Beyond clickbait and commerce

Clare Cook
advertising, selling merchandise and events), but a lack of impact
from those initiatives on overall budgets. A lack of in-house
business skills was a key challenge and doubts as to the likelihood
of achieving full sustainability in exile were raised (ibid: 17). The
quest for sustainability has itself been plagued by confusion of the
word and also belies the immaturity and complexity of the markets
externally in many of the most repressed countries. Parsons et al.
(2008) map the barriers to media development including economic
impoverishment, lack of stable monetary systems, poverty, media
consolidation, and the cost of starting out, but stop short of
gathering any empirical evidence.
While scholars have focused to date on the broad challenges in
media development funding, there is little understanding of
the economic pressures at firm level, far less the ethical value
set developed as a result. This study advances the discussion by
confronting the underlying power relationship between notfor-profit
oppositional media and grant-giving institutions. It is
especially appropriate given the relatively new pressures on these
typically weaker media supporting free information flow to diversify
revenues. A legitimate flow of grant funding exists to support media
where external market and operational forces make such funding
a necessity. This has led to a form of unethically entrenched and
strategic dependence on grant funding. Commercial reluctance is
also evidenced: for some, making any revenue from their journalism
is seen as ethically dubious, with scepticism around commercial
and donated revenues. For others, commercial imperatives have
spawned increased reconciliation in operational economic matters,
including the use of a specialist advertising network as an ‘ethical
gatekeeper’.
Literature review
Since the United Nations Conference on Freedom of Information
in 1948, open and transparent media have been recognised
as important vehicles to address conflict, promote freedom of
expression and contribute to political or economic change. Against
a backdrop of neoliberal civil society (Kaldor 2003) supporting
independent media through a non-profit sector has also gained
prominence with the UN good governance agenda (Wilson et al.
2007). It is difficult to unpick clear estimates of the amount of
money dedicated to media support as it is often part of generalised
democracy and governance portfolios (Deane 2013) and actions
often result in a lack of close donor coordination (Fuchs et al.
2015). This can be due to the wider political (Alesina and Dollar
2000) or trade interests (Berthelemy 2006) that lead to a ‘flavour of
the month’ syndrome (Nelson 2011). Cauhape-Cazaux and Kalathil
(2015) note that many governments shy away from any kind of
media support because it is seen as too sensitive.
68 Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016