THE theme for Tuesday’s global observance of World Press Freedom Day 2022 was ‘Journalism Under Digital Siege’ – and for good reason, digitisation having virtually turned the media world up-side-down, for better and for worse.

According to the United Nations, the theme “is intended to highlight the multiple ways in which surveillance and digitally-mediated attacks endanger journalists and journalism.”

The latest United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Trends Report Insights discussion paper entitled ‘Threats that Silence: Trends in the Safety of Journalists,’ shows that surveillance and hacking are compromising journalists.

According to the UN: “Surveillance can expose information gathered by journalists, including from whistle-blowers, and violates the principle of source protection, which is universally considered a prerequisite for freedom of the media and is enshrined in UN Resolutions.

“Surveillance may also harm the safety of journalists by disclosing sensitive private information, which could be used for arbitrary judicial harassment or attack.”

But there are also many other ways digitisation affects journalism.

It has helped preserve the work of journalists, authors, poets and writers of all types in ways more secure and easily retrieved than ever, including building software libraries of newspapers and broadcasts from the pre-digital age.

Digitisation has made it easier for journalists to access facts online faster than the speed of light and digital technology has long combined an entire recording studio and editorial office into one cell phone.

Digital communications have taken shopping, paying bills and banking online, attending court proceedings and participating in any conference anywhere, without leaving home.

Indeed, digital technology keeps growing and changing at speeds faster than consumers can keep-up with, whether new models of branded cell phones or new Apps to access more in less time.

And working with the digital world at their fingertips has also made the work of journalists so much easier.

But, like a gun or knife, digitisation can also be either a tool or a weapon, depending on how it’s used and what for.

In many ways and cases, it’s turned journalism from an honourable profession based on constant pursuit of verifiable truth and dependent on reliable sources, to one where the race to be the first to report a story has greatly reduced the amount of time spent pursuing it.

In the rush to be ‘first’ to report ‘Breaking News’ that’s ‘Happening Now’, many journalists and editors bypass the traditional measurement for accuracy and factual reporting embedded in the 5Ws yardstick (Who, What, When, Where and Why) simply because it’ll take ‘too long’.

On the other hand, reporting for online audiences by digital means has also encouraged less attention to fine details like spelling names correctly or sourcing content, again based on the race to be first, but not necessarily accurate.

And then there’s the clearest evidence today of one of the negative aspects of digitisation and how it’s threatening journalism: coverage of the war in Ukraine.

It doesn’t take having a university degree to understand the effect of the one-sided flow of information through ‘on location reports’ that simply make it appear the war is being fought on the air or online, accomplished journalist and presenters dropping all pretense to be fair and balanced in their coverage.

Digital speed and captive audiences see the world’s giant media conglomerates going all-out to ensure common political narrative and messaging, supporting one side and damning the other in a war between neighbouring nations that’s taking lives daily and affecting the rest of the world.

Verily, in this case, digitisation is both a tool and a weapon.