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Blog, Comment, Journalism, Media plurality, Media policy

Steven Barnett: A predictable act of political cowardice: the Government’s response on media ownership

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This post by Professor Steven Barnett originally appeared on the LSE Media Policy Project blog in August 2014, following the publication of the Government’s response to the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications Report into Media Plurality and its own consultation.

If one week is a long time in politics, three years are an eternity. Remember those heady days in July 2011, as the phone-hacking scandal broke and unanimous condemnation from our political leaders’ reflected public revulsion? It wasn’t just the criminal acts targeting young or vulnerable victims that prompted a popular outcry, but the manifest abuse of untrammelled corporate power that had allowed one company to get away with it for so long. Something, they all agreed, must be done.

Speaking in the House of Commons just days after the hacking scandal broke, David Cameron was explicit about the need for action: “[the] challenge is how we address the vexed issue of media power. We need competition policy to be properly enforced. We need a sensible look at the relevance of plurality and cross-media ownership…. never again should we let a media group get too powerful.” In the same debate, Ed Miliband was specific about the policy changes required to deal with abuses that arise from media concentration: “The [Communications] Act needs to be updated as such a concentration of power is unhealthy.”

Returning to the theme at Prime Ministers Questions on 25 April 2012, the Prime Minister made a confession and a commitment: “I think on all sides of the House there’s a bit of a need for a hand on heart. We all did too much cosying up to Rupert Murdoch.” Then, in response to needling from Ed Miliband, he added: “The problem of closeness between politicians and media proprietors has been going on for years and it’s this government that’s going to sort it out.”

Cameron said it was time to do something about media concentrations. Photo by Number 10 CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Cameron said competition policy should be enforced. Photo by Number 10 CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

So how exactly did his government propose to “sort it out”? First, it waited two years before producing, in July last year, a bland consultation document on media ownership and plurality which barely scratched the surface of a now patently discredited and ineffectual plurality regime. It then waited thirteen months – and six months after a Lords parliamentary committee had produced a rather more comprehensive set of recommendations – before finally slipping out a response to both documents in early August, under the cover of summer holidays.

Government proposals at this stage of an electoral cycle were always going to be dull, narrowly focussed and risk-averse. Even so, this is a feeble response. Its opening contextual statement sets the tone for the policy inertia that follows: government will not explore changes to existing legislation until a new “measurement framework and baseline assessment” have been delivered. Therefore its response “does not seek to review existing regulatory and policy levers, nor does it seek to propose potential remedies.” In other words, the tub-thumping rhetoric of three years ago about curbing the power of unaccountable media barons has quietly surrendered to the pragmatism of electioneering.

Even within the narrow confines of its own consultation questions, this is a vapid document. Essentially, it has taken 13 months for the government to conclude that a plurality measurement framework should include online; should be restricted to news and current affairs; should include news aggregators; should include the BBC (though not in terms of remedies); and should include “some consideration” of local and regional markets. And that’s it. This simplistic approach has therefore excluded any assessment of how the public interest plurality test should be updated, the need for periodic plurality reviews, the involvement of government ministers in the decision-making process, or the need for streamlining a complex regulatory process. It leaves untouched the regime which was proved to be wholly inadequate during Murdoch’s attempt to acquire the whole of BSkyB. In short, it has severely circumscribed the fundamental issue of how to sustain media plurality within a healthy democracy, and what policy decisions should flow from that.

Ofcom will now be commissioned “to develop a suitable set of indicators to inform the measurement framework for media plurality”. And while media moguls continue to expand, amalgamate, acquire and consolidate their power and influence, the Prime Minister who promised to “sort it out” has suddenly gone missing.

This foot-dragging has been an entirely predictable act of abject political cowardice. The last time any government was foolhardy enough to produce serious changes in media ownership legislation in advance of a general election was in 1996, when John Major courageously insisted on preventing newspaper owners with over 20% of national circulation from acquiring terrestrial TV stations. There might have been one or two other reasons for the Murdoch newspapers’ wholesale switch to supporting Tony Blair a year later, but it would scarcely have improved his mood. Even with a majority of 179, Blair’s government postponed its own proposals on media ownership until after the 2001 election. And if it can’t be done with huge majorities or after unprecedented revelations of corporate corruption, there is frankly little hope for any significant legislative change under any future government.

