The Perils of the Digital Paywalls
By: Mehboob Khan
Tags: World, Society, News, Equality, Fake News

The Perils of the Digital Paywalls

Welcome to the era of information inequality

Photo by Misha Voguel from Pexels

“It’s a big question for democracy: The business model of news is changing, That’s a big challenge for the world.” — BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti

The tremors from the meteoric rise of the internet giants have shaken up the news industry. Globally, a greater number of people are consuming news through social media platforms, cutting the streams of revenue that used to keep traditional newspapers in circulation.

To compensate for the lost revenue, papers are increasingly erecting digital paywalls. The online news that people used to get for free is paid for now. On one side, the benefits of subscription-based news are quite broad. Apart from helping them stay afloat, the news organizations can now focus on delivering fact-based news and not waste time chasing advertising money, which forced them to publish more clickbaity content. It looks to be the ideal model for the fourth pillar of democracy.

On the other hand, what the digital paywall does is what every other wall is meant to do. It restricts access. It keeps the information accessible to only a privileged few. Many people who can’t pay for the news are deprived of factually correct and unbiased journalism. And like how with the rise of capitalism the chasm between the rich and the poor is growing wider every passing day. With the rise of the information age, the chasm between the elites and the masses will grow even wider, courtesy — the paywalls.

You thought rising inequality is dangerous for society? Hold on and fasten your seatbelts. You are entering an era where not only the rise in economic inequality is more acute, exacerbated by the pandemic, but the rise in information inequality is even more exponential. And the ones who are already grappling with inequality are now feeding on fake news too. A recipe for disaster?

Informed citizens are happy citizens

“Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.” — Robin Morgan

Journalism is not just about delivering factually correct content. We can say it to be the fourth pillar of democracy — Executive, Legislature, Judiciary being the other three, as it keeps all the other institutions in check. But if we learn anything from history, it’s that the executive and sometimes even the judiciary can become the pillars on which not democracy, but the ruling government rests.

Unbiased journalism thus becomes a hallmark of a progressive democratic nation. If a nation has an independent press, you know it’s having a functioning democracy. If we go through the World Happiness Index and the World Press Freedom Index, we notice that most of the countries that protect press freedom are the ones that are the happiest. On the contrary, countries, where the press is gagged, are the ones with the unhappiest people.

The United States and the United Kingdom, for instance, rank 45 and 35 respectively on the Freedom of Press Index and rank 18 and 13 on the Happiness Index. China and Russia rank 177 and 149 on the Press Freedom Index and 94 and 73 on the Happiness Index. Many studies including the one done at the University of Missouri have found that free and fair press has a large impact on the people’s happiness.

Now the important point to understand is that journalism inherently doesn’t have the power to keep the cathedrals of power in check. It keeps the citizens of a nation well informed about the various policies of the government, which in turn shapes public opinion. It’s the well informed public which is reading factual news that reins in the government if they feel the policies are detrimental to them.

The Information Age

Enter the Information Age, where traditional journalism is losing ground to misinformation, fake news, disinformation campaigns, political narratives, and what not. Content is flowing freely. Everyone is a source of news now. Anyone can be a journalist. Anyone can be a reporter. Anyone can be an editor.

But not everyone can be an unbiased journalist. Not everyone will know how to keep their own prejudices miles away from the story they are publishing. Not everyone will know the values and ethics inherent to journalism.

And advertisers, unfortunately, favor data over truth and facts. And it’s not their fault. They have to find their customers and sell their products and services. Social media companies give them enough data to pinpoint their prospects.

According to the Pew Research Center, advertising revenue for newspapers in the United States fell from $37.8 billion in 2008 to $14.3 billion in 2018, a 62% decline. During the same time, newsroom employment dropped by nearly half.

So now all the advertisement money that was encouraging quality journalism has veered towards social media platforms, leaving the traditional media houses high and dry.

So what can the news organizations do?

Build a wall

Newspapers worldwide are erecting digital paywalls to compensate for the lost revenue. We have metered paywalls which news organizations such as The Economist, New York Times, and Washington Post have adopted. In this model, a few articles are free to read for everyone every month before the reader hits the paywall. This is the most popular subscription model in America with around 62% newspapers adopting it.

Then we have the hard paywall where non-subscribers only get a sneak peek of the content, and to read the entire article the reader must subscribe. The Times of London is one such organization that follows this approach.

Then comes the freemium model where some content is free and value-add content is charged.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have news organizations such as The Guardian which keeps its content free but readers can support the organization by contributing as less as $1.

The problem

The digital paywall does what every other paywall is meant to do: create divisions.

Restricting information to a privileged few

What if Tim Berners-Lee had patented the internet, and it was available to only those who could pay for it. Can you visualize the jarring division that it would have created and the advantage that the wealthy would have over the poor? Forget about the whole internet. Just imagine if Wikipedia was behind the paywall.

