcast distribution via cable. As Al Jazeera researcher William Youmans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/01/14/this-is-what-doomed-al-jazeera-america/">noted</a>, restrictions placed on AJAM by cable providers were onerous and succeeded in preventing any significant leakage of content from the cable networks’ walled gardens to other platforms.</p>
<p>These restrictions forced potential AJAM viewers to be sitting in front of a TV set subscribed to the correct cable package and watching in real time. In 2016, when consumers expect to be able to dial up whatever content they want, on whatever device or platform they want, at whatever time they want, broadcasting exclusively at the wrong end of the cable dial is a sure path to failure.</p>
<p>Al Jazeera was also forced by its AJAM cable contracts to restrict American access to the enormously popular Al Jazeera English (AJE) livestream and its other online video content. AJAM’s failure is a testament to how ineffective this measure was in transitioning existing American Al Jazeera viewers to the new franchise.</p>
<p>In contrast, AJE, based in Qatar and broadcasting around the world via a multitude of platforms, is free to create and distribute content however it wishes. Television is still very much AJE’s primary focus, but its online arm is increasingly central to the channel’s operation. </p>
<p>While only one TV signal is beamed across the world to all viewers no matter where they are, AJE’s online arm targets specific content at different users based on a whole range of factors such as geographical location, social media preferences and the like. A large contingent of online journalists works alongside the main newsroom to augment the television output and create unique digital-only material. As a result, many AJE consumers never or rarely tune into the channel’s main TV signal.</p>
<p>Similarly, Al Jazeera’s digital-first startup, <a href="http://ajplus.net/english/">AJ+</a>, is going from strength to strength delivering short, sharp, engaging and shareable news content over social media networks and mobile apps. Barely a year old, the channel attracted <a href="http://digiday.com/publishers/al-jazeeras-distributed-content-unit-generated-2-2-bil-facebook-video-views-2015/">over 2 billion views</a> on Facebook alone in 2015.</p>
<p>Al Jazeera’s story in Australia is similar. The network certainly has a broadcast presence in Australia — primarily via AJE’s content-sharing partnerships with the ABC and SBS — but it is online that Al Jazeera is having the most impact. Despite its relatively low population, my own research (forthcoming) shows that Australia is the third-largest global source of traffic for AJE content online and that this Australian online audience continues to grow fast.</p>
<p>AJAM’s closure is a reminder that any of Al Jazeera’s operations could be wound up at a moment’s notice with the stroke of a pen. Having said that, it is difficult to foresee the same fate for AJE or the Arabic-language Al Jazeera channel any time soon. Unlike AJAM, those channels (despite recent challenges) remain enormously influential and probably continue to represent a valuable return on the government’s investment.</p>
<p>There is, however, one important lesson in AJAM’s closure for all media organisations in 2016, whether they exist for profit or for influence: the future of media is definitely not broadcast.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53214/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Bridges worked for Al Jazeera English on a freelance basis from 2010-2011.
Scott is the Managing Director of Australia-Middle East Journalism Exchange (AMEJE), a not-for-profit organisation that facilitates study tours for student journalists between Australia and the Middle East. AMEJE's study tours receive in-kind support from the Embassy of the State of Qatar in Australia.</span></em></p>Al Jazeera America was not launched to make a profit, but its traditional broadcast distribution model meant it also lacked influence.Scott Bridges, PhD candidate, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/459852015-10-27T10:09:50Z2015-10-27T10:09:50ZThe humble (ad-free!) origins of the first World Series broadcasts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99690/original/image-20151026-18458-kxfvrf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Failed singer Graham McNamee was baseball's first celebrity broadcaster.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=bRbvWq7uk5nnVhvIWWWZhA&searchterm=baseball%20radio&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=244389259">'Graham McNamee' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year, FOX Sports paid Major League Baseball <a href="http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8453054/major-league-baseball-completes-eight-year-deal-fox-turner-sports">about half a billion dollars</a> for the rights to broadcast the national pastime. </p>
<p>While the package includes some playoff games and regular season contests, the crown jewel is still the World Series; despite decades of declining ratings, baseball’s postseason is still a revenue machine. </p>
<p>But World Series radio broadcasts had humble beginnings, which I detail in my recent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Crack-Bat-History-Baseball-Radio/dp/0803245009">Crack of the Bat: A History of Baseball on the Radio</a>. </p>
<p>In fact, for the first 13 World Series broadcasts, radio networks paid zilch to carry the national pastime’s showcase tournament. The broadcasts started as a promotion for a new radio station and coverage was amateurish. In fact, the first voice on the first live broadcast of a World Series didn’t even know the score at the end of one game. </p>
<p>In October 1921, WJZ, a new station based out of Newark, New Jersey, needed a big event to announce its arrival in the New York metro area. The all-Gotham series between the Giants and Yankees (eventually won by the Giants, five games to three) provided the perfect opportunity. </p>
