No News is Bad News

And yet World Press Freedom Day is a moment that should remind everyone - particularly those in power - of the duty to uphold freedom of expression. Sadly, as anyone working in communication of any kind knows, press freedom is under pressure from all sides be that political attack, platform manipulation, economic collapse or algorithmic control.

I’ve been tracking (and addressing) this disintegration for a number of years and the first quarter of 2025 is the worst it has been, primarily due to the resurgence of US lie manufacturing. The White House Propaganda Factory is in full production with fresh lies peddled daily from the press room podium. Temu Trumps around the world have leapt at the chance to emulate this behaviour - our tetchy Trumpian here in NZ, Deputy PM Winston Peters (and minority politician), has seemingly become an avid apprentice of such artifice and disparagement, much to the despair of most of the country.

Add to that the commercial pressures - most of our ‘main’ news channels have disappeared in recent years - and the diminishment of credible journalism is all but complete. Good journalists working for authentic programmes and publications will be the unicorns, searched for relentlessly but hidden deep in the forest of dark algorithms (or quietly grazing in spaces like Substack).

The story of news is no longer just about who reports what. It’s about who gets seen, who gets written out, who gets believed, who gets shouted out, who gets suppressed and whether the public ever really gets the chance to know. But it’s not all about the politicians and the algorithms. If impartial journalists are the Jedi, the old-school publishers could well be considered the Sith. We know throughout history, publishers have their own agendas - mostly profit driven, often political and particularly political when it comes to boosting their profits. None of that is new but the social publishers - the techno barons - have amplified such agendas and overlaid them with their own.

Once upon a time, most newsrooms knew their communities. Not just by numbers or demographic data but through lived connection. Reporters walked the streets. Editors understood those around them. Now, more often than not, people are just clicks, views and monetised metrics – numbers on a dashboard instead of neighbours in a democracy. Journalists are measured by the number of views their pages generate not by the quality of their reporting. ‘News stories’ are snatched from a single social media comment and turned into large, if forgettable, headlines of the day. People - actual people - slip silently into the cracks of conspiracy. The relationship is no more.

That shift from trust to transaction is central to why people are disengaging. They cannot see themselves. That sense of community is diminished. When local news goes missing, so does belonging. And in that vacuum, in that isolation, we find ourselves having to fill a growing gap. Not because we want to replace journalism, far from it. But truth, context, community and connection must exist somewhere.

Across the US, New Zealand, Australia and the UK, news deserts are expanding. Local journalism – the kind that holds power to account, strengthens civic life and reports what matters most to people on the ground – is vanishing.

Without it, communities lose more than information. They lose their watchdogs, alert for the first signs of corruption. They lose a sense of shared experience. Most importantly, they lose that crucial sense of belonging.

And when that sense of belonging disappears, it spills over into every corner of public life. People feel alienated from local governance. Trust in institutions begins to falter. Civic participation drops. And when stories don’t get told or shared, communities lose their voice. They become fractured, disconnected – fewer places to live together and more spaces to simply exist alone, albeit side by side.

Clicks don’t build trust, relationships do. But in turning away from relationships in favour of clicks, mainstream media ends up with no news that matters - and no news is bad news.

While media outlets optimise for engagement and headlines that prompt outrage, public relations professionals must work another way. Understand our communities, understand their needs, work to build the relationships that our organisations need to operate, fairly, ethically and kindly.

And in doing that, we can help mainstream media regroup because what’s required now isn’t more noise – it’s reconnection. Real connection. Across divides, across channels, across digital and political chasms and with a renewed sense of societal purpose.

AI’s role in the media mix complicates everything further. It generates content, distributes it, fragments the narrative and challenges verification. And while some of it is useful it also makes the truth harder to see.

I designed a professional development session to address this, create a space where we can explore what this means for us all and suggest ways forward. Last month I ran the first one and as part of the mix, included agentic AI – tools that not only generate but decide, act and shape outcomes on our behalf - and their role in news and information. The old newsagents on the street corner long since replaced by machines. Machines which, if we’re not careful, create echo chambers rather than pockets of insight.

So the question I asked – and continue to ask – is this. How do we rebuild the news environment so people can discover and trust the information they receive? How do we sidestep sneaky algorithms that push profits not purpose?

The future of media relations is very different. It sees us as trusted partners in public understanding but only if we resist the lean into corporate cowardice that we have witnessed these last months and stay true to our values and organisational purpose.

With that as the context, it means asking the hard questions. And these are just a few for starters:

We already have the tools – from stakeholder maps to ethical communication frameworks. We just need to use them with good intent.

I’m running the session again - Cutting Edge News - at the end of May. We’ll explore how practitioners can build trust in a dispersed public sphere and move on from the old models that no longer serve anyone well. And on a very practical note, I’ve some new models to help guide the way.

If you care about truth, trust, community and connection, I hope you’ll join us.

https://learn.prknowledgehub.com/course/cutting-edge-news-may-2025