Author Archive for admin

European policy, Guest post, Media plurality

Des Freedman: When are we going to do something about media power?

by admin on 6th March 2014 • 0 Comments

This is a guest post by Des Freedman, which originally appeared on the UK Coalition for Media Pluralism site.

Media moguls are losing their power. At least that is what Rupert Murdoch thinks. As he tweeted back in 2012, during a discussion about a possible bid for the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, ‘haven’t you heard of the Internet? No one controls the media or will ever again’.

This is an impressively modest claim for a man whose media interests include Britain’s largest broadcaster, BSkyB, Britain’s best-selling newspaper, Britain’s top commercial radio news wholesaler and a slew of major media companies across the world. The idea that the media is now an anarchic field of competing voices may, after all, seem rather counter-intuitive given the fact that a mere three companies control some 70% of daily national newspaper circulation and that four public service broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5) continue to account for nearly three-quarters of total TV viewing in the UK.

The internet, despite Murdoch’s assertion to the contrary, is not going to stop this build-up of media power as similar patterns of concentrated media power are now being replicated online. For example, five groups account for more than 70% of online news consumption (measured by browsing time) and, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the ‘BBC and a few other traditional brands dominate the UK online news market’. Increasingly, we see monopolies firmly entrenched across the online world – Amazon for e-books, Google for search, Facebook for friendship and so on. In the US, Comcast, the giant internet service provider which also owns content producers and TV channels, recently announced its intention to buy Time Warner Cable to produce a company that would control internet access to two-thirds of American homes.

Handing this much influence to unelected individuals and unaccountable firms has a significant impact on who is able to direct the public conversations that take place at any one time. And we learned from evidence presented to the Leveson Inquiry that politicians are still in awe of ‘old media’ power (just as they are desperate to court ‘new media’ power) while proprietors are still able to command the attention of top politicians and to shape news agendas according to their ideological preferences.

So it matters when the Daily Mail launches its regular witch hunts against leading Labour politicians and stands firmly behind the government’s austerity programme, supports NHS privatisation and warns about a stampede of Romanians coming to our shores (a claim which it recently had to correct). It matters when the Sun uses its market power regularly to assault EU membership and when it describes the Guardian’s publication of the Edward Snowden revelations about NSA surveillance as ‘treason’ (rather ironic considering its self-declared support for press freedom).

An unhealthy intimacy between media moguls and politicians is hardly new but levels of media concentration across Europe are fostering a climate in which a handful of right-wing figures are able to exert growing political influence. Silvio Berlusconi may no longer be the Italian prime minister but his media interests still dominate Italian culture. In Hungary, the CEO of the second biggest commercial TV channel, TV2, is widely identified with the controversial governing party, Fidesz – an affiliation that has led to some 86% of political comment being dominated by representatives of the ruling parties. The Bulgarian media is dominated by Delyan Peevski who not only controls newspapers, websites, broadcast outlets and magazines, but was appointed head of the national security service in 2013. This decision was later overturned but he remains a hugely powerful political figure.

These are just some of the reasons why we need action to overturn media concentration and to press for genuine diversity in the media. In the UK, the House of Lords Communications Committee recently produced a report on media pluralism which called for more involvement from the communications regulator Ofcom, as opposed to ministers, in deciding on media mergers but still refused to recommend a course of action that might actually challenge existing media ownership structures. So while rumours continue about another bid by News Corp to take full control of BSkyB or about a joint bid by Discovery Communications and Sky to buy Channel 5, there are still no effective rules in place to prevent the further consolidation of the media by corporate interests.

It seems highly unlikely that, given the continuing influence of the largest media groups, any of the major political parties in Britain will make democratic media ownership a manifesto priority. But this should not stop us from trying, particularly as we have learned such a lot in the last few years about the corrosive relationships between senior politicians and media executives. We should also support the European Initiative for Media Pluralism, a grass roots campaign to secure enough signatures to force a European debate on tackling concentration. Today, news outlets across Europe, including La Repubblica in Italy, Le Soir in Belgium and openDemocracy in the UK, are devoting space to alt-phabet, a novel way of encoding news stories, to demonstrate the growing threats from states and media giants to pluralism and independence and to urge people to sign the petition.

Patterns of media ownership might not be able to tell us everything we need to know about how the media operate but they are certainly central to the reproduction of media power. As Stuart Hall once pointed out, media ownership might not be ‘a sufficient explanation of the way the ideological universe is structured, but it is a necessary starting point. It gives the whole machinery of representation its fundamental orientation in the value-system of property and profit.’ As long as we have a media culture that is accountable to a narrow range of corporate and state interests rather than the audiences and users who sustain it, then we will never get a media that is willing to challenge the powerful, to represent ordinary people or even adequately to make sense of the world.

To add your name to the petition please follow this link.

Des Freedman is Professor of Media and Communications in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and chair of the Media Reform Coalition.

This article gives the views of the author/s, and does not necessarily represent the position of the Media Power and Plurality Project. We welcome further views and contributions to the media plurality policy debate: please contact j.townend@westminster.ac.uk if you would like to contribute.

Blog, Media plurality, Media policy, Regional and local

New research: How do hyperlocals contribute to local democracy and what do they need?

by admin on 5th February 2014 • 2 Comments

Collaborative survey asks about hyperlocals’ contribution to the UK media landscape

Survey at this link

Hyperlocal publishing and community websites are becoming an increasingly important feature of the UK media landscape, supplementing existing print titles and other local platforms. In some places they may even be the only form of dedicated media coverage.

While the term ‘hyperlocal’ isn’t favoured by all, it is recognized at a governmental level, with a brief mention in the Department of Media, Culture and Sport’s recent consultation on media plurality as a “key source of information for people in specific communities”.

And new – and extensive – funding is being made available: through NESTA’s Destination Local project and the Technology Strategy Board.

However, there has been little systematic collection of data about the practice and direct needs of hyperlocal producers and consumers.

The hyperlocal strand of the Creative Citizens project at Cardiff University and Birmingham City University aims to fill this gap by looking at the emergence of neighbourhood news websites that have started to materialise in scores of communities around the UK.

These researchers have now joined forces with the media plurality project at the University of Westminster to design a research questionnaire.

The survey, supported by TalkAboutLocal, aims to understand better the nature of hyperlocal operations, and the problems or issues that those who run them are facing.

It has already been sent out to hundreds of hyperlocal sites on the TAL mailing list and in the Openly Local directory. The initial response has been very encouraging.

But we think there are more voices to hear. If you have already participated, please pass the link to fellow publishers. If not, please consider taking part – it shouldn’t take any longer than 15 minutes.

Our collaborative survey

We want to collect information about your main hyperlocal activity: it could be a website, blog, Facebook page, Facebook group, forum, Twitter feed, Tumblr, or something else. For simplicity, we use the word ‘site’ throughout the questionnaire although we will occasionally ask questions about specific media such as Facebook.

In the survey you will be asked about the way in which you run your site, the kinds of content you produce and your reach, and the support you would like in future.

This questionnaire should take around 15 minutes to complete. The data will be aggregated and anonymised which means your replies cannot be linked to you or your site’s name in any published findings.

There is a space at the end to leave your name, email and site name if you would like to be sent results and subsequent reports. Many thanks for your participation, which we believe will benefit all those involved in hyperlocal projects.

The questionnaire can be accessed at this link:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/J8XDSRF

Please do not fill in the survey twice – if you took part at the end of 2013 there is no need to do so again.

