Society will lose should traditional media collapse

So much has been said about media, particularly the fate of traditional media. Those who study journalism pronounce the death of journalism and how changes in technology and society have created significant new players who are now the new acts in town.

But as Kenya teetered towards the cliff in the recent mass actions, you could hear the question regarding the potential players who could intervene being raised. One of those voices was to ask what role the media could play during such moments of national crisis.

It is one thing to circulate images and messages on social media, but a completely different matter for those same images to appear in traditional media.

In traditional media, those images and voices gain authenticity, credibility, and affirmation that the events happened as presented. In some estimation, the Kenyan media has not disappointed; the leading broadcasters started issuing editorial commentaries preceding prime-time news bulletin.

The editorials started taking a life of their own and circulated on social media platforms long after the news bulleting had ended, lengthening the life cycle of the messages.

But good journalism must be a sharp double-edged sword cutting both sides and standing up for what is right as they understand it. Journalism’s observer position places journalists in an excellent spot to see the events as they unfold from both sides.

This is a role that no institution is better suited to play for the moment. Granted, over the last decade, many media platforms, particularly of the social type, have sprung up and eaten into the space of traditional media.
The challenges the traditional media have faced and continue to face have been ably documented: falling circulation, fewer eyeballs on the screens, decreasing revenue and increasingly limited media influence.
Evangelists of social media, and they are many, emphasise on the power of social media in society. But what happens when society begins to fall apart? Can the power of social media be harnessed to make it a voice of reason in society to call that society back to order?

Maybe we will end up in that space soon. The evolution in social media has been staggering, with new products emerging within a short span of time and often acquiring a life of their own as they challenge the way things have been done previously.

Many characteristics of traditional media place it in a pole position to intervene on social issues, a role that no other institution can play for the moment with similar effectiveness. It has a known address, credentials of professionalism, long history to fall back onto that lends it credibility and trust, and conviction of its commitment to social order, among other factors.

While there is no denying that traditional media face massive sustainability issues in the long run, society will be poorer should traditional media collapse altogether. For now, no institution has come up that will replace the role of traditional media, that voice of objective information and intervention during moments of crisis.
Can social media, for example, be relied upon to cover war, be the source of information during a disaster, build consensus and seek to move the nation forward? Social media has many qualities, such as speed, egalitarianism, empowering particularly disadvantaged constituencies and the fact that it has a much wider spread. But it also has its challenges.

Governments may find it near impossible to govern without proper communication channels that provide a one-stop window to access verified information. Traditional media may have many challenges. However, for the sake of social stability, governments, more specifically, but society in general, must continue to explore mechanisms to ensure that a mechanism of providing a verified source of information exists.

At the moment, the sure bet is to sustain the traditional media, at least until better options emerge.

—The writer is the Dean, School of Communication, Daystar University