Journalism in the Pandemic: Public Support, but not from Advertisers

If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that access to accurate, trustworthy and credible sources of news and information has never been more important.

This is good news for journalism and responsible news media which are witnessing an unprecedented surge of public support in the midst of lockdown. 

According to research from the University of Oxford's Reuters Institute, which has been monitoring the UK population’s attitudes to news during the pandemic, the BBC and the Guardian’s coverage of the coronavirus outbreak is considered to be substantially better than other British news outlets.

Mainstream news media have consistently reached record audiences over the last two months, but not all of them are trusted. The Sun and the Mail were the only national newspapers where more people felt they were doing a “bad job” of reporting on the pandemic.

The study shows that the BBC dominates online news, with 37% of the population turning to the corporation’s website for coronavirus news. In all, television broadcasters continue to outrank newspapers for trust ratings and audience levels.

But there’s still a trust problem. The population is more approving of how the government has handled the crisis than how the media has covered it. Around a quarter of the population feel news outlets exaggerate the severity of the crisis.

The fact that news websites have seen record audiences in recent months should be good news for cash-strapped media, but it isn’t.

For years commercial news outlets have faced a continuing collapse in the advertising market. Competition for advertising from big tech companies and a fall in print newspaper sales have destroyed their finances.

The situation is made worse by the fact that the big tech companies like Google appear to be filtering adverts alongside coronavirus-related content on news websites. 

Many brands are using content filters during the pandemic, which prevent their ads from running next to stories including specific terms such as “coronavirus” and “pandemic”. According to the Financial Times, even mentioning “Boris Johnson” will deter some advertisers!

With algorithms diverting advertising and much-needed revenue away from news media that provide useful and popular pandemic coverage there has been a predictable howl of protest from publishers.

Their complaint is, for once, entirely legitimate. At a time when people are yearning for access to useful and truthful information, news outlets should be encouraged to focus on news that will help people to keep safe.

The tech companies are interested, first and foremost, in keeping their advertisers happy and by allowing them to filter out Covid-19 -- effectively penalising journalists for giving the public the information they need – they open the door to more media sensationalism and click bait content.

So far Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others have been actively promoting public health messages during the crisis, but the tweaking of algorithms to downgrade public interest news is an example of how when it comes to the crunch they will choose to maintain their lucrative business model rather than serve the public interest.