For further information, please contact:

Professor Steven Barnett, University of Westminster / Email: s.barnett@wmin.ac.uk
Dr Andy Williams, Cardiff University / Email: WilliamsA28@cardiff.ac.uk
Dave Harte, Birmingham City University / Email: Dave.Harte@bcu.ac.uk

Or leave comments and questions below!

Blog, Comment, Media plurality

Lords Communications Committee report on Media Plurality: two cheers

by admin on 4th February 2014 • 0 Comments

The House of Lords communications select committee publishes its report on media plurality today [Tuesday]. While there are a few holes in its policy approach, the recommendations provide a practical basis for a long overdue upheaval of the UK’s plurality framework, argues Professor Steven Barnett

There are two ways of looking at the House of Lords select committee’s report on Media Plurality, published today. The less charitable view is that it has ducked the crucial issue of how Parliament should lay down clear, unambiguous guidelines to prevent undue concentrations of media power. In doing so, it leaves a hole in the central plank of its proposals for reform, and breaches the very specific advice given in evidence by Chris Goodall, a former Competition Commissioner now working with Enders Analysis: “Whatever you decide to propose, I hope you leave no discretion to anybody.”

The more charitable – and probably fairer – view is that the report has provided both the philosophical and practical basis for a long overdue upheaval of Britain’s plurality framework. Since the positives outnumber the negatives, I will start with those.

From the beginning, there is a welcome and unambiguous declaration about the need for a dedicated plurality policy within a democratic society. In an important passage which sets the context for the rest of the report, there is a clear exposition of why plurality cannot simply be left to the market or to competition policy: “we believe that determining clear demarcation lines between plurality and competition policy is crucial”.

There is also common sense and restraint in dealing with the BBC, where the committee rejects any suggestion that the BBC should be subjected to plurality “control measures” from outside its own regulator. It floats the idea of a more creative role for the BBC, in which the next Charter might give it explicit responsibility “to stimulate consumption of diverse viewpoints from different external sources”. That is wholly in line with Director General Tony Hall’s recent pronouncements about the BBC’s potential contribution to fostering partnerships. Moreover, in a powerful rejection of top-slicing, the committee urges Government “to support our view that the licence fee should be for the BBC alone”.

Revamped framework

But the meat of this report lies in its suggestions for revamping the plurality framework. In what they call “the centre-piece of our approach”, the committee recommends a statutory periodic review of plurality, to be undertaken by Ofcom every 4-5 years. This idea was first floated by Ofcom itself, and is a wholly laudable and desirable proposal measure designed to account for organic growth in a dynamic and fast-changing market. At the same time, the committee recommends keeping the “transactional” review to be triggered – as now – by specific merger or acquisition activity.

Perhaps the most intriguing set of recommendations is the proposed regime for who should make the ultimate decision, with different approaches being advocated for the two types of review. For periodic reviews, a final decision would rest with the Secretary of State. Ofcom would rate any concerns across or within media markets (including the so-called digital intermediaries such as Google) on a three point scale from moderate to high to severe. Where it finds “immediate and pressing concerns resulting from organic change”, the report even allows for Ofcom to order divestment although it warns that the bar should be high, and would be subject to offers of mitigation. Moreover, with the final recommendations resting with a cabinet minister, it could of course still be overturned.

For transactional reviews, however, the final decision would rest with Ofcom. This is the most radical part of the report, including recommendations for “a new statutory responsibility for the assessment of a transaction’s impact on plurality”. It is a role for Ofcom which stems directly from the committee’s opening argument that competition policy and plurality policy are entirely separate concepts and that “a plurality assessment must focus on the interest of the citizen”. While the competition authorities would still have a role in assessing the competition aspects of a transaction, it would ultimately be left to the Ofcom board to reach a “Public Interest Decision” to resolve any conflict. The committee have therefore taken the perfectly logical view that, since decisions on plurality are ultimately about citizenship and democracy, the final decision should rest with the body which has a statutory duty to promote the interests of citizens as well as consumers.

Why no final decision on transactional reviews for the Secretary of State? Because, says the committee – clearly influenced by the evidence of Jeremy Hunt to Leveson as well as several witnesses to their own enquiry – “it is impossible for the Secretary of State to [make that decision] without the appearance of being influenced by political motives”. There is some logic in making this distinction between periodic and transactional reviews, though the same political considerations will no doubt apply equally to any divestment recommendations stemming from organic growth.

Ofcom’s discretion

All those elegantly argued and positive recommendations are slightly diminished by the huge amount of discretion left to Ofcom and the measurement process in carrying out either type of review. Parliament should, says the report, lay down guidance for a new framework but “there should be flexibility for Ofcom to interpret statutory guidance, design the assessment framework and select appropriate metrics according to the circumstances at the time of the review”. Although the report is not specific about the guiding framework for periodic reviews, it is essentially based around ensuring a sufficient diversity of viewpoints and preventing too much editorial influence. For transactions, it follows the same guiding principles and concludes that negative decisions should be based on the likelihood of a “material and unacceptable lessening of plurality”.

While Parliament’s role in providing a clear framework is essential, the discretion left to Ofcom to interpret that guidance, design an appropriate assessment framework and select metrics leaves it wide open to accusations of selective and subjective approaches. The biggest media companies are notoriously litigious; it is difficult to see either kind of review – if it results in recommendations for divestment or prevention of a transaction – avoiding lengthy legal challenges and judicial reviews.

Perhaps that is the nature of the plurality beast, and no set of proposals was ever going to fulfil what is by definition a difficult and contested policy aim. But while I sympathise with the sentiment that “a concept as complex as plurality can [not] legitimately be reduced down to one (measure)” – and indeed that proposals around behavioural remedies raise as many questions as they answer – I worry that a 21^st Century Fox bid for Sky or a Google bid for ITV or an Associated Newspapers bid for the Independent would all receive an eventual green light whatever creative combination of metrics might be cooked up by Ofcom.

Local initiatives?

One further aspect of the report is disappointing. Although it mentions in passing the importance of new initiatives and interventions to stimulate media enterprises, particularly at the local level, there is little attention paid to the different creative approaches that might be feasible or the potentially enabling role of government policy. Apart from reiterating the charitable funding idea raised in a previous report, there is a missed opportunity to call for new approaches along the lines of existing small grants to Community Radio, or allowing hyperlocal sites to share revenue from statutory notices.

These, plus other ideas for generating revenue to help boost new local media, could have been included as complementary initiatives to the reformed regime for plurality reviews. Overall, however, we should certainly welcome a report which puts the citizen and Ofcom firmly at the centre of a new plurality regime.

Steven Barnett is Professor of Communications at the University Westminster, and is currently leading an AHRC funded project into Plurality and Media Power. He acted as specialist adviser to the Lords select committee on four earlier inquiries.

Blog, Comment, Media ownership, Media plurality

Steven Barnett: Murdoch and media power – déjà vu all over again?

by admin on 30th January 2014 • 0 Comments

This week saw the announcement of half-year results from BSkyB. There was a slight dent in its relentless profitability following recent competition from BT for Premier League rights, but very little deviation from the last full-year results: annual revenues of £7.2 billion with an annual operating profit of £1.3 billion. One and a third billion is an awful lot of spare cash to be generating each year.

That was precisely why Rupert Murdoch, who still owns just 39% of BSkyB, was desperate for his 2010 News Corp bid for the whole company to succeed, until it was finally derailed in July 2011 by the Milly Dowler phone hacking revelations and subsequent Leveson Inquiry. While in previous years his UK newspapers were the company cash cow, they have been increasingly overshadowed by the sports-driven pay TV business of Sky. Unfortunately for Murdoch, only 39% of that £1.3 billion belongs to him.

