On one side big media companies have greatly reduced their international reporter network and therefore lost ‘local competence’. On the other side a huge army of freelance photographers, reporters and cameraman has developed in the least two decades.

But the media mercenaries focus mostly on popular stuff that brings in the money. Unpopular topics are left to a few brave reporters and photo journalists. So commercial news is today mostly about ’sellable’ news. If you can’t sell a picture or a story you won’t report about it again, because you need to pay your bills.

This is why we need support alternative media outlets for journalists and a willing audience to pay these people.

We also need more institutions like the BBC and other democratic and state funded media organizations, who can afford to report unpopular causes and criticize the powerful.

Free markets for news organization is a disaster. To provide a balanced public service will always collide with the quest for higher profits. Let big media create the entertainment, let publicly funded news organizations make the news.

And screw Rupert Murdoch and all the big media tycoons.