A detailed analysis of government policy inaction, co-authored with Judith Townend, has recently been published in The Political Quarterly: ‘And What Good Came of it at Last’ Press–Politician Relations Post-Leveson. 

Blog, Comment, Guest post, Media plurality, Media policy, Non-profit, Regional and local

#MediaPlurality14: Douglas White – six lessons from Neighbourhood News so far

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Reflecting on our Media Power and Plurality event last week, Douglas White from the Carnegie UK Trust, looks at policy initiatives to help new market entrants

One of the most interesting discussion points at the Media Plurality and Power event at City University on 2 May was around the interventions that are needed to help new players in the media market flourish.

Our Neighbourhood News project, outlined here by project evaluator Will Perrin, founder of Talk About Local, and described by Will at the conference, has produced six key lessons from its first six months of operation. These six lessons from the local news projects delivered by five ‘Carnegie Partners’ across the UK highlight the importance of local news organisations to their communities and how local news might be delivered in the future. We believe they are a good starting point for any funders and policymakers interested in supporting the provision and sustainability of local news:

  1. Local, grassroots news organisations can deliver a significant range of community news and information, in return for quite a low level of investment. For example, in just four months Your Harlow alone published 850 stories and 90 videos. This suggests that the local community news sector has the capacity to deliver projects that can deliver a high level of output in a short period of time, and can provide good value for money for both citizens and funders.
  2. Local news organisations are often successful at attracting volunteer time and pro bono input from professional journalists to supplement paid wages. Brixton Blog, for instance, has levered 112 volunteer hours (£1,557 at national average hourly rate) with £1,400 of paid labour.
  3. Local news can be used as a tool for community engagement, action and cohesion. To date, the Carnegie Partner projects have featured stories that matter to their communities, such as poor street lighting, library closures and the local impact of benefit cuts. And they have often done so in new and locally innovative ways. For example, the Digital Sentinel held a chat with local police and fire services on Twitter, asking a range of questions on topics from knife crime to noisy neighbours to the number of police officers on their streets.
  4. Grassroots community news organisations made up of freelancing and volunteer contributors are subject to competing demands on their time, such as employment, family and pre-existing commitments. These real-life time pressures can cause disruption in delivering consistent output, but they are pressures which funders must respect in order to improve long-term local news provision and deliver community benefits.
  5. Recruiting individuals with skills which supplement core journalism skills, such as advertising sales and IT know how, which help to sustain local news projects can be a challenge. These issues can impact on news production, and again, it is important for funders to take a long-term perspective and show understanding and tolerance to any delays incurred.
  6. Taking the time to ensure that the correct structure is in place is important for the success of local new organisations. This will allow local news organisations to balance competing demands and volume and quality of output on schedule, but can be an ongoing challenge. Getting this balance right is not always straightforward, and needs careful consideration.

These six lessons have formed the basis of six discussion questions posed by the Trust in our Neighbourhood News – The Time is Now policy summary [PDF]. We’d be delighted to hear from #MediaPlurality14 attendees on these questions and how we can challenge funders, policymakers and practitioners to support and deliver new and improved neighbourhood news.

Douglas White is the current Acting Head of Policy at the Carnegie UK Trust.

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 us if you would like to contribute.

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

#Mediaplurality14: Tom Gibbons – What is ‘sufficient’ plurality?

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In a post marking our Media Power and Plurality event on 2 May, Tom Gibbons assesses recent recommendations on media plurality in the UK

The House of Lords’ Communications Committee’s recent report on Media Plurality [PDF] is part of a process of reform initiated by the regulator, Ofcom, in the course of giving advice to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport about the implications of the proposed complete takeover of BskyB by News Corporation.

The constitutional proprieties require that Ofcom should only implement policy, and it is for parliamentarians to make it. However, Ofcom is obviously best placed to see how well the current rules work, in particular the operation of the public interest test for media mergers under the scheme introduced by the Communications Act 2003. So, having identified a number of problems, the minister made two formal requests for advice, thus enabling Ofcom to make suggestions for reform. But even then, Ofcom was keenly aware that some judgments about where to draw the line were matters for politicians. Of particular interest, it noted that decisions, about whether the media landscape provides a ‘sufficient’ degree of plurality, involve subjective assessments and discretion, and it suggested that it would be appropriate for Parliament to provide guidance about the issue.

