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Blog, Media plurality, Media Plurality series

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

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steven_barnettKicking off our joint media plurality series with the LSE Media Policy Project, University of Westminster’s Steven Barnett argues that the “share of references” method of measuring media power is not sufficient. 

At the heart of any discussion about plurality and media ownership lies the concept of power: for democracy to function properly, the exercise of power over public opinion, law-makers, opinion-formers and elite decision-makers must be properly distributed and not become concentrated in a small group of individuals or organisations.

Principles of media power

This essentially abstract notion of media power was implicitly addressed by the communications regulator Ofcom in its advice to the Culture Secretary on “Measuring media plurality” in June 2012. It defined plurality with reference to what it called “desired outcomes of a plural market” and suggested two overarching principles:

• Ensuring there is a diversity of viewpoints available and consumed across and within media enterprises.

• Preventing any one media owner or voice having too much influence over public opinion and the political agenda.

These principles were adopted by the government in its consultation on Media, Ownership and Plurality in July 2013 and are generally accepted as a sensible interpretation of the democratic underpinnings of media plurality. They encapsulate the notion of power – over dissemination of news and opinion as well as over hearts and minds – and provide the philosophical basis for intervention in the market to promote a healthy and dynamic democracy.

Measuring media power – Ofcom’s approach

In order to gauge the nature and proportionality of that intervention – at what level concentration becomes dangerous and raises issues of democratically unacceptable power – it is necessary to generate some objective and justiciable criteria. Not only is this important for abstract reasons around justice and fairness, it is also essential for providing clarity to commercial enterprises making vital investment, employment and expansion decisions.

In an era when media sectors were discrete, convergence did not exist and there was little or no cross-ownership, it was relatively easy to impose sectoral limits by audience consumption: traditionally (though not necessarily logically) share of TV viewing, share of newspaper circulation, and share of radio listening. With convergent technologies and cross-ownership now an established fact, we need some kind of “currency” which permits measurement across sectoral boundaries.

Only one such currency has so far been proposed: Ofcom’s “Share of References”. In its June 2012 advice to government, Ofcom elaborated on the Share of References scheme it had first employed for its public interest test of News Corp’s proposed takeover of BSkyB in 2010. That scheme has never really been interrogated as a satisfactory proxy for measuring media power, despite its potential drawbacks.

A full explanation of how the scheme works is contained in Ofcom’s news consumption report published in September 2013. Briefly, share of references is calculated by asking respondents in a representative survey which sources of news they use “nowadays”, and how frequently. Each mention is counted separately and the figures are aggregated, culminating in a share for each news provider expressed as a proportion of all references for all news sources. In Ofcom’s words: “This produces a cross-media metric with consistent methodology and a consistent definition of news across all platforms.”

Share of References: why it is problematic

While superficially offering a solution to the perennial conundrum of cross-media measurement, this metric suffers from one fundamental flaw: by focussing entirely on consumption, it is bound by default to exaggerate the role of television and, in doing so, to distort the true picture of how media power is distributed in the UK.

In pure consumption terms, television’s dominance is clear. According to Ofcom’s 2013 News Consumption report, when asked about their news sources nowadays, 78% said television, 40% newspapers, 35% radio and 32% the internet. This ratio is a wholly predictable function of television’s ubiquity and accessibility, and of course the average 28 hours of weekly viewing. But does that really equate to power?

In three important respects, I believe this metric overstates the power of broadcast media and understates the power of the printed word, whether in hard copy or online.

First, it takes no account of the power to persuade, or the opinion-forming impact of print and online media.  The significance of “impact” was recognised by Ofcom in its 2012 advice to government, and in particular the significant influence which could be exerted by print media’s partiality and its agenda-setting role. However, Ofcom’s ideas for possible measurement “proxies” – importance, impartiality and quality of news source – all favour the television medium despite being, by their own admission, imperfect substitutes.

Impassioned, one-sided argument is an integral and powerful element of a free press. Our national newspapers are highly partisan, and the popular press in particular often elides news and comment.  While we cannot measure to what extent such editorialising drives popular opinion, intuitively a one-sided, opinionated approach will carry more weight than a carefully balanced approach. And yet the power to exercise that passion and thus to influence hearts and minds is entirely absent from this calculation.

Second, it takes no account of the power to set news agendas. Rigorous research is lacking, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that our national press plays a hugely important role in driving news agendas. Broadcast newsrooms are usually immersed in mountains of newsprint, and informal conversations with BBC journalists reveal a high level of editorial anxiety when bulletins are not covering a story which has featured prominently in the press.

