A language gripe which I haven’t mentioned lately is the treatment of “media” as a singular. I’ve given it up as a lost cause, but it damages discourse. People often think of “the media” as one thing. Obviously there are many media. This blog is a medium for information, no less than CNN is. But in common use, you don’t qualify as a medium unless either you’re a big corporation or a fortune-teller. Similarly, there’s a tendency to count people as “journalists” only if they work for a “medium” (or is it “a media”)? This leads to the idea that freedom of the press applies only to properly credentialed and accredited journalists and media.
This trend appears in Article 17 of the EU’s proposed Media Freedom Act, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation has strongly criticized.
One of the most controversial provisions under the EMFA is Article 17, which endeavors to address the treatment and moderation of media content by ‘Very Large Online Platforms’ (VLOPs), such as Twitter and Facebook. Article 17 requires VLOPs to give special privileged treatment to media outlets by notifying them before content is removed. Should VLOPs remove content without ‘sufficient grounds’, Article 17 enables media service providers to find an ‘amicable solution’ through dialogue with the VLOP. Article 17 also provides that VLOPs must create fast-track systems for actors to self-declare as independent and regulated media providers, hence leaving it to online platforms to decide over the status of a wide range of media actors.
This would create an elite class under the oxymoronic name of “independent and regulated media providers.” Article 17 would give them special privileges against platforms like Twitter and Facebook, requiring the sites to notify them before taking down their content and mandating a resolution process. EFF notes that this will make it harder for the sites to control their content and get rid of obvious nonsense, which might include libel. Another, equally important, point is that it would divide the net into so-called “independent and regulated” media and the rest of us.
Article 17 doesn’t explain what constitutes being “independent and regulated.” Apparently anyone can just claim to qualify. But we can be sure that before long member nations will impose a set of regulatory requirements on qualifying “independent” media, which will be too inconvenient, if not impossible, for the average person reporting or commenting on the news. My Filk News account on Mastodon isn’t regulated or recognized by any governmental authority, so it’s doubtful that it would qualify for the media elite.
No one should have special status before the law as an information source. Anyone who runs a website, whether it’s Facebook or a ten-user Mastodon server, should be free to set its policies without having to grant special status to a media elite.
Who are the media? Anyone who conveys information, accurate or not. That includes small-time bloggers as well as big corporations. It includes fortune tellers and QAnon. It includes small-time bloggers and people with cameras who may be the first to call attention to an occurrence. The independent and unregulated (pardon the redundancy) media are essential to a free society and must never be pushed to second-class status under the law.