Beyond journalists' poor pay, save public media

• Consider subsidies, viable business models for public media

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THE PILGRIM, Friday, November 26, 2021

By now we all know what would happen the day there is no doctor: there would be total chaos in the world until the last person drops dead from a pandemic like COVID-19.

But what would happen in a country like Zambia if journalism collapsed?

This is the sort of scenario that Government and all civic-minded Zambians should imagine when I argue that we should not limit media reforms to salaries and press freedom, but we should also consider the need to introduce direct and indirect public financial support for sustainability of the news industry.

The problem of poor salaries is just a symptom of the larger market failure and existential crisis that journalism in Zambia—like everywhere else—is facing, with an already small media market being robbed by Google and Facebook.

Since journalism is essentially a democracy project that exists in the interest of good governance and transparent and accountable governments, Zambia should start considering a public solution to the profession’s woes.

Though I’m aware of recent consultative meetings between the Minister of Information and Media and the Minister of Finance and National Planning regarding public media challenges, I’m of the view that this country should hasten the design of subsidies or grants for public-interest journalism to stave off what appears to be an imminent collapse of the sector.

Let me state from the outset that consultative meetings like the one alluded to are not new because they are currently a trend in countries like the United States of America, where journalism scholars and practitioners have risen to debate alternative media business models that will allow news outlets to survive beyond diminishing advertising revenue and circulation.

Since news deserts (communities no longer served by local newspapers) continue to emerge and leading media houses are adopting attrition policies to cut costs amid digital competition, policy makers everywhere are asking the following question: should we consider state intervention or allow free market forces to impoverish and eventually kill the news industry?

Taken as a separate case, the dominant and preferred view in Zambia is that news organisations, whether public or private, should be able to run profitably through purely commercial business models or otherwise die.

But it is such commercialism that has led to public neglect for newspapers like Zambia Daily Mail and Times of Zambia, where circulation has been on a sharp decline since the 1990s.

The previous Government itself endorsed commercialism, which meant that newspapers like the Times of Zambia and Zambia Daily Mail would not run under a line ministry but as businesses expected to ultimately declare dividends under the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC).

But while the Zambia Daily Mail itself has tried to diversify its business portfolio by expanding its printing services, leveraging courier, and introducing web design services, the newspaper still finds itself falling back on advertising revenue which is being shrunk by online aggregators such as Google and Facebook.

So a responsive approach to a possible crash of advertising revenue in the news sector is for the Zambian Government to consider direct and indirect subsidies towards public-interest news media.

If the Government does not move in to support journalism, not only will the problem of poor salaries persist, but market hostility will swallow up the profession and its potential benefits for society.

As an example, Chile offers the best case of what would happen to a public broadcaster if its funding, which depends on commercial means like advertising, suddenly crumbled amid growing debt. The country’s Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) was in such a crisis until they resorted to Government-backed loans for survival.

The Zambian Government should therefore work hand in hand with industry players such as newspaper management teams themselves and media academics to develop a more flexible media business model that includes subsidies and grants supported by the public.

An obvious political economy argument that some stakeholders might level against such an approach is that it would erode media credibility and lead to editorial interference from the Government.

Such criticism, however, is not as tenable as it sounds because research shows that all developed democracies robustly provide subsidies directly or indirectly to the media.

In America alone, studies show that newspapers and magazines receive indirect support worth $1.2 billion a year through tax breaks and reduced postal rates.

A Government subsidy for the news sector in Zambia will help maintain media diversity with other media competitors funded by donors or business moguls, and it will ensure that public media remains the most effective vehicle for dissemination of important information and advancing Government’s development agenda.

Public media support for the Zambia Daily Mail, Times of Zambia and Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation can be achieved through tax relief or grants to pay service providers, or indeed taking over the wage bill of the media organisations.

A public subsidy for the newspapers could be designed like a ZNBC TV levy.

It has increasingly become undeniable that while mainstream or legacy media is not dying but merely evolving, they cannot negotiate the harsh business environment without state intervention through financial support.

The Ministry of Information and Media should therefore lead the pack on this issue and review the whole gamut of for-profit and non-profit media business models and select unique one that works for Zambia’s media market, one that that is flexible on commercial interests by accommodating direct or indirect support from the public.

The Zambian population needs the media more than the media need it.

And since it is the public media that demonstrably leads to rich political cultures and well-informed citizens, it should be the public’s role to save it through state intervention.

This column is published every Friday in Zambia's best-selling newspaper, the Zambia Daily Mail