The House of Lords’ Committee’s recommendations incorporate a number of Ofcom’s suggestions, notably the ideas that there should be regular, periodic reviews of plurality, supplemented by specific reviews of media transactions which are significant for plurality. It also endorsed Ofcom’s view that the criteria for review should be primarily qualitative, rejecting proposals for quantitative ‘caps’ on media companies’ ownership structures and their market share. But, while the Committee did recommend that there should be statutory guidance about ‘sufficiency’, it did not take offer any substantive suggestions itself, instead leaving to the Government to take up in the next stage of its overhaul of plurality regulation.

In many ways, this is understandable, because – as both Ofcom and the Committee acknowledged – determining what is ‘sufficient’ plurality is the trickiest part of pluralism policy. Ofcom is of course aware of that, and it considers that, ‘Given the importance of contextual factors, and the associated exercise of judgement, there is unlikely ever to be a crisp and unambiguous definition of sufficiency.’ Its approach is to offer a description of a well-functioning plural media market, indicating a set of key elements that will help to spot one when we see it. Thus:

‘Qualitative guidance could be designed around whether the news media market in the UK displays the following characteristics:

• There is a diverse range of independent news media voices across all platforms, providing citizens with access to a breadth of views on matters of industrial controversy and public policy, ensuring a vibrant democratic debate.

• Among consumers, the reach and consumption of many news sources is relatively high, across all demographic groups and across all parts of the English regions and the devolved nations.

• No one source of news commands too high a share of consumption, thereby ensuring that consumers are not exposed to too narrow a range of viewpoints.

• People multi-source from a number of independent news sources to help inform their opinions, ensuring that the process of opinion-forming draws on a diversity of viewpoints.

• The market conditions are such that there is comparatively free entry into the news media market, as evidenced by the emergence and establishment over time of new news providers.

• News media organisations are well-funded and commercial returns are high enough to ensure their long-term economic sustainability.’

The House of Lords’ Committee saw these elements as the basis of the guidance for assessing the sufficiency of plurality. Yet they are clearly inadequate (insufficient?) because they do not indicate the thresholds that have to be reached, and they rely on the same kind of intuitive approach that characterises ‘the public interest’ or the view that roughly four or five ‘players’ in a media market will provide adequate diversity.

Sufficiency has to be assessed in terms of what is needed for a particular purpose or objective. The context here is the functioning of the media in a democracy. At the least, that entails the provision of a basis of information and opinion for citizens to participate in policy formulation and decision making. That in turn requires that the qualitative components of the elements cited above have to be assessed by reference to the contribution they make to that democratic functioning:

  • Ideas promoted by any single media organisation should be open to challenge by an equivalent other.
  • The citizen’s perspective should be dominant – are they aware of the diversity of viewpoints and do they have access to them.
  • The viewpoints available in the media should represent the range of different interests and communities in the society.

The implications are that, in assessing sufficiency of plurality, Ofcom will have to become involved in judgments about the content of media material. This will be in contrast to current practice, whereby diversity of media sources and platforms is taken to be an adequate proxy for the citizens’ experience of diverse content. For that reason, detailed discussion of the sufficiency of plurality is bound to be controversial and plausible thresholds will be keenly contested. But the sooner debate is opened, the better.

Full details of the Media Power and Plurality conference at City University London on Friday 2 May, jointly hosted by University of Westminster’s Media Power and Plurality AHRC project and the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism at City, can be found here. Tom Gibbons, Professor of Law, University of Manchester, will take part in a panel looking at national policy.

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 us if you would like to contribute.