According to the Daily Telegraph, he may be lining up a new bid and “the move makes more strategic sense now than it did in 2010”. Any bid would now come from his new 21st Century Fox business, created when he split the film and TV business from his publishing interests (still called News Corp) in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal. But in media ownership terms, Murdoch chairs both companies and the end result would be no different from the highly profitable and enormously powerful conglomerate which was eventually sidelined in 2011.

There is in some circles an increasingly relaxed view of a new Murdoch bid: a sense that, with the emergence of global social media and online giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon, anxiety over an expanded Murdoch empire would be yesterday’s problem. This is misguided. A wholly Murdoch-owned BSkyB would still mean that a single media enterprise – and ultimately one individual – controlled over a third of national newspaper circulation (and their associated websites) in the UK and the only commercial 24 hour UK news channel – which in turn supplies the news for Channel Five and almost every commercial radio station in Britain.

Apart from the news plurality issue, a new takeover bid would raise other issues. A unified corporate culture can determine editorial direction across a range of media outputs beyond news, including drama and comedy. Moreover News Corp, like all media conglomerates, are adept at exploiting their media outlets to promote their own products and ignore or disparage those of their rivals. A wholly owned Sky will give Murdoch more leverage for cross-promotion across his empire, thereby entrenching his competitive advantage and further reducing the number of alternative voices.

And apart from influence over editorial content, there’s the scope for consolidating power by putting undue pressure on regulators. Sky has already shown a healthy appetite for expensive litigation, draining the resources of regulators and competitors. Allied with strident editorial assaults on Ofcom in News Corp newspapers, this can create formidable barriers to public interest interventions which reinforces an unfair competitive advantage in the battle for rights and talent.

All of these fears about the potential consequences for unhealthy dominance of the newly merged conglomerate were rehearsed in the months before the News Corp bid fell victim to the phone-hacking scandal. It was, however, on the verge of going through and the lengthy process exposed serious flaws in the UK’s regulatory regime around media plurality. As ministers and prime-ministers past and present explained during the Leveson hearings, politicians became too enmeshed in the Murdoch empire and were given too much discretion in determining the outcome of such bids. If a second bid is also to be thwarted – which the public interest surely demands – that plurality regime must be overhauled.

Next Tuesday sees publication of the long-awaited report by the influential House of Lords Communications committee on media plurality. It will, I hope, propose a number of recommendations for reforming the media plurality public interest test, which was a last minute addition to the 2003 Communications Act (courtesy of some nimble political footwork from David Puttnam in the House of Lords). Without it, the Murdoch takeover would have been waved through.

But now the plurality regime urgently needs updating to embrace a broader view of plurality and media power than just news. Moreover, a new framework needs to re-engineer the complicated sequence of interventions which currently can only start and end with the Secretary of State. If we have learnt anything from the phone-hacking scandal and the relationship between politicians and the press, it is that powerful press barons still command a deeply unhealthy genuflection from politicians in desperate search of a positive headline. It is the independent and competent regulator, Ofcom, which should be tasked with ensuring that the public interest is not sacrificed to political expedience.

Governments are not bound to accept the recommendations of select committees, and there is no guarantee that the Lords committee will propose sweeping changes. But without them it is quite likely not only that Murdoch will launch another bid for the Sky cash cow, but that this time he will succeed. The consequences for democracy of such undiluted media power being concentrated in the hands of a single individual are just as dire as they would have been three years ago.

A version of this post first appeared on the Huffington Post.

Blog, Comment, Media plurality, Media policy

Philip Schlesinger & Alex Benchimol: The future of the Scottish press

by admin on 30th January 2014 • 0 Comments

By Professor Philip Schlesinger and Dr Alex Benchimol

In the run-up to the independence referendum on 18 September, Scotland’s newspaper press is facing a double challenge. First, can print journalism adapt to the digital revolution, given a continuing decline in newspaper sales? Second, can the press perform its civic role in contributing to an increasingly distinct democratic culture north of the Border?

Oddly, such questions have been largely neglected in recent debate about the media and Scottish independence. Of late, the focus has been on ideas set out in Scotland’s Future, the Scottish Government’s White Paper.

While this discusses culture, broadcasting and communications, it is prudently silent on the future of the press. A wise move, no doubt, after hostile media and political reactions to the ‘McLeveson’ report, commissioned by Alex Salmond and published in March 2013.

This report was widely seen as going further in proposing the regulation of the press and online journalism than anything that might be agreed, post-Leveson, south of the border and so the First Minister kicked it into the long grass. In fact, separate Scottish regulation is now effectively off the agenda.

As it happens, we don’t think that regulation is the fundamental issue for Scotland, although it’s the only issue concerning the press to attract political attention. It’s a truism that for anyone to regulate the press at all it first has to survive and flourish – and that really is not being as widely discussed as it ought. In a rare intervention, more than three years ago, a study by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute concluded that while there was a profound challenge of falling circulations and advertising migrating online, new media developments could also bring new opportunities for the press. That transition is still under way, and no major Scottish titles have yet disappeared.

Scotland’s press is certainly not unique in facing the impact of the online revolution. A key issue for newspapers everywhere is how to make their digital presence pay, as print sales continue to fall and advertising migrates online. That’s why in a 2011 Herald article, one of us called for a new business model for the Scottish press.

Can Scotland learn lessons from what’s happening elsewhere? To see how the press was faring in nations comparable to Scotland, at the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Cultural Policy Research we brought together leading national and international experts – academics, journalists, media executives and policymakers from Scotland and the wider UK, Denmark, Norway, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Quebec. In closed seminars, we discussed intensively what is happening to the press in other small nations and states as well as in Scotland.

The ensuing debate showed that at best the constitutional question is secondary to the strategies of those running the Scottish press. That’s because the fundamental issue of creating sustainable conditions for their enterprises dominates, regardless of whether Scotland is independent or not.

In fact, there was a consensus that in national regions in Europe and North America such as Catalonia, the Basque Country and Quebec, as in the rest of the UK, the need for new press business models and the need to attract new readers stand out as the most urgent issues facing their press systems. That’s because (as a recent Reuters Institute study has shown) there is an increasing divergence in how news is consumed across generations, with younger ‘digital natives’ increasingly moving to mobile devices like tablets — as well as using social media — to access news content.

The quest for a new balance between print and digital has enormous implications for the way that newsrooms are organized and how newspapers actually produce daily copy. There is also a new challenge to how news judgments are being made that is posed by the increased editorial use of live web analytics – information about real-time use of content. We are working on precisely this issue in current research at CCPR.

The overriding focus of our international discussion was on technology and economics with politics, surprisingly, playing second fiddle. What became quite clear was that each nation’s institutional history has affected the development of its press system. How each political culture has evolved has also influenced the extent of state intervention in subsidizing national press systems and the reasons that are deemed acceptable for doing so.

While explicit public subsidy to keep a wide range of titles in existence would be regarded as dangerous political interference with press freedom and plurality in the UK, in Norway it is simply taken for granted. There, it relates to both a strong sense of national identity developed over time and the wide geographical dispersal of the Norwegian population. Just think of how this contrasts with the UK press’s reception of Leveson’s proposals for press regulation last year.

