The Col·legi de Periodistes de Catalunya (CPC), the Consell de la Informació de Catalunya (CIC) and all Catalan universities with journalism and communication studies have made a joint call this Wednesday against the use of the so-called clikbait because “it violates the ethical principles of journalism.
In a joint statement, these organizations consider that this resource to “capture the public's attention at any price” has become an increasingly common phenomenon in many newspapers, a fact that “puts the veracity of the information at risk, generates loss of trust on the part of the citizens, and contradicts the principles that all the signatory journalism schools teach their students.”
It is highlighted that in the current context of digitalization of information, in which traditional sources of financing are on the decline and digital subscriptions are not yet a consolidated source of financing, digital media “feel the urgency of monetizing their contents through advertising, which is determined by the audience (number of clicks or visits).” This fact, they added, causes many media to prioritize the creation of content that can generate enough interest in the audience to access it, “regardless of its informative relevance.”
Clickbait is understood as digital content with a striking title that has the sole objective of getting users to enter the news, in order to obtain the maximum audience volume that can translate into an increase in advertising revenue. Although it is within journalistic logic that the headlines have to be attractive, the problem appears when “the cyberbait headline incites error, speculation or directly misinformation, since this collides with the principles of the Code of Ethics of the Col·legi de “Journalists of Catalonia”.
They point out that sometimes these headlines “are written in a deliberately misleading and/or ambiguous way, so that the information that can be read inside the news does not meet the expectations generated.” In this area, quantitative criteria (getting the maximum audience or clicks) override qualitative criteria (offering truthful information of public interest).
They also criticize that this information can “pervert” the traditional structure of the inverted pyramid that has historically governed journalism, so that the reader encounters background information or information of little interest at the beginning of the news and has to wait until the end. last paragraph for explanations about the headline.
The signatories of the document indicate that the content that is the result of clickbait “tends to simplify the message and often suffers from a lack of precision. They are written with a deliberate ambiguity that leads to speculation, often offering incomplete information and encouraging sensationalism and/or exaggeration.”
They warn that the abuse of clickbait can make the media lose its main value in the eyes of citizens, which is credibility, since a portion of users are beginning to be aware of this phenomenon and the loss of trust that it generates.
They consider, therefore, that moving away from the Code of Ethics causes journalism to "resign from its main function and cease to be a reference for society when it comes to receiving quality information that follows the essential parameters of professional ethics."
The universities that have adhered to this statement are Autònoma (UAB), Barcelona (UB), Fabra (UPF), Llull (URL), Rovira i Virgili (URV), Vic (UVic), Abat Oliba (UAO-CEU) , International (UIC), Open (UOC), Girona (UdG) and Lleida (UdL).