<p>The voice for this first radio World Series belonged to a Westinghouse engineer named Tom Cowan, but its eyes belonged to another. Unlike Cowan, Newark Call newspaper reporter Sandy Hunt was actually at the Polo Grounds.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GtJ6ISp0hxU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Footage from the 1921 World Series, which pitted the New York Yankees against the New York Giants.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hunt relayed the plays by telephone to Cowan, who was lodged in a cramped 15-by-20-foot “contractor’s shack” atop Newark’s Edison plant, where the WJZ transmitter was located. In his calls of the games, Cowan simply parroted whatever Hunt told him – mind-numbing work that offered few breaks. </p>
<p>After one exhausting game, Cowan <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/reminiscences-of-thomas-h-cowan-oral-history-1951/oclc/122565183">reported</a> he “couldn’t even collect [his] thoughts enough to tell who had won.” When a WJZ colleague asked him who won, he could only say, “I don’t know, I just work here.”</p>
<p>In 1922, the two-person team was replaced by a single eyewitness at the games – and a famous one, at that. Grantland Rice, perhaps the best-known sportswriter of the day, traded in his typewriter for a microphone during the World Series rematch between the Yankees and Giants. </p>
<p>While offering solid description, Rice would occasionally take extended breaks to “rest his voice,” leaving listeners adrift for minutes at a time. Like Cowan, Rice found the new communication medium daunting; he would later tell legendary commentator Red Barber that one radio World Series “was enough for me for all of my life.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99681/original/image-20151026-18424-349eq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99681/original/image-20151026-18424-349eq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=702&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99681/original/image-20151026-18424-349eq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=702&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99681/original/image-20151026-18424-349eq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=702&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99681/original/image-20151026-18424-349eq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99681/original/image-20151026-18424-349eq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99681/original/image-20151026-18424-349eq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For Grantland Rice, announcing one World Series was enough.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.irishlegends.com/pages/reflections/reflections57.html">irishlegends.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After these early experiments, National League owners, fearing that broadcasts would hurt World Series attendance, voted to end all World Series coverage. But the new commissioner, a former federal judge named Kenesaw Mountain Landis, overruled them. Landis viewed the nation’s newest mass medium as a potent promotional machine, and developed a policy promoting the widest possible coverage of the games: all stations and networks would be welcomed to cover the games for free. </p>
<p>The next year, 1923, Graham McNamee, a failed singer, became the nation’s first “superstar” sports announcer. For the next several years, he announced the World Series over RCA’s regional network and, later, NBC’s national network. In 1927, CBS joined NBC in providing national radio coverage for the World Series. A third radio network, the Mutual Broadcasting System, would join the fray in 1935. </p>
<p>Interestingly, the networks initially saw coverage of the World Series as a public service, with no sponsors and no commercials. The radio networks supplied the announcers, paid the AT&T line charges and essentially donated airtime to bring the World Series to the nation’s rapidly expanding radio audience. </p>
<p>In the process, Major League Baseball reached a national audience, while the networks became identified with the country’s most popular sport. </p>
<p>However, as attendance and revenues declined in the pit of the Great Depression, Commissioner Landis looked to radio for a new revenue stream. </p>
<p>Over the years, many companies approached the networks with offers to sponsor the World Series. But the networks feared a backlash if the games were broadcast with a commercial sponsor. </p>
<p>Back then, the advertising supported model of broadcasting was not fully entrenched; unlike today, listeners didn’t simply assume commercial interruptions would take place. </p>
<p>Even the pro-business, future Republican president Herbert Hoover <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Sponsor-Potentates-Classics-Communication/dp/0765805472">thought it</a> “inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for [radio] service…to be drowned in advertising chatter.” </p>
<p>As one NBC executive put it, “The minute we begin to commercialize this type of service we will soon have difficulties on our hands from various groups that are not friendly to broadcasting.” </p>
<p>Despite the chance of listener backlash for signing on sponsors, in 1934 Landis went on to sign a US$100,000 deal with the Ford Motor Company to sponsor the World Series. </p>
<p>The players got 42% of the take, and the clubs took the rest. Both parties were overjoyed with the commissioner’s radio windfall. The Ford deal made the World Series too valuable to remain unsponsored, ending the era of sports programming as a public service.</p>
<p>Landis still insisted that the maximum number of networks and stations carry the games, and throughout the 1930s, the World Series saturated the airways each October. Sponsors, however, balked at paying network charges for redundant coverage on multiple networks; by 1938 no sponsor could be found. </p>
