Experts highlight social media’s impact on traditional media standards

RIYADH: Social media has fundamentally disrupted the traditional gatekeeping role of broadcast and print media, leading to heightened challenges in balancing ethical standards with audience expectations, said Jamie Angus, former chief operating officer of Al-Arabiya Network.

Angus’s comments came during a panel discussion, “Media Coverage of Crises: Challenges, Ethics, and the Role of Technology,” at the Saudi Media Forum in Riyadh on Thursday.

“Before social media, we were the gatekeepers,” he said.

Angus said that the rise of platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and Instagram has eroded trust in mainstream media as audiences increasingly question editorial decisions.

“A small number of decision-makers in newsrooms controlled what audiences saw, particularly sensitive imagery related to conflicts, such as graphic depictions of violence or casualties.”

Angus said that traditional media historically balanced the need to avoid sanitizing the realities of war with adherence to editorial standards.

“Today, explicit and disturbing content circulates widely on platforms without warnings or context. Audiences now accuse mainstream media of hiding truths they can easily access on their phones,” he added.

Angus noted the growing dissonance between media organizations and their audiences.

“But the conversation has now shifted as audiences say, ‘I don’t trust the media anymore, because the media are hiding things from me that I can see on my phone.’”

Angus said that this poses a critical challenge for today’s media environment.

The unchecked spread of graphic content on social platforms, he argued, pressures traditional outlets to lower their standards to meet audience demands for unfiltered access, potentially compromising ethical guidelines.

Acknowledging the dilemma, Angus said that if traditional media avoids showing certain images, audiences might question their credibility.

Echoing concerns over digital-age challenges, Frank Kane, journalist and CEO of Sundog Education, emphasized the importance of reinstating rigorous journalistic processes to counter misinformation while preserving independence.

Kane reflected on his experience in UK print media during the 1980s: “There was a very rigorous structure for how news was verified, before it got into print, before it got published.”

Kane added that traditional newsrooms had layers of verification: reporters, sub-editors, news editors.

“This was long before the days of citizen journalism, which in many ways, is a good thing as it increases the number of sources that you have and the overall potential for news gathering,” he said.

But Kane underlined the importance of traditional techniques of news verification.

“Even though trust all round in mainstream media has declined, I still think I would trust mainstream media to get things right anytime over most of the modern social media websites that seem to produce lots of distortions, fakes, inaccuracies.”