Projects

Italian Journalism in the Age of Silvio Berlusconi

What's happened to Italian news media in the last two decades, and what was it like before?

Reporting China

Chinese journalism after market reforms: the possibility and dangers of investigation.

Russian News is Good News

The remaking of Russian journalism, and Russian journalists, in the age of Vladimir Putin.

Independent Journalism in Post-Independence States

The perils and possibilities of holding power to account in different African countries.

The Pipers and the Tunes

A comparative perspective on the power of proprietors, public service and people to influence the content and limits of journalism.

The Peripheral Vision of Central Issues

How good is the coverage of matters essential to public welfare and the public interest? And who cares about it?

About Axess Programme on Journalism and Democracy

The Axess Programme on Journalism and Democracy was launched in June 2009, funded by the Ax:son Johnson Foundation of Stockholm. Its director is John Lloyd.

The programme is organised round two main questions: ‘How should journalism serve the public?’ and ‘What happens as the old media world order changes?’ These two guiding issues will be explored through individual projects that make up the programme.

The scope of the Programme will be worldwide. This is both because journalism is a global practice, and because we will illuminate its practice, and its relationship with and effect on democratic institutions, by contrasting the ways in which it is done in different states and regions.

How should journalism serve the public?

That is - how far do the classic ideals of democratic journalism – the notion of a watchdog of liberties and the major medium through which power is held to account - command allegiance among journalists and their audiences in liberal democratic societies? How far and in what ways does journalism make the issues it covers explicable to citizens? How much of the citizenry is practically included in the circle of those who understand the news – its content, its criteria and its framing? Why exactly do people need information on public issues? What are the consequences if people don’t know what’s happening?

The constricted space given to formal and parliamentary politics and the expanded space given to politically related scandal is now common across all democratic societies – with what effects? What are the limits imposed by ownership in democratic societies? What are the critical differences for democracy in the differing forms of ownership?

In authoritarian societies, journalism is more or less closely monitored, controlled and constrained. What kind of journalism does this produce? How far and in what ways does journalism adapt itself and seek to enlarge the sphere of its operations? How far can it act as a democratising agent? To what models does it look?

What should the role of publicly owned media be? How far and in what ways should it compete with privately owned media? What should be the public obligations on private media? How far are journalists effective in developing and observing codes of conduct?

What happens as the old media world order changes?

A series of major developments – the slump in advertising in most advanced economies, the development of the internet, increased competition due to cable and satellite channels and broadband internet, and globalisation of communications – have over the past ten years radically changed the media landscape.

The development of the internet is revolutionising the ecology of journalism, hugely increasing the ability of the public to access information; to create their own material through blogs and websites; to associate through social media; and to react instantly to messages and events. Journalism is now much more connected and globalised than ever before – with ownership increasingly organised through global corporations, and with standards and ethics now the subject of worldwide debate and challenge.

We see, simultaneously, huge growth of news media in developing economies – as India – and crises in journalism in developed economies, as the US and Western Europe.

We will chart these changes – with the aim of understanding what effect they are having or will have on the relationship of the media to political and other power. How do the changes affect the reach, power and influence of the media – and in what ways, in which countries? How far is the internet undermining the ability of the authorities to control the media – and how far are new forms of control effective? How far is citizens’ journalism empowering citizens – and in what ways? What is it doing to mainstream journalism?

How far will the new technologies of news-gathering and news-making change the nature and content of journalism? We will want to test both the pessimistic assumption – that decline in mainstream media will rot the watchdogs’ teeth – and the optimistic view, that the net ushers in a new age of democratic involvement, ease of understanding issues and citizens’ control.

We want to examine how robust and universal the “western model” of journalism – based on an ideal of objectivity, transparent sourcing and independence of government – is. How far is it seen by those who seek to expand the boundaries of what can be reported or opined as the model to follow – or if there is a third way, which is neither the western model nor state/party controlled media?

If media are now more globalised than at any time in their history, and large media corporations, organised transnationally, control increasing amounts of news media, what effect is this having on news standards, objectivity and investigation?

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