It is also clear that national regions for which cultural identity is closely bound up with language have opted for state intervention. In Spain, leading national/regional newspapers like the Basque-language Berria and Catalan-language newspapers like El Periódico de Catalunya and El Punt Avui benefit from wider regional government subsidies to sustain these languages in the wider Spanish-speaking context.

In Scotland, this kind of subsidy is familiar in public service broadcasting, where government funds flow to BBC Alba to sustain Gaelic-language production. It would be unimaginable for such a policy to be applied to the press, however.

In each national press, digitization is re-shaping the economics and very identity of leading national newspapers, including La Presse in Quebec and ARA in Catalonia. Sustained by substantial language communities, both have sought to implement aggressive digital strategies as a means of actively engaging with the new multi-platform media landscape. They have gone digital in ways as yet unthinkable in Scotland.

Taking a long view, technological and existential anxieties about the role of the Scottish periodical press are nothing new. After the Union of 1707, Scottish editors and publishers framed their ambitions in terms that resonate with the ‘double challenge’ facing Scotland’s national press today. How could they provide a dedicated focus for Scotland’s cultural ambitions and distinctive civil society in the face of fierce commercial and technological competition, then, as now, from the London press? How could they promote Scottish national interests in a new constitutional framework and global economic context?

In the first issue of The Glasgow Advertiser in 1783, editor John Mennons described his new venture as engaged ‘in the task of informing and instructing his fellow citizens’, from the perspective of ‘the foremost commercial city in Scotland’. Mennons projected the new venture as part of a wider civic and national effort to maximize both Glasgow’s and Scotland’s commercial potential during a period of economic transition, when the cessation of trade with America had constrained the wealth of Glasgow’s Tobacco Lords, making the kind of commercial and political intelligence available in Scottish newspapers like the Advertiser all the more relevant to the city’s and nation’s economic survival.

The key issues about the current state and future shape of the Scottish press—economic survival; technological adaptation; and the national interest—have been with us since the earliest years of Scotland’s national press. So has the question of how the press might sustain a distinctive national cultural identity in a British, European and global context. These issues will remain an urgent national challenge, regardless of the result of Scotland’s independence referendum on 18 September.

Philip Schlesinger is Professor in Cultural Policy and Dr Alex Benchimol is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. The ‘Securing Scotland’s Voice’ seminars were supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This post first appeared on Policy Scotland. Many thanks to the authors for allowing us to publish it here.

Event, Media policy, Non-profit

Upcoming event, 27 January – ProPublica’s Richard Tofel at University of Westminster

by admin on 27th January 2014 • 0 Comments

Richard Tofel, president of the New York based non-profit investigative organisation ProPublica will be addressing an audience at the University of Westminster tonight, 27 January at 18:30 [details here]. His question: How do you measure the impact of journalism in 2014?

According to organisers OneWorld:

This is a rare chance to see Tofel discuss how ProPublica, an independent non-profit newsroom funded by philanthropic funds, operates and how he measures the impact of ProPublica’s journalism. The event will include input from media and impact experts, followed by audience Q&A.

Richard Tofel’s talk will be based on his white paper: ‘Non-Profit Journalism: Issues Around Impact’ [PDF], which he also mentions in an interview with the Guardian:

In Tofel’s new world of philanthropic journalism – ProPublica receives about $12m a year from 3,000 donors – the demand for more sophisticated methods is becoming increasingly loud, in tune with a trend sweeping the whole philanthropic sector.

Full interview here.

The event ties in closely with one of the themes of our media plurality project: we have been have involved in discussions about the potential for charitable and non-profit journalism.

New platforms offer the potential for increasing plurality, but realistically require structural and financial support to be both viable and effective. We are looking at ways in which charity law might usefully be amended to offer some financial assistance to local and national initiatives. The Community Radio model, with financial assistance available according to strictly defined criteria relating to “social gain”, might provide a further useful model.

Blog, Comment, Media plurality, Media policy

Government’s focus on measurement runs risk of neglecting crucial media plurality issues

by admin on 15th January 2014 • 0 Comments

Media coverage following Maria Miller’s appearance in front of the culture, media and sport select committee in December 2013 focused on press regulation, but she was also asked about the government’s progress on media plurality, in light of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations.

The Secretary of State’s comments, reproduced and highlighted in red below, indicate that the government is focusing on the development of a measurement framework and runs the risk of neglecting broader issues of media plurality.

In written evidence to the government’s consultation, Professor Steven Barnett raised his concern that while the consultation paper started with the broad-brush approach of the Leveson report, it then appeared to limit its scope to issues of measurement and consumption.

This focus does not allow for what the eminent American political scientist, Edwin Baker, called “communicative power”. While undue concentration of media ownership is certainly unwelcome because of its potential influence on diversity of news, information and ideas in a democracy, there are other potentially harmful consequences for democracy.

A measurement framework which is constructed purely around statistical models of consumption or “share of references” by definition takes little account of opinion-forming impacts of different media forms.

Furthermore, the government must look at the current policy regime around plurality – in particular, the Public Interest test – which we suggest is not fit for purpose.

These and other concerns are also addressed in our recommendations to the House of Lords select committee inquiry on media plurality.

Extract from oral evidence by Maria Miller, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to the Culture, Media and Sport committee, 18 December 2013:

Q49 Mr Bradshaw: Not quite. I had one other question on Leveson. What progress has your Department made in implementing Sir Brian’s recommendations on media plurality?

Maria Miller: Mr Bradshaw is absolutely right to say that media plurality was another aspect of Lord Justice Leveson’s report. A consultation on plurality closed on 22 October, and we are due to publish the consultation report early next year. I think that that will give us a foundation from which we can move forward on that really important issue.

…..

Q51 Chair: On Mr Bradshaw’s first question about media plurality, your communications and creative industries Minister said to the Lords Communications Committee that it is unlikely that there would be any legislative measures taken on media plurality in this Parliament. I take it you would agree with him on that.

Maria Miller: What we are focusing on, Chair, is the importance of understanding how we deal with media plurality in what is a very different and ever-changing environment. Our consultation has been seeking views on the scope of a measurement framework, and then, when we have got through that particular part of our deliberations, we intend to commission the development of a clear measurement framework and work that up in partnership with the industry.

This is a highly complex area which is, frankly, only getting more complicated, but at the heart of our approach is ensuring that British people have the ability to access a wide range of news and views, and information about the world in which they live. We believe that that plurality of information is at the heart of having a healthy and vibrant democracy.

Q52 Chair: From what you say, it sounds as if it is unlikely that it will be in the next Parliament either. It is going to take a long time.

Maria Miller: Again, I think it is important that we get it right. I think the Committee would be urging us to get it right and it is certainly a complicated area.

Chair: Let us move on to something completely different.

Blog, Comment, European policy, Guest post, Media plurality, Media policy

Alison Harcourt: EC should encourage transparency and co-ordination, not duplication & liberalisation

by admin on 14th January 2014 • 0 Comments

Media concentration continues to grow in Europe. Pressure from the European Parliament and NGOs prompted the European Commission to establish a High Level Group, which reported on media pluralism in early 2013. The Commission’s DG Connect then responded to the Group’s report with its own proposals. University of Exeter’s Alison Harcourt, a member of our media power and plurality research advisory board, points out the problems with these proposals and suggests the Commission focus rather on using soft policy initiatives to encourage transparency and co-ordination among existing stakeholders. This post originally appeared on the LSE Media Policy Project Blog and is reproduced here with thanks.

