The advent of Internet and social media have changed the way journalists frame their stories, Al Jazeera Plus managing director Dima Khatib told the World Media Summit Doha 2016 yesterday.
“The people have become the tool with which I make and disseminate my story,” she said, citing the audiences’ preference in selecting and “liking” the kind of content posted online.
Speaking about the impact of technology on new reporting, she also showed a video of a man who uses sword and fire in cutting women’s hair, which got more than 186mn views and around 3.4mn subscribers on Facebook. She felt a journalist like her no longer holds the authority of telling people what is true or not, which was not the case in the past.
“Before, when they see it on television, it was like sacred and it must be true, or because it was published in newspapers,” Khatib recalled.  
But now, she said journalists are obliged to prove the authenticity of their news report or video, especially when the public reacts to comments and direct messages.
“As a news organisation, I do not have that authority anymore,” she said. “Many times even if I prove it, people will question it and come up with ‘counter truth.’ As a journalist, I have to fight back with another ‘counter truth’ to convince them that I am telling the truth.”
While such set up serves as a big challenge to many journalists, she said that it also provided them an opportunity to use these reactions or feedback to frame and come up with better stories.
Al Jazeera has been doing this on the ground, according to Khatib saying their reporters connect news subjects and sources to those who post comments online.“For example, our reporter who is in Macedonia speaks with refugees and then translates to them the comments. Then he posts it back on the thread,” she added. “We do not own the platform where we operate and this is a true challenge.”
According to Daya Thussu, professor of International Communication at the University of Westminster in UK, about 8.8bn videos are watched on Youtube and 186mn photos are posted on Instagram daily. In addition, about 2.3bn GB of web traffic is used, 152mn call using Skype, 803mn tweets are on Twitter, 36mn purchases are made on Amazon, 4.2bn searches are made on Google and 207bn e-mails are sent daily.
The massive use of social media and Internet has also significantly posted huge decline in ad revenues of many new organisations such as newspapers and television networks, according to Thussu.
He said New York Times’ $3.5bn revenue in the year 2000 decreased to about $1.8bn in 2014 (14 years), which is more than 50% down. In the same period, Google grew from zero to $66mn. Earlier this month in the UK, The Independent newspaper also stopped its print edition.
“Digital natives such as Buzzfeed started publishing on Facebook instant articles while the traditional media however still struggles in pushing for distribution power,” he noted.
Khatib echoed Thussu’s statement saying the challenge now is how to control back over where to spread content by using technology to traditional media’s favour. “I would love to see a solution that would pioneer such a path.”