Parliament therefore appears to have become the plaything of government and the needs of the electorate have been ignored except when they coincide or reinforce the agenda of government. This is a dangerous departure especially when time slots exist for such debate.

It is simply good politics for Parliament to be seen at all times to be discussing national matters in a non-partisan way; to be otherwise undermines trust by giving the impression that politicians don’t care. This is not true, they do care but procedure undermines what they could achieve.

As the rest of the industry catches up, and starts innovating, with the online leaders such as the Guardian and BBC News Online, I think we will see a return to higher quality reporting. There is still, and always will be, a place for third-party editorial analysis of the many, many news-worthy happenings around the world but the way in which it is presented is not a simple case of changing the medium, the way in which the information is edited and presented has to change too.

I fail to see how you could not see any democracy in the EU unless you falsely equate “not democratic” with “democratically elected representatives doing things I don’t personally like.” It’s a common error, but still an error. The European Council and European Parliament are both beholden to the electorate in one way or other. Overemphasis on the actions of the Commission because it is “unelected” is like talking about, say, the Lords and the Bank of England and then claiming that Britain is not democratic. It is, but democracy is not myth nor magic – it’s just the least-worst system of government we currently have available. Personally, I am not a democracy fetishist, nor a sovereignty fetishist, and if handing over aspects of management to higher-level authorities can produce more favourable results (for example, allowing the ECHR to reign in the authoritarian excesses of our government) then I see no reason to cut off our nose to spite our face.

Besides, where I grew up in the north is closer to Brussels than it is to London – which from a long historical perspective removed the sovereignty of the region long ago. Why should I credit one set of foreigners with having my interests at heart over another?

Also, a “shibboleth” is not something you can belong to, it is a verbal marker of a group to which you belong. Perhaps you would be more comfortable if I said that you walk like a duck and quack like a duck, so without evidence to the contrary, I’m going to say you’re a duck.

Now, distractions aside:

“The internet” is a medium, not a message, and this cannot be stressed enough. Traditional news-gathering organisations do not have to die out if they can be flexible. As people move their reading habits increasingly from the printed page to the LCD screen (or, in coming years, to the E-Paper screen) then the magic of the market will ensure that companies which provide content in the formats that people want to read, watch or listen to it will find ways of making money out of it, and those who do not will atrophy and fall by the wayside.

There are, obviously, problems which will arise as the move occurs, but there are always problems with the news media, and the internet’s are not different in kind but in scale. One of the advantages of the internet is that it allows for fracturing and aggregation, so that people do not have to buy columns by Melanie Phillips if all they want is to find out who won the Bolton-Liverpool match (for example). To a certain extent this reduces the influence that a partisan editorial slant can have on a casual reader. On the other hand, the same process can increase the “bubble” in which a given reader can find themselves, with certain news stories never making it through the filters.

Sam Shepard worries about funding, I think we’ll see a transition of the old monoliths from print to online presences, and a flourishing of smaller online-only or small-run print magazines with large online presences, like the Washington Monthly and Talking Points Memo in the USA. While costs aren’t totally absent online, there is room for low-cost but still high-quality reporting. The cost of text online is minimal, while the cost of a tonne of “yesterday’s fishwrap” is not negligible. Different pricing structures will be required, no doubt, but workable models will definitely emerge.

Incidentally, while I approve very much of increased government transparency, I find it hard to agree with Liam that such things make a fourth estate superfluous. It will always be necessary to have third parties to comb through and analyse the vast swathes of data for a time- and expertise-poor reading public, not to mention the very real possibility of having governments lie to us. However, I do find his theory of a low sales > low reporting > lower sales death spiral to be fairly compelling, at least worthy of further consideration and research.

For example, the (qasai-stautory?) Ofcom regulates TV, while newspapers are self-regulating, through the Press Complaints Commission.

I’m not actually in favor of grater regulation, but this thought just struck me…

But: we should worry about a lack of trust and the decline in newspaper sales.

It’s true to say it’s a vicious cycle; sales drop, costs are cut, quality of journalism suffers, people trust us less, sales drop and so on.

If we can’t find a way to fund really good quality journalism then people like Liam will find that his aggregator sites won’t have any articles on them, because the people that produce them will all be out of a job.