<p>Landis quickly adjusted to the changing realities of radio advertising by granting exclusive rights to broadcast and sponsor the event, which would focus the attention of audiences on one network and one company.</p>
<p>In 1939, Landis granted Mutual exclusive rights to broadcast that year’s World Series, with an option for the 1940 contests. Meanwhile, Gillette signed on to sponsor the World Series at a cost of $100,000. But in paying only one network, they dramatically reduced the distribution costs. (Other stations could take the feed if they paid the line charges.) </p>
<p>Mutual would maintain exclusive radio rights until 1957 while Gillette was the exclusive sponsor on radio – and, later, television – until 1966. </p>
<p>Landis’ contract established the modern structure of World Series rights: sponsorship on a single network. Network exclusivity made the games more valuable for the carrying network, but also reduced the radio (and, eventfully, television) footprint of the World Series. </p>
<p>As the NFL exploded in popularity and the number of postseason baseball games and competing television networks rose in the 1980s and 1990s, the supremacy of the World Series in the national consciousness faded. While networks continued to pay higher rights fees to cover the World Series, <a href="http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ws/wstv.shtml">the television audience for the games declined</a> from a high of 44.3 million viewers in 1978 to a low of 12.7 million in 2012. </p>
<p>When it was unsponsored and on every network, the World Series became the “Fall Classic.” Meanwhile, sponsorship and exclusivity increased revenue beyond Judge Landis’ wildest dreams. </p>
<p>And, fortunately for fans, every announcer since 1921 has known the score at game’s end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45985/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The first World Series radio broadcasts were a far cry from today’s pricey television productions.James Walker, Executive Director, International Association for Communication and Sport, Emeritus Professor of Communication, Saint Xavier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/415652015-05-09T11:17:38Z2015-05-09T11:17:38ZAn old media election, but at least we got a few good gags<p>The secret ballot gives voters the chance to pulp punditry and polls on a scale which we see only very rarely. As the scale of the Conservative victory became clear, thousands of tons of paper, millions of words and many hours of talking heads onscreen were trashed and forgotten as those speculations collided with facts.</p>
<p>The media makes two rapid adjustments. The language of permanent coalition politics and all its complexities goes back into cold storage, to be replaced by a more usual discussion of cabinet-making on the weekend after voting. And perhaps for the next election or two, “neck-and-neck” polls will not dominate horse-race coverage as it has this time.</p>
<p>Politicians and journalists should recall their own biases as they make fun of the poor pollsters. Politicians like “neck-and-neck” because it gets out the vote; editors love a close race because it makes a better story. Both groups over-invested in a convenient description.</p>
<p>A miserably dull and rigidly-controlled campaign which never tested economic pretences and evasions nevertheless produced a surprising and decisive outcome. British politics will now be dominated – until the next general election in 2020 and most probably beyond – by the transformed politics of Scotland. The prediction that the SNP would wipe out the Scottish Labour Party at Westminster did turn out to be right.</p>
<p>During the campaign, many metropolitan reporters travelled north of the border and were surprised to discover what an interesting place Scotland is. Other reporters will now tread the same path, whether there is a second independence referendum or not. As this parliament unrolls, Scotland’s position inside the United Kingdom will become entangled with the now inevitable EU referendum in 2017.</p>
<p>One prediction about the media’s election can be made with complete confidence: the argument about malign media influence working against Labour will revive. A large majority of national newspapers came out in favour of either the Tories or the coalition. Some of the slants and omissions were inexcusable.</p>
<p>The Sun will be slated for both cynical hypocrisy (<a href="https://theconversation.com/two-faced-sun-shows-rupert-can-swing-both-ways-if-theres-something-in-it-for-him-41111">coming out for Cameron in the south and for the SNP north of the border</a>) and bias. On the bias charge, it should be noted that the Mirror was no better in its anti-Tory stories which, <a href="http://electionunspun.net/?select-categories%5B%5D=partisanship-unspun">the Media Standards Trust noted</a>, were slightly more numerous than The Sun’s in the other direction. In truth, each one was as bad as the other.</p>
<p>When the old and familiar arguments about the press barons ricochet, bear the following facts in mind. By any measure – total viewers, reach, time spent – the largest single source of news on elections or anything else is the BBC, whose political neutrality is one of the most strictly regulated in the world. Labour governments have managed in the past to be elected despite the “Tory press”. And while online and printed newspapers may provide broadcasters with agenda and tone, the circulation and clout of national newspapers is in steep decline.</p>
<p>But despite the fading influence of “the press”, the election campaign was not marked out as the “digital”, “online” or “social media” election. Online media enlivened coverage and produced graphics which explained the intricacies of minority governments, but they did so alongside television. Party leaders debates began with a huge chorus of leaders which produced a stiff and incoherent discussion and finished with party leaders being roasted by voters.</p>
<h2>All passion spent</h2>
