Chairman of Vietnam Journalists Association: Solution and humanistic journalism is a trend

“With 7 billion information channels transmitted every day, readers are fed up with negative information, sensational information, and clickbait. If the press wants to retain and attract readers, it must accept competition to have high-quality products, in which solution journalism, journalism with humane stories is a trend…”, Mr. Le Quoc Minh, member of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Vietnam Journalists Association shared, in a conversation with Giao Thong Newspaper on the occasion of the 98th anniversary of Vietnam Revolutionary Press Day.

As President of the Vietnam Journalists Association and Deputy Head of the Central Propaganda Department, what is your view and assessment of the mission and responsibility of the press in the current period, sir?

From history to the present, the most basic mission of the press is to convey information accurately, quickly and provide useful information to readers. The Vietnamese Revolutionary Press also has a very important mission of propagating the Party and State's guidelines and policies, effectively communicating policies, and orienting readers and listeners. On the other hand, our press needs to steadfastly carry out its mission of social criticism, protecting the Party's ideological foundation, socialist orientation, and at the same time must be a companion and pioneer in the task of foreign information.

Sir, when the press has to simultaneously communicate ideological orientation and policy, how does this affect the press's mission and responsibility for social criticism?

The above missions of the press are not contradictory. The nature of the press is to monitor and criticize society, to be a bridge between the people and the authorities, so the mission of monitoring and criticizing is of course extremely important. In my opinion, not only criticizing and finding mistakes is monitoring and criticizing. That responsibility does not stop at finding shortcomings and inadequacies of a unit, locality, or individual and warning, but also finding good models, new ways of doing things, and effective solutions. Or it must both point out loopholes in legal documents and codes, and introduce good features and new things in the documents.

But the reality is that recently, in journalism competitions, the genres of investigative journalism, anti-corruption, and critical journalism in all fields seem to lack worthy works. What do you think is the reason?

This is a problem for the entire world press, not just Vietnam. The content of investigative reports is an important pillar of journalism, besides news. But recently, due to the development of the internet, we see a lot of elaborate newspaper content being quickly copied, investigative stories sometimes take weeks, months, even years to develop but their "lifetime" is very short. Besides, there is the problem of balancing revenue sources. For example, a report of a major newspaper such as the New York Times, Washington Post or many other press agencies can cost from 50,000 - 150,000 USD, but the revenue from advertising in newspapers as well as advertising on websites is not commensurate, and copyright can even be easily infringed. Besides, due to the development of social networks, people's attention has decreased compared to before. If in the past, we could read articles that are several pages long, now readers do not have enough patience to read long articles. The trend of developing short video content on social media platforms has caused readers to change their reading and information consumption habits. Research has shown that people's attention span is now equivalent to that of a goldfish - if they don't attract readers within 8 seconds, they will leave. This is also the reason why long, in-depth content from print and online newspapers is losing its position. Another reason is that information is becoming increasingly difficult to monopolize. In the past, a journalist could discover a problem, pursue it, expose it and create a buzz, but now, anyone can discover something and post it on social media. The ability to find a special, unknown problem is much more difficult than before. That makes it even more difficult for press agencies to decide to spend money and effort on in-depth research and investigation content. However, in my opinion, even though information consumption behaviors have changed, there is still a real need for in-depth investigative reports. Thanks to technology, investigative reports can bring highly interactive visual effects, thereby raising these works to a higher level, making them more interesting and effective.

At the recent mid-term Central Conference, 11 Central Committee members resigned or were forced to resign, and many officials were disciplined. While the entire political system is fighting against negativity and corruption, looking back, there are very few investigative articles by the press that are ahead of the authorities. Although this is influenced by many factors, is there any factor from economic interests and group interests that has spread to the press team, sir?

In fact, no one can stop the press from fighting against corruption. In their work, journalists are often no different from investigators and detectives. If the press can stay ahead of the authorities and, thanks to the content in the press, the authorities can effectively handle cases, that is actually a very good and important thing. However, this is actually more difficult than in the past. Because nowadays, news is difficult to monopolize from the time it is discovered until the article is completed.

In the missions and responsibilities of journalism that you mentioned above, what do you think are the weaknesses that press agencies need to avoid?

In the process of carrying out their missions, whether it is the Vietnamese press or the press in the world, they all encounter problems with revenue sources and "bread and butter," so in many cases negative information overwhelms positive information, the main reason being that newspapers have to try to get more visits in the hope of increasing advertising revenue. In addition, recently, when competing with social networks for readers, the press has rushed into stories that are meant to attract views. Policy information, useful information, positive information often does not attract viewers as much as negative information, including information that goes too deep into private life, shocking stories, and even information that is considered useless. There is a situation where the press condemns some deviant phenomena, but some press agencies also follow the trend, following those deviant stories to get more viewers. So while we seem to be criticizing events and characters, we actually help information about these bad behaviors and bad people spread more widely. In today's society, there are many people who do bad things and then post them online in the hope of becoming famous, and in many cases the press has over-exploited them, helping them become famous, spreading the bad. We have heard of a murder in New Zealand in the hope of becoming famous, but the Prime Minister of this country called on the press not to report on the incident so that the perpetrator could not carry out his plan. I think this is a point of view that we should pay attention to. In the past, there were hundreds of newspapers or radio and television stations, but each station and each newspaper had a certain capacity, so they had to choose the most prominent events, the press was likened to a "gatekeeper". But now, with the development of social networks and the internet, information is flooded on about 7 billion information channels every day. That huge flow of information, most of which is negative, makes readers feel pressured and stuck. Humans have limited information processing capabilities, so reading or watching too much negative information can have negative impacts on the thinking of readers and listeners. The trend of being bored with negative information gradually spreads to important political and international news, leading to readers not reading or even disconnecting from information in an extreme way. When readers no longer want to read, it is difficult for us to fulfill our basic mission and responsibility.