Media concentration is recognised as a threat to democracy, freedom of speech and pluralist representation. However, media ownership restrictions have been replaced in EU states with competition law due to market pressure.

Pluralism remains a key consideration, as evidenced in competition decisions taken on the 2005 proposed takeover of ProSiebenSat by Axel Springer in Germany; the 2007 17.9% stake in ITV by BSkyB in the UK; the 2009 26% Communicorp stake in INM; and the 2011 proposed acquisition of BSkyB by News Corporation.

Interest groups, including some from the UK, are calling for EU action. A 2013 European Initiative for Media Pluralism, by over 100 civil society groups, called upon the EU for “legislative actions to stop big media and protect media pluralism in Europe”.

The arguments focus on: why continued statutory restrictions should remain in place to ensure pluralism of opinion, adequate political representation, and a citizen’s participation in a democratic society; why market forces alone cannot be trusted to deliver these democratic goals; and how increased technological delivery of media content is leading to the establishment of gateway monopolies.

But what form can EU action take? Article 151(4) of the Treaty is a weak instrument on which to base a Directive as its link to media pluralism is tenuous and it requires unanimity decision-making in the Council of Ministers. Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which states that “The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected”, needs only to be respected under EU law and cannot be utilised as a basis for a Directive.

The European Commission’s proposals

In May 2013, the European Commission (EC) made 30 recommendations in response to the report of the High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism on “A free and pluralistic media to sustain European democracy” and following a public consultation.

Condensed into 9 main categories these are to:

1) fund a European fundamental rights agency (EFRA) or independent monitoring centre to monitor the role of media freedom and pluralism;

2) set up a national audiovisual regulatory authority (NRA) network based upon the IRG to report directly to the European Commission;

3) recommend EU‐wide standards for media councils, journalistic practise and media literacy;

4) subsidise media content, in particular “increasing national coverage of EU affairs”, journalism scholarships, academic research, cross national media networks, and open access policies;

5) revise EU legislation on privacy and introduce libel restrictions at the EU (which would also cover the internet);

6) include media pluralism under competition rules at the EU level;

7) make a pluralist media environment a pre‐condition for EU membership and receipt of EU aid;

8) promote net neutrality;

9) mandate opt-outs to third party data transfer.

The problems with the EC’s proposals

Why are these proposals problematic? Rather than addressing media plurality, the proposals seek to support and promote the existing agenda of the European Commission:

1) an EU monitoring centre could repeat work of other organisations;

2) an NRA network would flank existing efforts by EPRA on best practise and information exchange but such a fora should not set the agenda;

3) there is no EU legal competence for media councils/journalistic practise. Media literacy is already funded under the EU’s lifelong learning programme;

4) promoting EU media coverage does not address problems of media concentration;

5) the 2012 proposed General Data Protection Regulation covers privacy and data protection; libel is protected by subsidiarity;

6) Article 21 (4) under the Merger Regulation protecting national media pluralism rules should not be transferred to the EU level but remain protected under subsidiarity;

7) market liberalisation in third countries does not address existing EU ownership problems;

8) net neutrality is covered under the EU Regulatory Framework;

9) third party data is being discussed under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and does not address media ownership.

Transparency and soft policy co-ordination

What should the EC be doing? 1) it should identify and extend existing provisions protected under subsidiarity to cross-border broadcasting 2) it should increase requirements on transparency of media company reports and activities via application of existing EU company law 3) enable public availability of media monitoring via existing EU transparency provisions 4) establish soft policy coordination for safeguarding editorial independence and freedom of expression in collaboration with interest groups.

Specifically, the EU should build upon best practise and policy learning under stakeholder governance. Soft policies can and should be initiated under the “media pluralism” clause of the 2008 Audiovisual Services Directive to be implemented by the Contact Committee in cooperation with EPRA and third sector groups.

Ownership monitoring and recommendations on editorial independence and freedom of expression can be made in conjunction with third sector actors without the need for the establishment of an EFRA. Information should be exchanged amongst the EC, NRAs and the third sector.

Provision of a publically accessible database for monitoring media ownership can be made available through third sector groups listed in the EU’s joint Transparency registry. Resources should be pooled and links made between existing databases such as the KEK’s database on German companies (e.g. detailing ProSiebenSat1′s ownership in the Cayman Islands) and OpenCorporate’s online database and made available in French and English.

Finally the EC could co-ordinate the identification of national best practices, such as the non-media-specific transparency requirements under the UK 2006 Companies Act (Section 854) and the Austria’s Open Government Data Portal, for application on a European-wide basis under the EU’s 2004 Transparency Directive and 2007 Transparency Recommendations.

Blog, Media plurality, Media Plurality series

Media Plurality Series: all the posts

by admin on 23rd December 2013 • 0 Comments

In the last few weeks we’ve been running a special series on media plurality with the LSE Media Policy Project. Here’s a list of the featured posts, from first to last. Please feel free to comment under the individual posts, and if you would like to contribute to the blog in the new year, please email j.townend@westminster.ac.uk.

Media Plurality Series: Is Ofcom’s ‘Share of References’ scheme fit for measuring media power? – Steven Barnett

Media Plurality Series: Fixed ownership limits proposed for transparency and accountability – Justin Schlosberg

Media Plurality Series: European level inertia is not justified – Petros Iosifidis

Media Plurality Series: The transparency of media ownership – Mark Thompson

Media Plurality Series: The impact of a 20% ownership cap is not so ‘minor’ – Rob Kenny

Media Plurality Series: Why is the EU not protecting plurality? – Mike Harris

Media Plurality Series: Interview with Robert Picard on policy priorities for a pluralistic society

Blog, European policy, Guest post, Media ownership, Media Plurality series

Media Plurality Series: Interview with Robert Picard on policy priorities for a pluralistic society

by admin on 20th December 2013 • 1 Comment

For the last post in our special Media Plurality Series with the LSE Media Policy Project, LSE MSc student Emma Goodman interviewed Robert Picard, Director of Research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, on definitions and measurement of pluralism, the role of the internet and overall policy priorities.

Follow this link for the other posts in this series

[EG] You have said that the UK tends to use a more narrow definition of plurality than that employed in other countries. Would you suggest a wider definition, and if so what would that be?

[RP] The question is: what are you trying to achieve? The definition of plurality used in the UK is designed to try to maintain an existing range of plurality, primarily in the press, and a range between Conservative party views and Liberal/Labour views. It doesn’t really worry about other parties’ views. It doesn’t really care if the Greens or UKIP have anything to say, so in that regard it’s problematic, because it’s essentially designed to maintain existing power relations among the parties, and that’s not a really effective policy. It only concentrates on political plurality and ignores all other aspects.

There are many other aspects of plurality and many other influences on plurality besides just ownership. If you’re not really looking at plurality in terms of how varieties of cultures and classes and varieties of ethnic groups in the country are covered, you are taking a very narrow view of what society needs to do to be able to discuss itself, understand its identity and explain its problems to each other. That is why I say there is too narrow a conceptualization in the UK. And it’s not that the ownership of the press isn’t a problem, that’s just part of the problem.

While citizens of a country all share a particular culture as national citizens, there are often several sub-cultures within a country that need to be well represented. For Britain this is a particular problem now, as we have devolution going on and other such things – how do you represent that but still maintain some sort of broader national identity? That’s a huge problem. You can only do that if you’re not just looking at politics.

Does increasingly widespread internet access make plurality of traditional media ownership less important? Is there inherent plurality on the internet?