 

Blog, Comment, Guest post, International, Media ownership, Media policy

#Mediaplurality14: Philip Napoli – Missed research opportunities in media diversity policy assessment in the US

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In a post marking our Media Power and Plurality event on 2 May, Philip M. Napoli discusses a lack of research continuity in media policy development

In the United States, the issue of plurality/diversity in media is, at this point, represented in the media policy realm almost exclusively by the media ownership regulations that are in place.  While many of these regulations have been relaxed or eliminated over the years, those that remain focus primarily on multiple ownership and cross-ownership of traditional media outlets (newspapers, television stations, radio stations) at the local level.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is required to re-evaluate these regulations every four years (ironically, it is sometimes the case that one re-evaluation isn’t fully completed before it is time for the next one to begin).  And, in fact, the latest iteration of the media ownership review is just beginning. I’d like to focus on this process, as I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in each iteration of it since 2003 in a variety of capacities, including: conducting research utilized by public interest organizations engaged in the proceeding; serving as a peer reviewer for the FCC for a study that they commissioned; and providing testimony to the U.S. Senate and the FCC.  So I’ve had some interesting vantage points from which to observe this process as it has played out every four years, particularly in relation to the role that research plays in the process

And if there has been one thing that has struck me about this process, it is that, from a research standpoint, every four years the media ownership proceeding begins with very little connection to the previous media ownership proceeding. That is, the questions of which research questions will be investigated, how they will be investigated, and by whom they will be investigated, are asked anew every four years, with no effort to maintain any meaningful continuity or consistency across proceedings. Individual studies addressing specific questions are conducted one year, and then abandoned in subsequent years for different studies investigating different questions, and employing different data and methods.

For instance, an effort to develop a market-level Diversity Index was employed for one ownership proceeding, but was invalidated by the courts for lacking the necessary rigor, and then was abandoned by the FCC, never to be corrected or improved and redeployed in subsequent proceedings. Some proceedings have involved studies of the relationship between cross-ownership and the ideological slant of local television news, and the impact of the relaxation of certain rules on minority and female broadcast ownership. Other proceedings have not addressed these issues, but instead provided analyses the relationship between ownership structures in local markets and civic engagement and of the availability of local news and information online.

It is as if every four years the wheel gets reinvented. Consequently, there has been no meaningful, systematic accumulation of longitudinal data and research findings. From a research standpoint, this is particularly frustrating, as it represents a waste of a very valuable opportunity that arises from the fact that this is a quadrennial proceeding. In theory, every four years the FCC has the opportunity to systematically build upon the knowledge base of the previous proceeding in ways that would facilitate potentially valuable comparative analyses across time periods and across markets; and that would allow for the systematic tracking of the impact of specific policy decisions on media diversity and pluralism. But instead, every ownership proceeding begins almost as if it is the first ownership proceeding, with no meaningful continuity with the empirical record that was established for the previous proceeding.

Why this is the case has to do with the extent to which research has become a highly politicized element of the media policymaking process. Desired policy outcomes tend to drive the research questions that are asked, the methods and data that are employed, and the selection of the researchers who conduct the analyses. Consequently, over the past decade and a half we have seen a number of fairly egregious suppressions, abuses, and manipulations of policy research (something that I am chronicling in an ongoing book project).

And so, as the policy objectives shift with each FCC administration, so too do the research objectives and approaches that underlie each ownership proceeding. As a result, the kind of robust, systematic, longitudinal body of knowledge about the effects of various policy, marketplace, or ownership changes on the diversity of sources, content, and viewpoints available to media audiences that should be a primary outcome of these quadrennial media ownership proceedings is, unfortunately, lacking.

Full details of the Media Power and Plurality conference at City University London on 2 May, jointly hosted by University of Westminster’s Media Power and Plurality AHRC project and the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism at City, can be found here. Philip M. Napoli, Rutgers University, School of Communication & Information, will take part in a panel looking at ‘What can the UK learn from other countries?’. This post also appeared on the LSE Media Policy Project blog.

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 us if you would like to contribute.

Blog, Comment, Guest post, Media ownership, Media plurality

#Mediaplurality14: Des Freedman: Media ownership – the elephant in the room

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Ahead of our Media Power and Plurality event on 2 May, Des Freedman introduces a new report on media ownership

Criticisms of food banks that have recently appeared in popular news outlets shows that the press has lost none of its ability to lash out at the poor and vulnerable. Former Conservative minister Edwina Currie argued in the Sun that food banks, as distinct from the desperation that drives people to seek emergency aid in one of the world’s richest countries, are a ‘mistake’; an ‘investigation’ by the Mail on Sunday, backed up by a separate editorial, demonstrated how easy it is to ‘abuse’ the charitable work provided by food banks and managed to find space to claim that many users were – shock horror! – asylum seekers.

