Public Affairs

Media in transition

George Brock discusses the changing media landscape with Peter Cheney. Privacy stands out as the most pressing ethical issue going forward.

A forty-year career in print journalism means that George Brock is well-placed to commentate on the changing nature of his trade. Now as a Professor of Journalism at City University London, he views privacy as the key ethical issue for the media – not just for now but for the next two decades.

The “collision” between privacy and free expression is “never going to be solved definitively but has to be managed,” Brock comments. He adds: “I don’t think we’ve really seen the full effects of what can be done to privacy by digital technology which gives you an extremely rapid, frictionless, easy, cheap way of capturing and distributing information.”

The Leveson Inquiry “was really an inquiry about privacy” but did not consider the full scope of the subject. He sees a need to define what is private “all over again” and finds that, among media lawyers, there is a strong view that the law is not keeping up with technological change.

Brock started reporting at The Yorkshire Evening Press and The Observer, before joining The Times in 1981. In his 28 years on the paper, his roles ranged from feature editor to heading up the Brussels bureau. Looking back at his career’s beginnings, he recalls: “There were three or four terrestrial TV channels, about the same number of national newspapers as there are now, very few local radio stations and no independent radio stations.”

Internet, cable and satellite were all unknown. He characterises the flow of news back then as being from “a few to a many” and becoming a journalist was similar to joining a “privileged priesthood”.

He adds: “There are lots of things about journalism that haven’t changed. You are trying to disclose information that people don’t want disclosed. You’re trying to do it right. You’re trying to trying to make it useful to people and important. None of that changes in the slightest but the circumstances and the context have changed very, very radically indeed.”

One of the often overlooked aspects of change is that the media is only starting to work through the consequences “of having so much information.” It’s a matter of the “management of abundance” and there has also been a return to uncertainty and improvisation – and therefore a need to be well-informed and flexible.

“If you’re not well-informed and you’re not flexible, now that the media is chaotic, anarchic, fast-changing [and] very plural, you’re not likely to succeed,” Brock reflects, adding that this holds true for PR professionals, journalists and organisations which want to maintain a positive profile.

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