The media landscape in the next decade will involve Facebook becoming a real news provider, rather than an accidental one, says CNN anchor and correspondent Hala Gorani.
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The Emmy-award winning journalist will be giving a speech at the Women World Changers Summit in Melbourne and Sydney later this month about the crucial role of journalists as media transforms in the digital age.
"The media landscape will look very different in 10 years," she tells Fairfax Media in an interview by phone from London.
Gorani, who is currently based in London as host of CNN's The World Right Now program, says Facebook may have not set out to be a news service, but it inevitably it will be.
It will be "a headache for them, in that it's been forced upon them," she says. "I don't think Facebook or any of the others [social media players] wanted to be in the news business."
She says Facebook – the world's most popular social networking site – will either move to produce its own content or more seriously aggregate content from selected news outlets. "They will curate the stories we see," she says.
"How many times do you first notice a story on Facebook?", she asks, noting that even as an experienced journalist she often sources stories from Facebook and other social media. "Or Twitter? – although Twitter to a lesser extent."
Facebook has about 1.71 billion monthly active users. In July the company passed Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in market value. Facebook is now valued at almost $US368 billion ($483 billion).
The company's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told the world, via a post on Facebook on August 28 last year, that in one single day "one in seven people on earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family".
The Silicon Valley giant has also has started "FB Newswire" – which it says is "a resource for journalists that aggregates newsworthy social content shared publicly on Facebook by individuals and organisations".
Gorani says: "Social media platforms will [have to] make a big decision about how they carry news feed … it's not their core business."
Gorani, a French-raised Syrian-American, has had a 22-year career in journalism covering breaking news throughout the Middle East and Europe for major news organisations like AFP, Bloomberg Television and CNN.
She predicts the role of journalists will become more crucial as media changes. "News is a public service," Gorani says.
Those that provide news in a professional way and are seen as a credible source, will survive and thrive, she says. The rise of sites like Buzzfeed, 140-character Tweets and YouTube videos, cannot kill the craft.
Serious news, she says, has always had to compete with fluffy news. The advent of click-bait journalism simplify amplifies it. "It's always been the case," she says. "The Sun has always sold more than The Guardian."
She says every generation someone predicts the end of news media. "They say, 'can you believe it, we're dying'? But in the end it's still there. It's a perfected craft. You need to know how to do it. And just because there are citizen journalists doesn't mean we [journalists] will lose our jobs."
Gorani also spoke to Fairfax Media about the threat sexist remarks from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pose to gender diversity. But she says the fact that people challenge his comments shows we have moved a long way in the diversity cause.