These attacks featured in the country’s two most popular news titles that, between them, account for more than one in two of every daily newspaper bought in the UK.

This is one small illustration that we have a serious problem with news diversity in that a small handful of organisations dominate the media landscape. A new report, published by the Media Reform Coalition, shows that just three companies control nearly 70 per cent of national newspaper circulation, five companies are responsible for 70 per cent of regional daily newspaper circulation and a single news provider (Sky) provides news bulletins for the vast majority of commercial radio. In terms of local news, around a quarter of local communities have no daily local newspaper at all while in 35 per cent of communities, a single title has a 100 per cent monopoly. The report is called The Elephant in the Room based on the fact that concentrated media ownership seems to be an issue that very few politicians and, not surprisingly, even fewer media outlets are willing to confront.

On Monday, however, Parliament hosted a meeting to discuss how best to ‘reclaim the media’ from the proprietors, editors, lobbyists, and shareholders who are determined to place vested interests above the public interest. Speakers including Caroline Lucas and John McDonnell highlighted the need both to support campaigns such as the ongoing European Initiative for Media Pluralism which is collecting signatures across the Continent to force the issue of media ownership on to the agenda in Brussels, and to make media concentration an issue for the forthcoming party manifestoes.

They have recently tabled an Early Day Motion that ‘condemns the way in which groups such as benefit claimants, immigrants, women and environmental campaigners are routinely misrepresented in the media’ and ‘believes that there should be urgent action to safeguard the right to independent and pluralistic information’.

Some may argue that the audience share of the Daily Mail or the limited number of news wholesalers is hardly an issue which matches the urgency of, for example, the situation in Ukraine, the fate of the unemployed or the controversies surrounding immigration.

This is to miss the point. Our understanding of welfare, immigration and foreign policy is, at least partly, predicated on the ability of powerful gatekeepers to impose their agendas and to naturalise their own reporting frames. For example, our actions in relation to Syria and Ukraine are all too often presented as intrinsically democratic and humanitarian while our enemies are necessarily only interested in expansion and/or terrorism; welfare is a ‘drain’ and always open to individual ‘abuse’ while corporate tax evasion has to be dragged into the limelight through the actions of groups like UK Uncut.

There is a real concern that if we have only a few, dominant voices, largely repeating similar opinions about the need to shrink the public sector, to mitigate the threats to UK national identity allegedly presented by continuing immigration, and to resist the danger to global security that is posed by the Russian ‘strongman’ Vladimir Putin, our right to a full and open conversation about matters of public importance is clearly undermined.

Does the BBC provide a sufficient counterpoint to these limited agendas? Its commercial rivals continually point to the Corporation’s domination of broadcast and online spaces that ‘distort’ news markets but they are far more reluctant to identify the real problem with the BBC: that, as a recent study carried out by researchers at Cardiff University argued, the Corporation ‘tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda’.

Perhaps we need not worry about pluralism any longer simply because the internet has broken the grip of our traditional media moguls and provided us with a range of opinions that was not possible in the analogue age. After all, this is precisely what Rupert Murdoch has argued: ‘haven’t you heard of the internet? No one controls the media or will ever again.’ Yet, despite Murdoch’s protestations, we are seeing the same patterns of concentrated media power being replicated online. After all, if the internet was designed to challenge the stranglehold of incumbent voices, why is it that the Mail is far and away the most popular read online with nearly 180 million monthly unique users?

Large sections of our news media have failed to represent the interests of ordinary people – little wonder that only 19 per cent of us ‘trust’ our press to tell the truth, one of the lowest figures in Europe. Many of our leading media organisations are too wrapped up in relations with power to be able to hold this power to account. Concentrated ownership can no longer be hidden away as the issue we dare not confront if we really want to see a media that represents the interests not of elites and executives but of the majority of its readers, viewers and listeners.