Then there are the newspaper reviews: twice each evening on Sky and BBC News channels, at the end of every edition of Newsnight, on Sunday morning’s Andrew Marr show, and frequently mentioned on the Daily Politics and the Today programme. Both Sky and the BBC tweet the front pages of next day’s national newspapers every evening.

Third, it takes no account of the power to influence policy makers – parliamentarians, think tankers, civil servants, regulators. In his 2013 book Democracy Under Attack, former Guardian journalist Malcolm Dean published a meticulously researched account of how this press-driven influence has operated in a number of social policy areas. Moreover, evidence to module 3 of the Leveson Inquiry provided abundant evidence of how unduly powerful media corporations exert pressure on politicians and their policy-making. Four successive prime ministers admitted, either implicitly or explicitly, that they were bound too closely to News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch. That kind of power cannot be measured through share of references.

The conclusion is straightforward, even if the ramifications are not. It is inherent in Ofcom’s approach that television’s penetration and popularity equates to power. But that is an assumption which is at best unproven and at worst seriously misleading. If we adopt their Share of References schema uncritically, we may miss dangerous concentrations of power elsewhere. We therefore need to find ways of assessing media power in a broader sense than this limited cross-metrics approach will allow.

This post is adapted from a presentation to the Westminster Media Forum seminar on media plurality, 27 November 2013.

Blog, Media plurality, Media Plurality series, Media policy

Launch of new media plurality blog series

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Since the publication of the Leveson Inquiry report just over a year ago, the formation of a new self-regulatory body for the press has dominated the policy debate about its implementation. However, Inquiry proceedings and the report’s recommendations also highlighted another important area for policy reform: the control and measurement of media plurality and ownership.

Although outside the limelight, policymakers have paid attention to Lord Justice Leveson’s suggestions in this area.  The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) launched a media plurality consultation on 31 July and is expected to respond in the coming months. The House of Lords Select Committee on Communications also just finished hearing evidence in its inquiry on the same issue. The time seems ripe for a thorough debate leading to possible reform of media plurality policy, assuming the consultation and inquiry are not just going through the motions.

In the interest of opening up the debate beyond Whitehall and Parliament, the LSE Media Policy Project and the University of Westminster’s Media Power and Plurality project have teamed up to produce a special blog series on media plurality. The series of posts will be jointly curated by Sally Broughton Micova (LSE MPP) and Judith Townend (University of Westminster) and will appear on both blogs.

Media plurality policy is not just about ownership limits and concentration. Cross-media ownership rules and other competition based-policies are challenged by convergence within media industries. At the same time, changing audience and advertising patterns are threatening traditional business models.

In this series authors will cover issues such as the implications of convergence, options for stimulating plurality in the current environment, and the mechanisms with which to measure ownership and plurality.

There will also be discussion of some of the specific proposals that have been made to the inquiries, which are expected to report early next year.

The series has no set number of posts, and we would be happy to accept further contributions, so please feel free to get in touch with us at LSE MPP or the Westminster Media Power and Plurality project with your ideas. And, of course, you can join the debate in the comment section beneath the posts, or on Twitter: @LSEMediaPolicy and @mediaplurality.

Blog, Event, Media policy

Upcoming event, 17 December: Symposium on Global Media Policy and Business

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An announcement about an upcoming book series launch at City University London:

Join us for the book series launch of Palgrave Global Media Policy and Business, co-edited by Professors Petros Iosifidis, Jeanette Steemers and Gerry Sussman.

Please email the event organiser Petros Iosifidis at P.Iosifidis@city.ac.uk to register

Programme

1.00 – 2.00pm Refreshments; books on display to be sold at a discounted price

2.00 – 4.00pm Talks on Global Media Policy and Business. Confirmed speakers include:

Steven Barnett, University of Westminster, London
Jean Chalaby, City University London
Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside
Michael Starks, Oxford University, UK
Mark Wheeler, London Metropolitan University
OFCOM representative

4.00 – 5.00pm Wine reception to follow the talks.

This event takes place in rooms D111-3, 1st floor, Social Sciences Building, St. John Street, EC1R 0JD London

Blog, Guest post, Media plurality, Regional and local

Dave Boyle: Addressing the decline of local media – a response to Theresa May

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Dave Boyle

It was a shame that in her recent intervention on the subject of local newspapers, Home Secretary Theresa May chose to use the opportunity to indulge in every government minister’s favourite sport of bashing the BBC.