Partly it is about medium – as I and many other people have blogged before, today’s teens and 20-somethings don’t read newspapers, or watch tv news, unless they’re linked in to a specific story by a friend, or a really big issue. They don’t need to seek out news because it’s all around them.

I believe investigative journalism is important. But I’m not sure anyone has yet come up with a business model that can fund news in the long term. And then what happens? The BBC’s content will be all that’s left and I don’t think anyone could argue that a single broadcaster would be good for us as a democracy…

I take the points you make. There is competition with the Web, though it begs the question as to what is the nature of the competition. What is the web offering that newspapers cannot offer? Is it the message or the medium, or both? Does the Internet result in a dumbing down of news, emphasising the quick data-bite at the expense of serious reporting? Is the Internet winning because of its interactive capacity and its immediacy?

There is some way to go, incidentally, before people trust the Internet. It elicits low levels of trust within EU member states. People trust television and radio more than they trust the press and the Internet. (According to the Eurobarometer data, levels of trust in TV and radio in the UK are close to the EU average.) The sources, of course, are not mutually exclusive. The BBC has a strong Internet presence.

In terms of what should be done, I take your point about direct communication, and engagement, between Parliament and people. This is increasingly being recognised. Parliament can reach people directly – and ideally people should be able to reach Parliament directly – without the mediation of newspaper editors. That is why more resources are being directed towards facilitating such engagement, though – as I have indicated in earlier posts – I think there is still much more we need to do. This Blog, as you indicate, is a modest step in that direction and the comments received in response to earlier posts have embodied valuable advice as to how we may take this forward.

Given that, should we worry about a lack of trust in the media and the decline in newspaper sales? Will there still be scope for serious investigative journalism? Or should we leave that to broadcast media and bloggers? In which case, should there be (could there be) the equivalent of the Press Complaints Commission to cover blogging?

All you have to do Brom, when you see my name (and by the way, I always use my full name on this ‘blog’) is skip the section I have written and go on to the next.

The question was about TRUST or lack of it, now where does “credibility” or lack of it lie?

I have to admit Dear Brom, I had no idea this was YOUR Blog for you to request me to stop posting on. Fancy you using the name “Lord Norton” in your heading?

Radio and TV both took a chunk out of newspaper sales — check the number of different newspapers on sale in the early 1900s compared with today — but nothing has ever done so much damage as the Web.

The founder of Netscape put it bluntly:

“He said, ‘If you have old media, you should sell,’” according to one attendee, who spoke anonymously because the sessions are off-the-record. “If you own newspapers, sell. If you own TV stations, sell. If you own a movie studio, sell.”

According to an article in Press Gazette, newspaper sales are universally dropping due to the Web.

Based on this premise, we see the newspapers need to increase sales; aside from dropping their price, the best way to do this is sensationalism. Or, as Rupert Murdoch puts it, to get a ‘scoop’. Sensationalism may help to sell ‘papers in the short-term, but promotes bad journalism (or a perception of it) in the medium- to long-term.

Something this study seems to omit: how many people said they don’t trust newspapers simply because they don’t read any? And how many of those people then read the ‘papers online? The survey seems flawed without this information.

So, to answer your questions, Lord Norton:

First, why the low level of trust? Is it a product of poor reporting?

Newspapers are becoming less relevant due to the ubiquity of information and news on the Web. This causes some newspapers to revert to sensationalism and catering to the lowest-common-denominator.

So, a low level of trust is a product of poor sales leading to poor reporting.

Second, what can be done about it? How can the quality be improved in order to raise levels of trust?

The Lords are doing the right thing already by communicating directly with people. Why would anyone bother reading a ‘paper when they can come and talk to people directly on their blogs? Why bother reading a ‘paper when all the news anyone needs is at: http://news.bbc.co.uk ? Why bother reading a ‘paper when any interesting articles will appear on aggregator sites like reddit.com or Slashdot anyway?

Conclusion: those ‘papers that sucessfully make the transition to the Web will survive. Those that don’t will die. Parliament may avoid a decline in trust, due to this, by using the Web (plus TV and radio) as their primary means of communication with the public. Accept the fact that old media is dying and adapt accordingly.

Postscript: this is a good blog entry. I submitted it to reddit, and it has generated some interest.

It’s just an extremely poor attempt at peddling your own agenda!