You can sign the European Initiative for Media Pluralism at www.mediainitiative.org.uk

Full details of the Media Power and Plurality conference at City University London on 2 May, jointly hosted by University of Westminster’s Media Power and Plurality AHRC project and the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism at City, can be found here.  Des Freedman, Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Goldsmiths, will take part in a panel looking at ‘Priorities for national policy’. This post originally appeared on openDemocracy.

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 us if you would like to contribute.

Blog, Comment, Guest post, Journalism, Non-profit

Benedetta Brevini: Inform, not notify – the birth of participatory, ‘slow journalism’

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In this guest post, first published on the Conversation, Dr Benedetta Brevini explores new models for journalism in the 21st century

The digital era has led to increasing challenges for western and traditional news media business models. Media outlets are facing steady declines in revenue, while the migration of advertising online has brought limited success in “monetising” digital’s audiences. To make things worse, internet ads have progressively decreased in value in recent years.

The issue of how to fund quality journalism that would hold the government to account is a pressing one. As newsrooms continue to cut back, there is a real reduction in reporting capacity with profound effects on quality, investigative and exploratory journalism.

And yet, the last year has seen a quite hectic, energising movement of “digital journopreneurs”. Personal-brand journalists, digital entrepreneurs and investigative journalists have decided to embrace the capabilities of web technologies to launch a new wave of journalism platforms.

The rise of ‘journoprenuers’

In March, statistician and journalist Nate Silver launched his ESPN-backed FiveThirtyEight.com, a data blog that, by banking on Silver’s impressive record, will bet everything on a data-focused approach.

Silver is part of a wider movement of celebrity journalists who are migrating from mainstream press to digital start-ups. Ezra Klein left the Washington Post earlier this year for an initiative launched in April and backed by Vox Media, which promised to “explain the news” in a new revolutionary way by employing “next-generation technologies”.

The list could go on: there is also Jessica Lessin’s The Information and Pierre Omidyar‘s First Look featuring Glenn Greenwald. In February, First Look launched digital magazine/investigative site The Intercept.

These exciting ventures led New York Times media commentator David Carr to declare the birth of a new start-up digital journalism bubble.

These projects have three elements in common. They have been launched or backed by “new media” celebrities, are mostly US-based and are funded either by philanthropists or by established technology companies.

Their success will obviously be dependent not just on their economic sustainability, but also on their ability to offer what the so-called “legacy media” outlets – which are maintaining their dominance in the online world – are not able to provide.

Not just an American trend

On the other side of the Atlantic, a London-based journalism start-up known as The Charta has just launched a campaign for funding via crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

The Charta invites its future audience to believe in two things. Firstly, that real journalism, as opposed to fast–churned storytelling, needs time for reflection, investigation and understanding. Secondly, that if we want quality journalism we simply have fund it and participate in shaping it.

The Charta has a clear goal: “to inform, not notify”. The platform was certainly inspired by the success of De Correspondent, a Dutch-language online journalism venture offering background, analysis and investigative reporting, which raised over one million euros through crowdfunding.

For its focus on long-term investigations and slow-paced news reporting, The Charta has already been acclaimed by the founder of the “slow” movement in journalism, Carl Honoré:

The best way to make sense of our fast world is to slow down the news. The Charta will do just that by taking the time to think, understand and explain. In a world ravaged by fast news that’s just what the doctor ordered.

The idea of committing not only to economically support a new journalism venture, but to participate in its development is reminiscent of the great Danish philosopher and educator Grundtvig, who believed that becoming a citizen was a matter of choice. One could choose to join or to remain outside a state but choosing to join the state meant accepting certain obligations.

Supporting The Charta reflects a belief that quality journalism needs resources, time and reflection, things that are often missing in contemporary fast-paced reporting. It also means that people are prepared to contribute to the direction of a platform that we see as a service to the public.

This could be called participatory, slow journalism. The Charta concept is ambitious and because it’s not launched by star journalists and not backed by famous philanthropists, it needs the support of “active citizens”.