In seeking to implicate the BBC in the decline of local media when speaking to the Society of Editors, she flattered her audience by avoiding the uncomfortable reality.

The BBC does, of course, have strong regional coverage, but this in no way can be said to be local in any meaningful sense of the word; if viewers and listeners and website readers are happy enough with what the BBC produces, then the real problem is that local media has been producing a fully-featured product for generations of people who would have been quite happy with the odd snippet.

It was a shame that May ignored the elephant in the room, because she has direct experience of it. In her remarks, she praised the Maidenhead Advertiser’s editorial freedom, but didn’t talk about its economic and strategic independence.

The paper, like others in the Bayliss group, were moved into a trust in 1962 by their founding family of owners, to ensure that they remained independent and locally focussed. They knew that they couldn’t rely on benevolent, wealthy people to guarantee the concern with local matters and undertook to make them unavailable for sale to anyone else.

Contrast that with the reality in the majority of the UK, where titles have been aggregated into 4 major groups, where decisions with serious impact on local community and civic life are made by people looking at spreadsheets hundreds of miles away for the benefit of people of shareholders thousands of miles away.

Papers merging content or merging titles, groups closing papers because they’ve squeezed all they can from them, editors being told to sack hundreds of journalists in the name of efficiency, whilst working those that remain ever harder with the resulting growth of churnalism. (The NUJ’s Chris Morley writes brilliantly about this here.)

If May wanted to give communities everywhere the kind of service that she and her constituents enjoy, she would do better to look to guarantee local ownership away from remote and distant groups and ensure it was in the hands of people who cared passionately about the ability of the local media to hold their councils and MPs to account.

One route would be the kind of ownership in trust enjoyed in Maidenhead (or The Guardian and Observer), But whilst that might protect a publication, it doesn’t enhance it, which is where community ownership would work much better, opening up the press to genuine engagement and control by local people (as well as helping the balance sheet by bringing new capital and revenue in the form of membership).

This is – slowly – happening, but Ministers who care about this can help by ensuring local communities get the chance to control the destiny of their local media by giving them a right to operate local media wherever the current owners wish to close or merge a title or reduce locally generated content below a certain level, or even better, a right to buy a paper if they can meet an agreed and independently verified fair price.

Both would do so much more than blaming the BBC, which is the equivalent of treating the very serious issue of ensuring journalism survives in local communities with leeches.

Dave Boyle is a researcher, writer and business consultant, who wrote Good News: A Co-operative Solution to the Media Crisis and organised the Carnegie UK Trust / Co-operatives UK programme ‘Make Your Local News Work‘. He blogs at daveboyle.net and on twitter as @theboyler.

This post originally appeared on the Media Reform Coalition website.

Blog

Special workshop: Critical issues in European and national media and communications policy

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A special workshop on ‘Critical issues in European and national media and communications policy: contours of a new paradigm?’ will be held on 8 November 2013, sponsored by the The Finnish Institute in London and organised by the Media Policy and Industry Group, Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Westminster and the Research group ‘Facing the Coordination Challenge: Problems, Policies and Politics of Media and Communication Regulation’ (FACE), Communication Research Center (CRC), Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki.

Draft programme

 11:00: Opening words

  • Jeanette Steemers, CAMRI
  • Hannu Nieminen, FACE
  • Antti Halonen, Finnish Insitute in London

 11:15: First session. General review of EU’s recent policies and policy initiatives in media and communications

  • Hannu Nieminen: When the national meets the European: new tensions in European media policy and regulation
  • Steven Barnett: Europe and media plurality: sound and fury signifying nothing?
  • Marko Ala-Fossi: Broadcasting in the Post-Broadcast Era: Transitions of Policy and Technology
  • Maria Michalis: Overview of recent EU policy developments in telecommunications/e-communication: Has there been a paradigm change?
  • Daniel Trottier: Digital media monitoring: from Facebook stalking to Edward Snowden

12:45 Lunch break

13:30: Second session. Special issues: policies and policy initiatives in regulating the infrastructure

  • Jeanette Steemers: Transformations in Television Distribution: The Space between Production and Consumption
  • Adriana Mutu: Modulating the media: institutional patterns of broadcasting regulation in 47 European democracies
  • Peter Goodwin: The politics of BBC governance
  • Alessandro D’Arma: Public service broadcasting and the crisis of legitimacy: the Italian case
  • Maria Michalis: Net neutrality: how well can the EU balance different sets of rights?
  • Jockum Hildén: EU without digital borders

