Beyond clickbait and commerce

informed citizenry. Most see journalism as a way to hold decisionmakers
accountable and disseminate inaccessible material. They
have a bias to editorial and human rights backgrounds rather than
business. While journalism often focuses on human atrocities and
hard news stories, editorial checks on balance are limited. Often
volunteers, they are sometimes unable to produce high-quality,
objective journalism.
The second commonality is in the overall economic fragility of their
existence. Many face a unique set of business challenges internally
and externally (CIMA 2007; Nelson 2011; FOJO 2013). Production
is required on limited resources far from audiences in different
languages. Teams are often small and traditional commissionbased
sales roles are deemed ‘untenable’ as they generate too
little. External to their outlet, the market and currency are often
weak and the normal supply and demand of products and services
is disrupted. Government agents and trolls disrupt interaction
online; literacy and the purchasing power of citizens are low.
Podesta (2009) identifies ‘soft censorship’ to include pressure by
governments on commercial enterprises to advertise in certain
media and not in others. Market distortions arise for many reasons:
advertisements are controlled, sizeable retail chains closed, controls
are imposed on who works with whom, cosy business relationships
are developed including highly lucrative concessions in exchange
for a ‘financially unsustainable pro-government media outlet’ (Loza
2015). Internet penetration is usually low with slow bandwidth and
with readers risking arrest. It is also a challenge not knowing what
the future holds: if and when a country will transition.
RESEARCH
PAPER
Given the operational difficulties and market distortions, it is
significant that legitimate donor funding has emerged to support
such media. An extensive landscape of international organisations,
aid agencies, trainers, publisher associations and private
foundations exists, providing an ever-widening range of assistance.
However, as the media development sector has matured, media
outlets have been increasingly warned to regard funding as seed
and focus on sustaining themselves independently with business
activity. Long-standing information providers such as Short Wave
Radio Zimbabwe and Uznews.net Uzbekistan, for example, closed
in 2014 due to lack of funding.
Evidence gathered to date shows these media use three main
revenue types: most rely on grant funding, some earn income
including advertising, sales, affiliate marketing and cross-subsidy
from for-profit business ventures, and there is some evidence of
private donations from individuals or through crowdfunding (Cook
2016). Of direct relevance, a consultation by non-profit organisation
FOJO Media Institute (2013) looked at the sustainability of 14
independent exile media outlets. It found overall reliance on grant
funding and only fledgling evidence of revenues (commercial
Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016 67