To borrow the words that journalist Paul Bradshaw used to describe his crowdsourcing reporting project, Help Me Investigate:

Journalism is about more than just ‘telling a story’; it is about enlightening, empowering and making a positive difference. And the web offers enormous potential here – but users must be involved in the process and have ownership of the agenda.

In a digital world dominated by a few media conglomerates, initiatives like The Charta and those in the US should be welcomed and encouraged. And this time it is the people – not just a few, illuminated philanthropists – who can make a difference.

The ConversationThis article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Dr Benedetta Brevini is Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Sydney and Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Law Justice and Journalism at City University, London.

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 us if you would like to contribute.

Blog, Comment, Guest post, Media plurality, Regional and local

Jonathan Hardy: London Live goes live – What about media plurality in UK’s capital?

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London’s new local television channel, London Live is due to launch this evening. Its owner also owns the city’s largest circulation local newspaper and two national newspapers. University of East London’s Jonathan Hardy discusses the implications for media plurality arguing that the key question is how the new service will be regulated. This post originally appeared on the LSE Media Policy Project blog.

What should supporters of media plurality make of the launch of London Live by the owner of the Evening Standard, The Independent and I? Having grown up in a time when ‘one owner, one outlet’ was a plausible, if never orthodox, proposal, the London Live launch might demonstrate how obsolescent that call sounds and how far media consolidation aids diversity. London is about to have a long-overdue television service that recruits talent from across one of the greatest cauldrons of creativity in the world.

Five bids were made and Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev’s Evening Standard Television (ESTV) won the licence. So should this have been refused in order to foster greater plurality of ownership, given that the wining bid comes from the company with the strongest print presence covering Greater London? Can advocates of plurality argue against a service that will increase plurality and might provide a channel for news and entertainment worthy of London? The licence, awarded for up to 12 years, requires at least four hours of ‘fresh’ news and 100 per cent ‘London-based content’. For me, the answer is not to argue against the service, but rather to argue that media plurality is about how the service is regulated.

Media plurality and what to do

Where there is not a diversity of media suppliers, for whatever reason, the issue for media plurality policy is what to do. How can greater plurality be achieved, either by means of the range of content and voices heard (internal plurality), by ensuring independent news values (impartiality), or by regulating how the service runs to prevent or restrict problems arising from ownership, control, commercial interests, advertisers and other influences.

London Live has been heavily trailed in the Evening Standard with daily page-long sections, plus other news stories, adverts and graphics to promote the launch. London Live will have news programmes hosted by the editor of The Independent and so visual branding and editorial promotion across the Independent’s media interests is likely to start strong and grow from there. The business case for such cross-promotion is overwhelming and axiomatic. Ofcom approved the Evening Standard’s ‘strong position to launch and maintain its proposed service, given its proposals for promoting and marketing the channel.’ Whether such cross-promotion is good for editorial coverage, for news quality and independence, for competitors, and for London viewers is to say the least uncertain.

Balancing creative industries and consumers

So what are the implications of London Live for the broader debate on media plurality policy now taking place?  The arrangement here, statutory licensing (following a competitive bid process), provides a comparatively straightforward mechanism through which to apply conditions, even if the actual licence requirements fall short as they do here. Yet the quandary of whether to allow a major media voice in London to extend further into television, underscores the call by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and others for new approaches.

We need arrangements to address media plurality that are broad and flexible enough to address changes in media markets, investor interest and commercial viability. The arrangements must serve the needs of our creative industries but balance this by safeguarding the interests of citizens and consumers.

Ofcom should have powers to take action when firms have a significant share or influence in markets. The threshold for plurality action will vary across markets but in general should apply when firms have a share of supply or revenue above 15 per cent. Where plurality concerns are moderate, enterprises should be expected to comply with relevant industry and regulatory standards. Where plurality concerns are more severe, Ofcom should have powers to enforce divestment of firms or undertakings made in lieu of divestment. Such undertakings will include remedies to strengthen and safeguard plurality and accountability by enterprises. Licences for new services should only favour firms already dominant in markets when safeguards for plurality are secured.

