Messaging is the Message

The Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan was way ahead of his time in foreseeing how the digital age would transform the public sphere. The medium was indeed the message, and today the messaging app is the message.

On World Press Freedom Day on Saturday 3 May, journalists must remind ourselves that it is not only our freedom that needs to be protected. Freedom of press guarantees the public’s right to know, journalists are just defending the freedom of their fellow-citizens. 

Democracy and freedom of expression, by definition, go hand-in-hand. There can be no democracy without participation, and there is no participation without open communication. 

But today, democracy is in retreat across the world, a trend that has gone hand-in-hand and has been abetted by the uncontrolled spread of social media platforms. 

The world’s two most populous countries to Nepal’s north and south now have converging political systems and media landscapes. China’s phenomenal economic progress seems to have convinced its admirers that democracy and development are antithetical.  

Over the past century, the United States demonstrated that a free press and the free market were two sides of the same coin — open society needed to be defended to ensure accountability and economic growth. The First Amendment to the US Constitution laid down that the legislature should make no laws that infringed on complete freedom of expression.

Yet, the United States is proof now of how too much freedom can kill freedom. We now know that the liberty to say anything can mean we end up saying nothing. There can be so much freedom that the truth can be buried in an avalanche of lies. The free-for-all on the internet is merely an illusion of freedom.

Democracy allows citizens even the freedom to destroy democracy itself. With democracies in decay worldwide, media as the fourth pillar of democracy is turning into a pillar of authoritarianism.

Hyper-local digital media content is so polarised that paralyses democracy and pierces the armour protecting the free press. Algorithms reinforce and further radicalise entrenched beliefs, muffle public debate, and muzzle journalists.

The truth is then drowned in a cacophony of toxic trolling, hate speech and disinformation. AI has made it possible for deep fake content to be even more potent and pervasive.

Democracy and social networking sites, alas, are not compatible. We have been reluctant to put it so bluntly before because agreeing to social media bans in Nepal (like the government did with TikTok) would mean infringing on constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression. Such control could lead to creeping censorship of digital content by a thin-skinned government.

The age of AI-driven algorithms coincides with democratic reversal globally, and an existential crisis in the mainstream press. Journalists are no longer sole gatekeepers, ‘content creators’ and ‘influencers’ now give ‘users’ what they want, not what they need to make informed choices — for example about mitigating climate breakdown.

As a press freedom activist said at a recent gathering: “We do not go to a citizen doctor when we are sick, so why do we need citizen journalists to tell us what is happening?”

Yet publishers and editors are stuck in their old ways, unable or unwilling to adapt to new storytelling styles and multimedia packaging formats. With falling revenue, there is less money for investigative reporting which was already jeopardised by corporate conflict of interest.

The free press must survive so that democracy is made more accountable, and pluralism can prevail over populism. For this, journalism must fight back. Smaller, isolated pockets of independence and professionalism need support to resist. Even practicing independent journalism in this day and age is a form of resistance. 

AI will embolden techno-fascists, replacing physical death squads with cyber lynch mobs. Governments do not need to censor the media, journalists can be silenced by corporate takeovers and mass trolling. They do not need to kill journalists anymore, they can just let journalism die.

Free speech is no longer about journalism, ‘free speech’ is what is on YouTube or TikTok. Journalism used to be governed by rules about verification, double-checking, about credibility and trust. Posts on X do not have to abide by any of those rules, and the tyranny of the algorithm remakes McLuhan’s global village with tribalism. 

Media freedom has ended up killing freedom, as another philosopher of resistance, Janis Joplin, once sang 60 years ago: “Freedom just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Kunda Dixit