There’s no question that there’s the opportunity for more people to express their views on the internet. But it does not increase the opportunity to be heard, and in fact much of what goes on on the internet actually restricts the ability to be heard. We know that the majority of people go to the sites that are primarily the big brands of offline media, and when you use search engines, the first results they give you are companies that pay them money – usually people with a good deal of money.

The second thing they give you are sites that don’t pay them money but are the most visible. So the algorithms tend to promote established powerful organisations rather than the alternatives. And when you get a page of search results, about 90% of people will go to the top 10 sites. A lot of people don’t realize how skewed those searches are because of the algorithms.

Are we better off than we were? Yes. Is it dramatically better in terms of what the other person sees and hears, no. The traditional media is still very, very important.

There has been a lot of focus on how to measure plurality – but more importantly: who decides, and on what basis, when it’s enough?

We, as human beings, tend to read the things that are most comfortable for us or tend to reflect our viewpoints the most. One of the terrible limitations of the human mind is that a lot of us don’t want to be confronted by other ideas, although of course there are some who seek out other ideas and want to hear debates. So you have a problem: can you force people to listen to views they don’t want to listen to? You can’t force people to read a particular newspaper or magazine. But you can ask broadcasters to make sure that they show a range of views.

Right now the range that’s demanded is pretty small, and in fact the broadcasters get yelled at if they go too far outside the normal range. UKIP, for instance, for all those people who think it’s racist and xenophobic and all of those things, does have some interesting arguments about whether Britain is losing sovereignty because of the EU – a reasonable question for any citizen anywhere to ask. But it’s hard of them to get their voices heard. That is problematic and it means that certain debates won’t take place. It’s very difficult in this country to have a debate about a topic like euthanasia, for example.

What should be the number one priority for policy makers going forward?

I think the biggest problem that policy-makers in the UK have to look at right now is what they are going to do about cross media ownership, the range of cross media ownership that is occurring and growing, and those who want to go further. Currently today nobody has effectively come up with a measurement system that really works. Some of the best ones, I think, ultimately come down to audience measures rather than ownership measures, because ownership isn’t the issue, the effect on the public is the real issue. So I think audience measures make sense, there are different ideas as to where the limits should be placed or how you should measure them – those are up for debate and should be discussed.

I think the second thing that needs to be discussed is how to meet the needs of many urban areas today where there are large communities of people who never see themselves in the press, or on television, unless there is a riot or some sort of problem. That is bad for society: somehow, we need to solve that. It’s not a peculiar problem for Britain. It is a problem for many countries, but it is one that needs to be addressed in policy because it is so important in a pluralistic society to make sure that they are represented. Because if they don’t see themselves in the media, in the news, in the issues that are put forward, they can never integrate, they can never fully become part of society.

Blog, Guest post, Media plurality, Media Plurality series

Media Plurality Series: Why is the EU not protecting plurality? – Mike Harris

by admin on 19th December 2013 • 1 Comment

As part of our joint series on media plurality with the LSE Media Policy Project, Mike Harris, head of advocacy at Index on Censorship, argues that action is urgently needed to protect pluralism in Europe.

Currently the EU does not have the legal competence to act in this area [media plurality] as part of its normal business. In practice, our role involves naming and shaming countries ad hoc, as issues arise. I am quite willing to continue to exercise that political pressure on Member States that risk violating our common values. But there’s merit in a more principled way forward

— Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes

Last week, Index on Censorship released its report ‘Time to step up: The EU and freedom of expression’ the first analysis of how the EU protects freedom of expression within the union but also externally in its near-neighbourhood and beyond. Attention was given to our call for the EU to do more to protect whistle-blowers after the failure of EU member states to give (or even consider to give) asylum to Edward Snowden, but the report also identified a number of significant challenges to media freedom within the European Union, in particular the growing problem of media ownership patterns that are reducing media plurality.

European plurality standards

The media in the EU is more concentrated than the media in North America even after taking into account population, geographical size and income. In fact, by global standards, media concentration in the EU is high indeed. This would perhaps be acceptable if the EU was merely a trading bloc, but it is isn’t. As the report reiterates, the EU is a broader project with a clear aspiration to protect and defend human rights.

This is a legal pre-requisite of membership and as the Treaty of Lisbon has made the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding, now an on-going commitment by member states. Every European Union member state has ratified the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and has committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Media plurality is an area the report argues where the European Commission has competency. Yet, the commission has until now left the promotion of media plurality up to member states. Now that this approach has been found wanting, the Commission is and needs to rethink its approach.

The Italian example

Italy is the most egregious example of an EU member state failing to protect media plurality. The famous Italian “anomaly” had the country’s then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi exerting influence over the state broadcaster (which in turn was mandated by law to carry his political party’s views) alongside his personal ownership of the country’s largest television private television and advertising companies. The Gasperri Law of 2004 that was supposed to prevent media concentration may according to the OSCE have helped to preserve them.

While the European Parliament condemned Berlusconi’s personal influence over nearly 80% of the Italian television media, the Commission did not respond until July 2010 where it acted to remove restrictions placed on Sky Italia that prevented the satellite broadcaster from moving into terrestrial television.

Concentration throughout Europe

Italy is not the only EU member state where media ownership patterns have undermined plurality. The Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom demonstrated this year that strong media concentrations can be seen across the EU with large media groups holding ownership of a significant share of the domestic media in many member states. These media concentrations are significantly higher than the equivalent US figures.

mike index's tables

The internet was supposed to drive competition in the media market, yet the Centre found the most concentration was in the online market. The reduction of the cost for new entrants to enter the media market facilitated by the internet was supposed to improve media plurality. There is alternative evidence to suggest this is happening.

Those who read their news in print in the UK, on average read 1.26 different newspapers; those who read newspapers online read 3.46 news websites. On the other hand, the convergence of TV stations, online portals and newspapers may produce even bigger media corporations[1]. New entrants to the market such as VICE Magazine and the Huffington Post have sold significant shares of their business to existing media corporations.

This process has not gone unnoticed by the Commission, with the independent High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism calling for digital intermediaries, including app stores, news aggregators, search engines and social networks, to be included in assessments of media plurality. The Reuters Institute is also concerned and has called for digital intermediaries to be required to “guarantee that no news content or supplier will be blocked or refused access”.

Match commitments with action

In a number of areas, the Index report has found the EU’s member states to be failing in their duty to protect freedom of expression adequately. Media plurality is one such area where a clear commitment by member states has not been matched by action from either the states themselves, or the European Commission. With increasing digital and media convergence, the role of the Commission will be crucial for the protection of media plurality. Unless the Commission is ready and prepared to act this convergence could have a significant impact on the range of opinions and views that European citizens are exposed to, with a chilling effect on freedom of expression in Europe. Italy may not be the anomaly in the near-future.

You can follow Mike on Twitter here: @mjrharris

[1] p.165, Lawrence Lessig, ‘Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity” (Penguin, 2004)

Blog, Comment, Guest post, Media plurality, Media Plurality series

Media Plurality Series: The impact of a 20% ownership cap is not so ‘minor’ – Rob Kenny

by admin on 13th December 2013 • 1 Comment

In response to LSE Media Policy Project’s policy brief on modelling proposed media ownership limits [PDF], Rob Kenny of Communications Chambers counters one of the report’s conclusions and explains why he thinks such limits would have significant impact on the media market. This is the latest post in our joint series with the LSE Media Policy Project.

Last week Justin Schlosberg (of Birkbeck, University of London and the Media Reform Coalition) and I debated media plurality issues at an LSE event. We agreed (I think) on the objectives of media plurality, but had very different views on the merits and form of regulatory intervention.