Digital paywalls restrict the flow of information to the masses and in doing so leave them in a storm of information that lacks rigor and reeks propaganda.

News is not any other form of content. It’s a public good. Everyone has the right to free and fair investigative journalism to make an informed decision about their lives and about their representatives. By limiting access, we deny people their right to quality information.

Serving the privileged few

Furthermore, let’s dig deeper into the economic model that the major publications are saying will keep quality journalism alive. By erecting paywalls, the publications are basically separating the wheat from the chaff; the paying ones from the non-paying ones.

In turn, the advertising money will shift from free services to paid services. And the economic incentives will therefore nudge the news organization to cover stories that the paying customer would get hooked on.

In other words, the news organizations will favor reports that the paying customer is concerned about and the issues of the average person will take a back seat.

Echo chambers for the privileged few

If you have subscribed to a news service, you are highly unlikely to subscribe to another. Research has shown that people tend to read information that confirms their biases. When the news is free, however, people will stumble on a unique perspective one way or the other.

If you are paying for the news, then you will lock yourself in an echo chamber. And as already mentioned, since advertisement money is still chasing your attention, and economic considerations weigh over the essence of journalism, there are chances that the news you are reading is curated to confirm your biases.

The Solution

The situation might look grim, but that does not mean that news organizations have exhausted all their options. There are still ways with which we can keep news free for everyone without the publication going kaput.

Publicly funded media houses

The publicly funded media news has its perils. At some places, the information that the public receives is as good as the government’s intention of protecting democratic values. And many times the publicly owned news organizations have become the go-to channel for governments to spread their propaganda.

But that doesn’t mean that the model doesn’t work.

As reported in an article in The Washington Post, a non-profit, municipally owned newspaper was launched in 1919 in Los Angeles when the public was grappling with the fake news of the early 20th century — yes, fake news is not a 21st century problem. They declared it as the “peoples newspaper” and the “first municipal newspaper of the world.”

But, people rejected the idea in 1913, ostensibly, because of the misinformation campaign fanned by the local publishers.

As described in the article,

One post-mortem report described the paper as a “successful experiment” brought down by “active, determined opposition” from the city’s local business community.

Is the time ripe to experiment with such public models again?

The membership model

The Guardian membership model is the perfect example of how quality journalism can be accessible to everyone without necessarily paying for it.

The well-to-do members can donate to the publications and keep it afloat and profitable. In return, these paying members get access to certain stories or services which the non-paying readers won’t.

And this model works. For the financial year 2018/19, The Guardian reported a profit of £800000. It’s first in over two decades and only after three years into the membership model.

Revenue sharing partnerships with tech companies

Google recently decided to pay $1 billion to news publishers. In his blog post, Sundar Pichai, the Chief Executive of Google announced the partnerships with some leading publishers and further explained,

I have always valued quality journalism and believed that a vibrant news industry is critical to a functioning democratic society… It’s equally important to Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful… Alongside other companies, governments, and civic societies, we want to play our part by helping journalism in the 21st century not just survive, but thrive.

Social media companies are facing pressure from governments globally to pay for the content that gets published on their platforms. The Australian government recently drafted legislation to force Google and Facebook to pay for the news.

So, Facebook and Google are now developing platforms such as the Facebook Journalism Project and the Google News Initiative which will treat news publications as partners and therefore give them a slice of the revenue pie.

It might be the first step in a journey of thousand miles, but it definitely is in the right direction. And by partnering with news agencies, the social media companies can also deal with the scourge of fake news.

The Freemium model

Keeping most of the digital content free and charging for certain value add content is another way of keeping authentic news accessible to everyone. This is the second most popular model in America as pointed out in this report of the American Press Institute.

Most reputed news organizations have kept the Corona virus coverage free for everyone. Why? Because this information is a public good. If factual information about the virus doesn’t permeate in the society, misinformation can spread its wings and fan public hysteria.

Similarly, basic news reporting should be accessible to everyone. If it’s not, then fake news takes center stage.

Conclusion

We are in an era where news organizations are facing competition not only from other publications but also from social media platforms, bloggers, and other such content generators. Their revenue pie is shrinking every single day. And a digital paywall seems to be a way out of the doom and gloom.

But as discussed above, other revenue models can better serve people, with no one hitting the paywall.

Objective, well-investigated journalism is a public good. What the president did that jeopardized the role of the judiciary, how he did it, what are its consequences, how can we prevent it in future… All the information should be available to everyone and not only to a privileged few. The masses should be able to access all the arguments, all the judgments, all the public documents in a clean, understandable format.

They shouldn’t be reduced to a group of kids trying to get a sneak peek of the overall picture from a crack in the wall of a theater.

As said by Aaron Swartz,