15:00: Coffee break

15:30: Third session. Special issues: policies and policy initiatives in content regulation

  • Kari Karppinen: Regulation of media pluralism
  • Steve Barnett: UK press regulation in the post-Leveson era
  • Katja Lehtisaari: Newspaper journalism in the converged environment
  • Jeanette Steemers: Protection of minors: regulating children?
  • Anette Alén-Savikko: Digital Copyright as Policy
  • Johanna Jääsaari: Copyright and users’ rights

17:00: Concluding session. Mapping areas for further research and potential themes for cooperation 

About this workshop

The main purpose of the workshop is to promote critical discussion on the issues concerning European and national media policies. The participants will address these issues in the form of short presentations, allowing ample time for common debate.

For further information, please contact:

  • Prof. Jeanette Steemers, CAMRI, University of Westminster  (email)
  • Prof. Hannu Nieminen, FACE, University of Helsinki (email)

Blog, Event, International, Media plurality

Upcoming event: 8 November 2013 – Pluralism in the Age of Internet

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The Florence School of Regulation will be live-streaming its Special Workshop
‘Pluralism in the Age of Internet’ on 8 November 2013 at this link.

The full programme can be found here [PDF].

About the event:

Internet challenges the traditional notion of pluralism. The term “media pluralism” has been developed in a media environment that was characterized by the scarcity of the resources of the broadcasting market. Nowadays the media sector is experiencing radical transformations: scarcity is not an issue anymore; access to the Web is usually affordable and allows users/citizens to reach a world-wide audience; new intermediaries that are operating in the market give users more opportunities to express themselves. Nonetheless the impact of these changes still needs to be carefully assessed: media pluralism in the Internet should be addressed considering important issues such as access and content regulation, market dominance and concentration, filtering and gatekeeping.

The Special Workshop will discuss the meaning of “pluralism” in the Internet age. The debate will focus on access as a fundamental right, on the need of specific regulation for web content and for web operators.

Blog, Media plurality, Presentations

Professor Terry Flew on media policy and influence

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Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communications in the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology,  has kindly allowed us to share his recent presentations at City University London.

The first – part of the Sociology guest speaker series – considered the concept of ‘media influence’ and its continuing relevance to media policy in relation to three sets of emerging issues:

  1. Debates about the conduct of newspapers and print media in light of the rise of online news media;

  2. The future of broadcasting regulations and questions of ‘regulatory parity’ with other audiovisual media;

  3. What constitutes a ‘media company’ in the context of convergent media and the rise of digital content intermediaries?

His second presentation, to members of the Centre for Law,  Justice and Journalism, looked at Academics and Activists in the Policy Process: Engagement with Australian Media Inquiries 2011-13. 

After its narrow re-election in June 2010, the Australian Labor government undertook a series of public inquiries into reform of Australian media, communications and copyright laws. One important driver of policy reform was the government’s commitment to building a National Broadband Network (NBN), and the implications this had for existing broadcasting and telecommunications policy, as it would constitute a major driver of convergence of media and communications access devices and content platforms. These inquiries included: the Convergence Review of media and communications legislation; the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) review of the National Classification Scheme; the Independent Media Inquiry (Finkelstein Review) into Media and Media Regulation; and the ALRC review of Copyright and the Digital Economy.

One unusual feature of this review process, discussed in the paper, was the degree to which academics were involved in the process, not simply as providers of expert opinion, but as review chairs seconded from their universities. This paper considers the role played by activist groups in all of these inquiries and their relationship to the various participants in the inquiries, as well as the implications of academics being engaged in such inquiries, not simply as activist-scholars, but as those primarily responsible for delivering policy review outcomes. The latter brings to the forefront issues arising in from direct engagement with governments and state agencies themselves, which challenges traditional understandings of the academic community as “critical outsiders” towards such policy processes.

Terry Flew is Professor of Media and Communications in the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology. He is the author of New Media: An Introduction (Oxford, 2014 – 4th Edition), Understanding Global Media (Palgrave, 2007), The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy (Sage, 2012), and Global Creative Industries (Policy, 2013). Professor Flew is a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts for Humanities and Creative Arts, and the Research Evaluation Committee (REC) Committee for Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA). During 2011-2012, Professor Flew was seconded to the Australian Law Reform Commission to chair the National Classification Scheme Review.