At the event Justin presented a paper Modelling Media Ownership Limits. This paper contains much useful material, but I write now to question one of its conclusions.

The paper sets out various proposed media ownership caps to support plurality, and their likely impact. For brevity I will focus on the caps proposed by the Media Reform Coalition (MRC), which are typical. In brief, they are:

At a 15% share of a media market, behavioural remedies would be applied such as the appointment of an independent panel to oversee editorial policy
At a 20% market share, ownership limits would be applied to ensure no person or entity had a controlling stake in the media entity

Justin’s paper suggests that “the impact on markets [of these caps] would be relatively minor”. However, this seems a bold claim.

Selling off the Sun and the Mail?

Both the Mail and the Sun have shares of the national newspaper market of over 20%. Thus under the MRC’s rules, both these titles would need to be publicly floated as independent entities. It is not at all clear that there is much public demand for the shares of new newspaper companies, particularly ones that would have no ‘take over premium’, since they could never be acquired. Thus the value placed by the public markets on a new ‘Sun PLC’ or ‘Mail PLC’ might be well below its true value. Moreover, there would be the listing costs to be borne, and the future costs of being a public company. Ultimately these would all be costs borne by the current owner (since they would be factored into the initial sales price). The current owner would also face the loss of any synergies with the rest of the group, and the intangible costs of loss of control.

What would a rational owner do when faced with such a forced sale? Presumably seek to avoid it by bringing the title’s share down below the 20% mark – relatively easily done through a price increase (which would keep revenues flowing but reduce circulation). The result would be a further reduction in newspaper readership. Moreover, it would severely discourage any future investment in those titles that might once again increase their share, and trigger an enforce sale.

Nor do the problems end there – if the Sun and the Mail reduced their share, then someone else would gain it. The Mirror could easily find itself close to or above the 20% share mark, forcing it to be spun out, or potentially to reduce its own circulation to avoid that fate. There is a clear risk of a vicious circle, and at minimum an acceleration of the already alarming decline in newspaper circulation.

Putting Sky News out of business?

Serious though the implications for newspapers are from a ‘20% rule’, they are far from the most drastic consequences. Because of Sky’s provision of wholesale radio news, the paper suggests that Sky News would fail the 20% test. However, it is hard to imagine Sky News being viable as an independent company – it is substantially loss making. In such cases the paper allows that “an equity carve-out or the transferral of voting rights from shareholders to employees” would be appropriate. It is not clear what is meant by an equity carve out – who would be interested in owning any number of shares that had no prospect of paying dividends, but rather required constant subsidies?

Conceivably voting rights could be transferred to employees, but would this have any practical benefit? If a Sky News remained utterly dependent on its parent for financial support – and by extension, the employees remained dependent on the goodwill of the parent for their jobs – how much real editorial independence would they have? Indeed, why would we expect the parent to continue to support a loss making, uncontrolled entity? Ownership regulations could put Sky News’ life at stake.

Within wholesale TV news, ITN is close to a 20% share – a relatively small drop in BBC consumption or the disappearance of Sky News could push it over the threshold. Once again, there are real concerns whether an independent ITN would be viable as a public company. In 2012 it made a pre-tax profit of just £1.5m, which contrasts to its net liabilities of £60m – without the support of its parents, it could well be bankrupt.

Thus the rules proposed by MRC could jeopardise the future of some leading news providers, accelerate the decline of newspaper circulations and act as a major disincentive to investment. It is hard to reconcile these significant risks with a view that the rules’ impact would be “relatively minor”.

European policy, Media ownership, Media plurality, Media Plurality series

Media Plurality Series: The transparency of media ownership – Mark Thompson

by admin on 11th December 2013 • 0 Comments

In the next post in our Media Plurality Series curated together with the LSE Media Policy Project, Mark Thompson, of the Open Society Media Program, argues that an important first step toward media pluralism in Europe is better transparency of media ownership.

Amid all the attention that scholars and activists have paid to media ownership over the years, the transparency of ownership has been neglected. This is odd, because the public availability of accurate and up-to-date information about ownership is – undeniably – an essential component of democratic and pluralist media systems. And anybody who has worked on media and journalism standards outside North America and north-western Europe is likely to have witnessed the problems that result when ownership is opaque.

Media regulators and ordinary citizens must have access to information about who owns what. It is impossible to take steps to address excessive media concentrations and conflicts of interest – or even to identify such problems – if owners cannot be identified. Public knowledge of owners’ identities helps to ensure that abuses of media power can be assessed, publicised, openly debated and perhaps even prevented. Transparency also ensures that people can be accurately informed about the interests and influences behind the news presented for their consumption, and that media markets can operate fairly and efficiently, especially towards new entrants.

The state of transparency in Europe

European organisations agree that transparency of media ownership is essential for media pluralism and democracy. This has been broadly recognised by the European Parliament, and by the European Commission’s High-level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism. The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media has consistently urged member states to respect transparency of media ownership.

Above all, it has been recognised by the Council of Europe. Thomas Hammarberg, as the Council’s Commissioner for Human Rights (2006-2012), concluded “there must be transparency of media ownership”. The Committee of Ministers has led the way in drawing attention to the importance of media ownership transparency and urging member states to “adopt any regulatory and financial measures called for in order to guarantee media transparency”.

Despite this recognition of the importance of the principle, no systematic research had been carried out before Access Info Europe (AIE) and the Open Society Media Program (OSMP) examined the availability of ownership information in 19 European countries, in 2012.[1]

We found that the public in most of these countries cannot obtain a detailed and comprehensive picture of who owns all media outlets. The data available does not make it possible to identify the ultimate or beneficial owners of media outlets. In nine countries it is impossible for the public to find out who the actual owners of the media are through media-specific reporting or company registers. In only six countries can the public access sufficient information from the media authority to establish who owns the broadcast media; for print and online media this is possible in just two countries.

In only four countries does the ownership information submitted to a company register allow identification of the owner for all types of company (publicly listed, limited company, etc.), but such requirements do not apply to owners of other kinds of media outlets. For the broadcast media, beneficial ownership is only required to be disclosed to the media authority in six countries and to the companies register in four countries.

What can be done?

This is clearly an unhealthy situation. AIE and OSMP have prepared a set of detailed recommendations for mandatory reporting requirements to disclose the entire ownership chain to a national media authority. This disclosure would allow the identification of beneficial and ultimate owners, back to natural persons. The information should be available to the public in an accessible format free of charge, and be published in a regularly updated and centralised database.

At the Council of Europe, the Steering Committee on Media and Information Society noted our research while the Parliamentary Assembly referenced it in a report on media freedom. The Committee of Ministers may yet be persuaded to issue a detailed declaration, pointing towards a clear international standard of media ownership transparency. This could then be used as leverage with member states and the European Union.

The wider context for this campaign is media pluralism, which is explicitly supported in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (Art. 11). Yet progress in Brussels is bound to be difficult, given the Commission’s extreme reluctance to legislate on media values and the certainty of push-back from powerful industry players against any meaningful disclosure regime. With elections to the European Parliament due in May, it may be harder still to make headway in 2014. The best opportunity may arise as and when the Audio-Visual Media Services Directive comes to be revised; without effective campaigns at national level, however, the opportunity will prove elusive.

More positively, this initiative coincides with an unprecedented global debate around company ownership transparency (commitments at the Open Government Partnership and the G8 are recent proof). Transparency of media ownership is an idea whose time has come.

