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There’s a reason not every media channel gets a special UN day

There’s a reason not every media channel gets a special UN day
Opinion

Today, 21 November, is World Television Day. And it’s a timely reminder of how advertising can support democracy alongside commercial interest.


The United Nations (UN) loves creating international days and sometimes even international weeks. Have a look here and pick a favourite.

I can’t choose between International Day of Potato (30 May) and World Toilet Day (19 November — still flush in our memories).

Today, though, is a professional favourite: World Television Day. This is the UN’s celebration of TV’s powers to connect us, to inform and entertain us — wherever we may be.

To mark the moment, every year the good people at Egta (the international trade body for TV and audio) and ACT (the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe), with support from the Global TV Group, join forces and pick a TV-related theme to focus on.

This year’s theme is TV’s role as a cornerstone of democracy.

If TV is something so familiar and expected in our lives that we tend to take it a bit for granted, then its role in supporting democracy is something we often ignore, if we’ve even registered it. Few of us turn on the TV to get a dose of democratic delight.

But perhaps we should think about it a bit more. Treasure it, even.

In an era mired in fake news, deepfakes and mass misinformation, and in a year of elections around the world that will have seen 1.5bn people go to the polls in over 50 countries, it’s a good moment to reflect on how TV supports democracy.

Assuming you like democracy, of course. Fingers crossed.

How does TV safeguard democracy?

It feels like quite a grand claim, but it is true — and one of the main reasons is regulation.

TV is regulated to its hilt. It can’t prioritise profit above all else and must adhere to stringent guidelines to ensure transparency, accountability and high ethical standards.

Following strict rules and high standards of transparency, doing all the due diligence and pre-clearing that prevents showing misleading or harmful content, all while having the skills and creativity — this makes TV expensive to make.

But transparency means trust, so let’s call that reassuringly expensive.

And that’s hopefully reassuring for advertisers as well as viewers. Brands may invest in TV for its main course of effectiveness, but they also get a side order of confidence in the company they keep and the just desserts of knowing that their investment funds a virtuous and mutually beneficial circle.

Advertising investment enables TV companies to continue making the shows and reporting the news that create the high-quality editorial environments that attract viewers, and this provides advertisers with the audiences they seek, and this encourages them to invest… and so on.

Some people may sneer at advertising as a tool of unvarnished capitalism, but when it helps fund quality, regulated media — like TV, news brands and radio — it too plays a vital role in supporting democracy.

Many advertisers may never pause to appreciate that — yes, there’s a business case to invest in TV, but there’s also a moral and social case.

Is news underinvested in?

TV as a whole is set up to support democracy — by offering access to reliable, regulated and trusted content, representing a wide range of viewpoints and communities, encouraging diversity of thought, bringing society together.

But its news provision deserves a special mention.

Quality journalism, which has arguably never mattered more, costs a lot to deliver. It is under immense funding pressure — and TV news is no different.

An Ofcom report earlier this year acknowledged that, although TV remains a bastion of trusted news, younger audiences especially are increasingly heading to social media for their news.

Ofcom is concerned about this flight from trust and is conducting a review. However, TV companies are not sitting on their hands and are accelerating moves to make their content — news included — available wherever the audiences are.

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Advertising’s role

But there is an argument to be made that advertisers could support quality news content more than they do and that doing so is in their commercial self-interest (as well as that of democracy).

A recent study by US-based marketing group Stagwell, for example, found that news had been “systematically demonetised” due to advertiser fears of brand proximity to certain stories. But Stagwell found that people do not react negatively to brands that appear around news content, regardless of topic.

Even if that’s only half true, it raises questions about advertising investment that supports quality journalism.

You don’t need to be Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen to be concerned that people are getting their news from questionable environments — ones characterised by algorithm-driven polarisation, echo chambers and a proliferation of misinformation. These don’t much support democratic principles; they erode them. The UN has not yet announced plans for World Meta Day.

But World Television Day, now in its 28th year, will be back next year to give us another moment to pause and think about TV’s contribution to society. Unless the UN votes against it.


Simon Tunstill is communications director at Thinkbox

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