Protect attended the recent annual Impress 2019 conference.
The conference looked at the challenges facing the news industry and how the public consumes news, with information flying at them from countless directions and what information can be trusted.
Our Business Support Executive Sukhbir Singh attended a panel debate, ‘Who Cares About Public Interest News?’ with Polly Curtis from Tortoise media, Alison Preston of Ofcom and Adam Cantwell-Corn of Bristol Cable, which looked into investigative and regional journalism. The session also covered government funding and recommendations from the Dame Frances Cairncross Review which includes measures to tackle the uneven balance of power between news publishers and online platforms that distribute their content, and address the growing risks to the future provision of public-interest news.
The discussion also looked at the unintentional negative impact of technology on investigative journalism, where news is now consumed very quickly, and longer, slower high quality journalism is not read by many of the younger generation, who largely read their news online or from their peers, instead of traditional print.