[1] The countries are Austria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK, plus Morocco as the 20th country. Open Society Foundation, part of the Open Society Foundations, is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (company number 4571628) and a registered charity (charity number 1105069). Its registered office address is 7th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP

Blog, European policy, Media plurality, Media Plurality series

Media Plurality Series: European level inertia is not justified – Petros Iosifidis

by admin on 9th December 2013 • 1 Comment

In the next post in our Media Plurality Series curated together with the LSE Media Policy Project, Petros Iosifidis of City University London looks at developments at the European level and calls for action to set criteria for two kinds of measurement mechanisms.

The rationale for public intervention on media ownership is twofold: to prevent excessive media concentration and the accumulation of power in the hands of a few, and to promote media pluralism (the presence of a number of different and independent voices) and diversity in the media (different political opinions and representations of culture within the media). It has long been argued that traditional conglomerates like News Corporation and Disney can endanger a pluralistic, competitive media system, but pluralism debates have gained momentum in recent years with the increasing power of ‘new’ global giants, such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. There has been a hot debate at the EU level as to whether there should be a Europe-wide intervention to curb the power of such media companies or whether this can be accomplished at the Member State level.

Previous action

During the 1980s and 1990s, following repeated requests by the European Parliament, the European Commission attempted to implement media ownership regulation across Europe. This was unsuccessful because no agreement could be reached on the unit of measuring media concentration and pluralism. In the 1990s, following the debate on media concentration at the European level (initiated by the EU 1992 Green Paper Pluralism and Media Concentration in the Internal Market), the view emerged that it was possible to measure ‘influence’ exerted by applying audience-based criteria (readership, audience reach, viewing or listenership share).

The argument was that while financial units (companies’ market share, shares of assets, value-added, sales, advertising revenue) are closer to the traditional systems of concentration measurement, which permit assessment of media market concentration or even the existence of a dominant position, audience-based methods might be more effective for the measurement of influence in the market-place.

More recently, the Independent Study on Indicators for Media Pluralism in the Member States – Towards a Risk-Based Approach (2009) split the concept of pluralism into three normative dimensions – political, cultural, and demographic pluralism – as well as three operational dimensions – pluralism of media ownership or control, pluralism of media types, and genres. While the study urges the application of the same analytical framework in all Member States to ensure comparability of results obtained, it is not a call for a harmonization of policies. Neelie Kroes, the current EU Commissioner in charge of media, established two advisory groups to examine concentration and pluralism: the High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism and the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom. Both produced reports in 2013 calling for action to protect media pluralism and media freedom.

The first step: a common definition

The debate on media pluralism has been kept alive with the commissioning of independent studies and reviews, but there has been little sign of action. The prevailing notion is that pluralism can be tackled adequately at a Member State level, because a pan-Europe approach could jeopardise national press and broadcasting traditions that are often connected to specific political histories, cultures and language traditions.

There have been initiatives to establish some common European-wide ways of assessing media plurality, the most ambitious of which is probably the Commission’s efforts to implement a Media Pluralism Monitor. However, reaching agreements around the right methods of measuring media concentration and pluralism has proven to be problematic. The two different sets of methods illustrated above (audience and revenue -based) are said to correspond to two levels of measurement of concentration in the information market: the political/cultural or pluralism, and the economic or concentration of resources. It is argued that audience-based methods are coherent with the cultural/political standpoint and that revenue-based methods are close to the traditional systems of concentration measurement. However, due to the close relationship between economic power and pluralism, audience figures could also measure market power.

In fact, audience-based measures are a form of market share measurement, which is a classic economic measurement. ‘Audience’ are the equivalent of measuring sales (that is, market share), which is a classic economic measure of power. Therefore, the distinction between economic measures and cultural/political measures is irrelevant. Both sets of media market measurement assess market power.

In the absence of a direct way of establishing ‘impact’, crude measures based on market power (criteria about market structure) are used instead. And what the audience and revenue-based methods are doing is in fact that – they evaluate market power. So, both sets of criteria should be used. Regulatory agencies should come up with clear measurement criteria in order to understand fully and eventually curb media power across Europe. After all, Europe-wide networks of regulators, such as EPRA (European Platform of Regulatory Authorities) and BEREC (Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications), have their hands on data from both types of measures. Inertia is not justified as it will almost certainly result in further consolidation.

Petros Iosifidis, along with his co-editors, will be launching a new book series on Global Media Policy and Business at an afternoon event on 17 December, 2013 at City University London.

Blog, Media plurality, Media Plurality series

Media Plurality Series: Fixed ownership limits proposed for transparency and accountability – Justin Schlosberg

by admin on 6th December 2013 • 0 Comments

In the second post of our media plurality series, co-hosted with the LSE Media Policy Project, Justin Schlosberg of Birkbeck, University of London discusses his latest research that examined civil society proposals for media plurality measures and models. He argues that such limits and thresholds could limit media power with minimal impact on the market.

What was exposed beyond any doubt at the Leveson Inquiry hearings was the scope of informal access to ministers enjoyed by major media groups, and their willingness to use those channels to ‘communicate’ regularly and intensely in the build up to plurality decisions. We now know that Jeremy Hunt at best misled Parliament about the personal contact he had with News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel in 2011, during the supposedly ‘transparent’ process of deliberation over News Corp’s bid to buy out BSkyB. That was over and above the more substantive contact between his office and News Corp revealed to Leveson in a series of email exchanges. It is for this reason that the majority of civil society groups – and indeed the majority of the public – have come out strongly in favour of fixed ownership limits as a means of restoring transparency and accountability to plurality policy.

“Clear bright lines” are not “blunt instruments”

Ofcom – in line with commercial media interests – have suggested the opposite: that the power to decide when and how to act on plurality should instead remain with ministers. The arguments underpinning this view rest on a number of shaky assumptions. For one thing, it is often taken for granted that fixed ownership limits are ‘blunt instruments’: that they can unduly penalise groups who merely innovate or survive whilst leaving others untouched who are no less impacting on public conversation.

The sub-text here is that measures upon which ownership limits would be based (such as consumption or revenue metrics) cannot take account of contextual factors which can determine a media group’s ‘share of voice’ and may not be detectable through quantitative indicators of market share. What’s more, the argument goes, media markets are particularly dynamic and subject to rapid change which a static system of ownership limits would be ill-equipped to respond to.

These arguments fail to address the nuances of proposals for ownership limits, many of which stipulate lower and upper thresholds triggering a range of remedies according to specific circumstances and market conditions. My examination of six non-industry proposals[1] submitted to the Lords Select Committee on Communications inquiry into the issue found the following to be the most common:

A Possible consensual position based on most common positions in civil society responses

The concept of ‘absolute limits’ is often assumed to denote a market share threshold at which companies would be forced to either divest or close down. But in fact, we can look at absolute or ‘ceiling’ limits in two distinct ways: an outright prohibition on any group or company that breaches the limit, or a prohibition on any controlling interest within a company that breaches the limit (Ofcom has already provided detailed guidance on how to determine a controlling interest in media companies).

If the latter framework is accepted for remedies in appropriate circumstances (i.e. where straightforward divestment would threaten the viability of a given title as a going concern), there is little basis on which to assert that fixed limits will act as deterrents to innovation of growth. And provided that any system of fixed limits is subject to regular periodic review, there is no reason why ‘clear bright lines’ in plurality policy cannot offer both flexibility and certainty so desired by the industry and Ofcom.