Why do we need a public policy for information?
Local journalism is a mandatory part of any discussion on public information policy. The statement may look like wishful thinking, but it’s not the case, and we will explain why as follows. First of all, a distinction must be made: a public information policy is not the same thing as a public communication policy. The first is related to the identification of items that affect the flow of information within a social group. Public communication policy, on the other hand, has to do with the regulation of information dissemination platforms, whether analogue (newspapers and TV, for example) or digital (social networks and blogs, for example).
Local journalism is a fundamental part of a public information policy because it has an irreplaceable role in the development of a culture of combating disinformation, which includes fake news, half-truths and on-purpose omissions of data. It is in the community environment that people transform the news received through the media into attitudes and opinions.
It is in the family, at work, at school or in the neighbourhood that the news is associated with individual or collective concerns and incorporated into each person’s daily routine. It is by talking with relatives, friends or colleagues that people absorb information gradually, without the need for a great effort of reflection. Under these conditions, the local reality ends up having a much more efficient persuasive power than the distant facts and events disseminated by the national or international press.
News deserts
The problem is that in the countryside, the diversity of information sources is much smaller than in the capitals, which makes people more subject to the influence of distorted or out-of-context news. This creates a favourable environment for disseminating so-called fake news in the local and hyperlocal context (neighbourhoods or associations), through social networks on the internet. Doubts about the credibility of news and misinformation become even more crucial when you take into account the fact that community and municipal journalism is in crisis due to financial difficulties and the loss of readers.
The abrupt drop in advertising revenue caused the closure of medium, small and even large newspapers. According to the Atlas da Notícia project, five out of ten Brazilian municipalities constitute what is conventionally called “news deserts”, as they do not have any local newspaper or radio station.
This served as a wake-up call for specialists in public information and decision-makers because it signalled the worsening of the political distance between the social bases and the ruling elites. It is in this context that studies and research on community journalism, including the hyperlocal variety (journalism about neighbourhoods or minority ethnic groups) began to gain relevance as an alternative to the closure of regional newspapers and an effort to mitigate information isolationism in small and medium cities.
This change in the media environment imposes the need for a public information policy aimed at valuing local themes to rebuild people’s involvement in community issues, either by reassessing municipal news agendas or by supporting journalistic projects engaged with the population.
Basic human right
A public information policy involves changes in social values, a complex objective because it also implies the emergence of new behaviours and regulations. A key issue, for example, is changing the way people view the news. The most common perception places the news as a disposable item in the daily routine of each individual.
But the digital age is making people no longer able to live without information. It has become something essential to survival, as it was possible to prove during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Demanding the necessary information to solve a community’s problems, for example, should be an attitude incorporated into social behaviour. Information, in the digital age, is increasingly an item of prime necessity, as individual and collective decision-making depends on it. It has all the conditions to gain the legal status of a basic human right.
Another mandatory item in the elaboration of a public information policy is the development of a critical attitude of people in the face of data, facts, events and new ideas. People trust less and less in what is published by the big press corporations because the news avalanche on the Internet has increased the diversity of versions about the same fact, at the same time that the commercial nature of the journalistic companies has led them to privilege their corporate interests over the of readers.
These are just some basic points for starting a national debate on the elaboration of a public information policy. Many others still need to be explored and analyzed in detail.
Non-profit journalistic organizations, university research institutes and community associations are essential players in the development of public information policies. These entities represent social segments involved in the production of local information and, therefore, with direct influence on the environment in which news is transformed into opinions and positions.