Recently, the world and domestic press have mentioned a lot about constructive journalism and solution journalism. How do you view this new journalism trend?

I think this is a positive new trend. The press not only raises social problems but also provides solutions. Of course, these solutions do not come from journalists but through interviews with experts and leaders of functional agencies to find the best answers. In addition, there is also a trend of constructive journalism, which means that even when raising social problems and negative issues, the important thing is to aim for a better society, not to criticize or bury a person, business or an agency or organization. For example, in the issue of economic recovery after Covid-19, there are many issues that the press needs to work with the Government to develop the economy. Newspapers should not only focus on false information and noisy incidents, but need to present a comprehensive, comprehensive picture to show that besides difficulties, shortcomings and violations, the efforts of the whole system are still clearly visible.

In the midst of being fed up with negative information and fake news spreading on social networks, is solution journalism, constructive and humane journalism the solution to retain and attract readers, sir?

In my opinion, this is just one of the ways for the press to change itself to regain the trust of readers. This method has been proven to be effective. Many newspapers in the world and in Vietnam have followed that direction. But for the press to truly have a position in society like before, to have a leading role, there is still a lot to do, to find many other ways. Whether we like it or not, user behavior is changing and we cannot go back to the old days when users had no other way to entertain and grasp information than to turn to the press. Even in the future, in addition to phones, there will be many other new devices that can view information (such as glasses, smart watches, etc.). The press needs to be proactive, research and understand clearly to have the most effective measures to bring content to those devices. We also have to think about how to invest in technology and what the revenue will be. In the past, when the print press declined, we thought we would use revenue from online newspapers to compensate, but now, after 20 years, revenue from online newspapers is still very low. This story makes the press have to think of many solutions to diversify revenue sources, not depending on advertising anymore. In the world, there are some very creative revenue growth models. Typically, recently, the New York Times (USA) launched an audio application, when users download it, they can listen to the news without having to read it. They will have news summaries of the day, cooking lessons... when readers are busy, they just need to turn it on to listen.

The Vietnamese press is calling for a strong digital transformation to adapt to the new reading habits of readers and social networks. But the reality shows that even if the digital transformation is successful, the press is still the place to produce content, and the main beneficiaries are still social networking platforms. So, how can the press escape that vicious circle and become self-sufficient, sir?

For many years, there has been a debate about platforms paying news organizations, first in Australia, then spreading to Europe and Canada. News organizations have argued that technology platforms have many users thanks to the content from the press, while the tech giants say that they themselves bring large traffic to the press. There was a time when technology platforms paid news organizations to produce content: Google and Facebook had agreements to pay the press, but in reality they only worked with large news organizations, and small news organizations did not benefit. The situation will turn in an unfavorable direction for news organizations when Google applies artificial intelligence technology such as Chat GPT. These applications automatically synthesize information and return specific results, users are not sure to click on article links like before. And so news organizations do not benefit from traffic, thereby losing advertising revenue. According to a study recently published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, any agency that still depends on online advertising is at great risk. Because depending on advertising means depending on technology platforms. In the world, there is a trend of press agencies joining hands to create alliances with a large enough number of users to build a business model. For example, in Switzerland, there is an alliance between newspapers. This way, they have up to 2 million users, large enough to come up with their own business models even though they cannot compete with social networks. Users only need one account to read all the articles in the alliance. The technology system will track the reader's usage behavior to know who the user is, what content they read, and which newspapers they regularly follow, thereby making advertising more effective and targeted. When you understand your readers, content production and service provision are also more effective. I think this is a good way.

What about the solution of tightening copyright on social networking platforms and charging readers, sir?

This is a solution that many newspapers have tried, but it is difficult to implement, and users have many ways to circumvent it. For example, many news sites take articles from official agencies, read the text and add pictures, or take pictures from official press agencies but insert fake content. With social networking and internet platforms, the press also raises copyright issues, but they argue that the content is shared by users. Not to mention that in some markets, Facebook is currently testing not allowing sharing of press content, so the copyright issue, although taken into account, is becoming more and more difficult.

So, in your opinion, what direction should the press take in Vietnam to transform to be most beneficial?

Regarding the story of digital transformation, this is no longer a matter of whether to do it or not, but a must to do it to survive and develop. But digital transformation is just a tool, after all, content is important, deciding to attract users to you, maintaining loyal users. From content to images, it must be of high quality, professional, must think of new products to attract users, attract readers to you with product quality, not with sensational content, superficial view-baiting.

Thank you very much!

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