By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service

LONDON, June 12–Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday said the news media, driven by increasing competition and pressure from fast-changing technology, has largely abandoned impartial reporting in favor of sensation, shock and controversy, which he said demoralizes public servants and badly serves the public.

“The fear of missing out means today’s media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack,” Blair said in a speech two weeks before he steps down after a decade in office. “In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no one dares miss out.”

In a speech hosted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Blair said the media has become fragmented with the proliferation of blogs and other Internet-based sources of information and 24-hour television news programming. As newspapers “fight for a share of a shrinking market,” he said, they face pressure to publish news on their Web sites today rather than in their newspapers tomorrow.

That new competition and increasing demands to produce news instantly has placed unprecedented burdens on news organizations, which have responded by “unraveling standards” of journalism and stressing “impact” over accuracy, he said.

“It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamor, can get noticed,” he said. “Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact.” In that environment, he said, “Something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked. . . A problem is ‘a crisis.’ A setback is a policy ‘in tatters.’ A criticism, ‘a savage attack.’ ”

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