<p>That last television debate actually produced the “passion” which party leaders talked about and failed to generate. The passion felt by those voters in the studio was mistrust and dislike of the political class. At a late point in the campaign, YouGov <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/04/24/ranking-coalitions/">was reporting</a> net negative ratings for all plausible government coalitions.</p>
<p>In one important respect, online media have added to the gaiety of the nation at election time. Fast visual jokes are now shared in huge volumes at great speed. Ed Miliband both enjoyed and suffered from this new pastime. Anyone <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3072859/Ed-Miliband-wrote-epitaph-8-foot-tombstone-writes-JAMES-SLACK.html">producing a large tablet</a> on the campaign trail should expect to be mocked up as Moses.</p>
<p>The fact that Labour did not extend its appeal beyond its heartlands and core vote was a strategic mistake for which Miliband is responsible; but his own campaigning improved his image. The <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3032823/Red-Ed-s-tangled-love-life-Miliband-s-wife-tells-fury-meeting-unattached-Ed-learn-seeing-hostess-just-one-number-relationships-women-clique.html">Daily Mail “revealed”</a> that Miliband had gone out with a number of glamorous, high-profile women before he married. This boost from an unexpected quarter for “Red Ed’s” rather earnest style started a social media “Milifandom” meme. My personal favourite was the Labour leader as James Dean.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81081/original/image-20150509-22782-1jepgut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81081/original/image-20150509-22782-1jepgut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81081/original/image-20150509-22782-1jepgut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81081/original/image-20150509-22782-1jepgut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81081/original/image-20150509-22782-1jepgut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81081/original/image-20150509-22782-1jepgut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81081/original/image-20150509-22782-1jepgut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rebel without a party.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">via cooledmiliband.tumblr.com</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Twitter and other instant social media perhaps featured less than expected because there was no big gaffe to go viral. They say that army generals are always fighting the last war; politicians are the same. Campaign bosses were terrified by a re-run of a catastrophic moment of unintended authenticity. In 2010 the worst of those was Gordon Brown’s “bigot” moment; whatever divided the big parties, they all wanted to eliminate that risk. Live encounters with unscreened voters were left to minor parties with neither the wish nor the resources to handpick audiences.</p>
<h2>And the winners are…</h2>
<p>The laurels for the best media coverage go to the sites and publications which steered round the national horse-race preoccupations which are the default options for lazy newsrooms. Bored by motionless poll numbers, small teams could zoom in on local struggles as pavement level. On many occasions, news media newcomers thought more imaginatively and reported in more detail than the older newsrooms more inclined to think in familiar templates and formulas.</p>
<p>Politico, which only began publishing in Europe as the campaign began, ran a <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/galloway-bradford-elections-uk-ge2015/">terrifying piece by Ben Judah</a> on being roughed up by heavies at a meeting run by George Galloway’s campaign in Bradford West. The New Statesman ran excellent blogs and began detailed profiles of individual constituencies impressively early. No one who had read any of this material from a site and magazine which came out for Labour could have been surprised by the inroads which Ukip made into the Labour vote.</p>
<p>A campaign which generated so little news, drama or facts was a severe test for writers with the thankless task of summarising it. The Financial Times made a very smart move by giving that task to their <a href="http://www.ft.com/comment/columnists/janan-ganesh">commentator Janan Ganesh</a>, who managed day after day, to say something worth reading in a very few words.</p>
<p>The best raw material for reporters who wanted to do something original was in Scotland. There was tragedy: the long narrative arc of the Labour Party neglecting and taking for granted the loyalty of its voters over many years and the vengeance of those same voters in 2015.</p>
<p>Scotland produced some fine analytic reporting: the actual spending figures from the SNP’s period in power in Scotland showed a prudent, perhaps even austere, party in government. Pointing this out made not a dent in the SNP’s entirely successful claim to be the only hope of defence against the villainous architects of austerity in London. Fact-checking does not always puncture rhetoric or fantasy.</p>
<p>And Scotland generated a majority of the best gags. A Scottish Labour MP on the mood: “It’s like the last days of Rome. Without sex. Or wine. In fact, with none of the fun bits.”</p>
<p>We may soon regret the passing such indiscretions. In a world of driverless cars and share trading conducted by algorithms, will politicians get a technological upgrade? “One day soon,” wrote Simon Kuper of the FT, “robots will write politicians’ lines for them. It won’t be hard.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41565/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Brock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This was supposed to be the “social media election” but in the end it was those who moved beyond horse-race journalism, on whatever platform, who excelled.George Brock, Professor of Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.