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International Media Conference

Katrina Domingo

ABS-CBN News

MANILA — The audience’s lack of interest in hard news and current events is becoming one of the biggest threats to journalism, several journalists said on Tuesday at a forum that sought for ways to keep the sector relevant in the age of social media and artificial intelligence.While regulators used to be the biggest threat to journalism, the audience and their apathy is also affecting the relevance and sustainability of newsrooms, ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) anchor Karmina Constantino told other journalists attending the International Media Conference in Pasay.“The biggest threat really is not so much of an overt attack… but it is the seeming indifference of people,” said Constantino, who was named as the 2022 Marshall McLuhan Fellow for Excellence in Journalism.In Papua New Guinea, the public has yet to fully appreciate how a free and independent press works, Inside PNG news editor Sincha Dimara said.“Maybe in a way it’s underdeveloped because people do not grasp the idea of how the media operates, that the media is self regulatory,” she said.“It’s a learning curve for everybody to know,” she said.The Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report showed that overall trust in news in the Philippines was only at 38 percent, and only 16 percent said that they were willing to pay for online news content.Over 80 percent of Filipinos who were part of the said study turned to social media for their news fix.“Now everyone is talking about inclusive dialogue. You also need to look at the politics of that,” said Swe Win, editor in chief Myanmar Now.“The newsroom knows what it wants to do, we publish what we want, but in reality it is not,” he said.ABS-CBN anchor Karen Davila — who moderated the panel on “The State of Press Freedom in the Asia-Pacific Region” — noted that journalists have been trying to navigate how hard it should push back against government and regulators that now have the power to disseminate their own narratives via social media.“It’s really not black and white, but more on the gray,” Davila said.“People who are leaders who have that power try to manipulate the media industry,” Dimara added.“They just want publicity, but when it is bad publicity, they will blame the media,” she said.Newsrooms need to raise their own funds to remain independent from the control of elite power blocs, Hong Kong Free Press founder Tom Grundy said.“We have been fund raising… No tycoons, no shareholders. [It’s] run by journalists, we rely on small donations from a number of people,” he said.“I hoped at the beginning that we would have a more diverse income stream but its mostly readers,” he said.Newsrooms should be “relentless in publishing stories out there” even if some sectors have come to distrust the media, the ANC anchor said.“The pendulum will swing back to us and when it does, we really want to make sure that we’re still there.”

The audience’s lack of interest in hard news and current events is becoming one of the biggest threats to journalism, several journalists said on Tuesday at a forum that sought for ways to keep the sector relevant in the age of social media and artificial intelligence.

The audience’s lack of interest in hard news and current events is becoming one of the biggest threats to journalism, several journalists said on Tuesday at a forum that sought for ways to keep the sector relevant in the age of social media and artificial intelligence.

Some journalists see public’s ‘indifference’ to news as biggest threat

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Some journalists see public’s ‘indifference’ to news as biggest threat

Katrina Domingo,

ABS-CBN News

Published June 25, 2024 08:53 PM PHT

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Updated June 25, 2024 10:07 PM PHT

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International Media Conference

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