Going beyond the boundaries of a single corporate vision 

For London Live that should mean that the service is obliged to demonstrate that editorial content and agendas are not unduly skewed to promote the corporate media and business interests of the commercial firm providing the service. There should also be action to strengthen ‘internal pluralism’ so that different media content producers have access to the London audience. When cable TV services were introduced in the early 1980s the licence agreements required that space was granted to smaller independent and community-based video producers. While such requirements were as short-lived as the soon closed or consolidated cable licensees does not detract from their merit.

In the digital age it is sobering how little material from beyond the established commercial or public service providers gets any airing across multichannel television. A channel that could combine the undoubted strengths of a cross-media business operation, with public regulation that protected against those intra-corporate entanglements, and expanded the range of voices and suppliers beyond the boundaries of a single corporate vision, would be a precious and fitting contributor to media plurality in the media city of London.

Dr Jonathan Hardy is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies and  Programme Leader for BA Media Studies at the University of East London.

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, Comment, Guest post, International

Benedetta Brevini: Australia swims against the tide of democratic media reform

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By Benedetta Brevini, University of Sydney

This article was first published on the Conversation.

That media ownership rules have been progressively relaxed in many democracies is certainly not news. But that Australia, with one of the most concentrated media markets in the world, is thinking of further deregulation is astonishing.

Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has suggested that he would like to relax the Keating-era cross-media ownership rules. These prevent any one proprietor from owning print, radio and television outlets in a single market.

Turnbull is also inclined to eliminate the rule that prevents a person controlling commercial television licences that reach more than 75% of the population. In his own words:

…the arrival of the internet and the additional diversity and avenues for competition that it brings really says we should have less regulation and more freedom.

This is the usual neo-liberal argument that the internet will set us free: it is giving us more news to consume, more diversity, more happiness.

“I see a new Athenian Age of democracy forged in the fora the Global Information Infrastructure will create,” Al Gore proclaimed in 1994. Since then, the contention that the internet will disrupt power structures and neutralise traditional gatekeepers has become popular in the new left.

In the UK, for example, the Labour government relaxed media ownership rules in 2003. It explained that “technological development had opened the way for new market entrants”. Well, it did, but only partially.

Old players dominate online

Recent studies show the internet is used primarily for entertainment rather than for news and political information. The most-visited news websites in Europe, Britain, the US and Australia are the websites of the dominant national news organisations.

According to Nielsen Online Ratings, News Corp’s news.com.au topped the Australian rankings in January with an audience of 2.767 million, followed by Fairfax’s smh.com.au and the Microsoft-Nine Entertainment Company’s co-owned site NineMSN. These represent established media institutions rather than new market entrants.

What is even more interesting is that while newspapers are facing an unprecedented decline in revenues, they are also reaching record numbers of readers because of their online editions. This translates into more hegemonic power in the hands of the same few powerful media owners.

At the same time, leading social media and search engines are acting as megaphones of the prevailing elites’ media agenda. This further impairs a variety of viewpoints.

It is this lack of diversity of voices that should worry Turnbull. Excessively concentrated media power does not just entail unchecked ties between political and media elites, as the UK phone-hacking saga demonstrated. This was one of the most remarkable examples of how such dominant media power can undermine the proper conduct of democracy.

The exercise of such power also entails the establishment of a system of control that does not allow space for dissent, for resistance, for minority voices. In other words, media concentration undermines democracy.

To echo prominent US academics Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their analysis of the news media, Manufacturing Consent:

If … the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear and think about, and to ‘manage’ public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard [liberal-pluralist] view of how the media system works is at serious odds with reality.

The push for pluralism

Turnbull’s statements are at odds with calls from European media and civil society organisations that are promoting the European Initiative for Media Pluralism. The aim is to secure a European Union directive on national media ownership to avoid concentration in the media and advertising sectors.

This campaign is in line with the promotion of media pluralism by UNESCO and the Council of Europe. In 2005, UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. In 2007, the Council of Europe affirmed that:

…media pluralism and diversity of media content are essential for the functioning of a democratic society and are the corollaries of the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information.

The council specifically demanded legislation to limit:

…the influence which a single person, company or group may have in one or more media sectors as well as ensuring a sufficient number of diverse media outlets.

These international organisations have indicated resolutely the direction that media reforms should take. The Australian government should follow this course without delay.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Blog, Comment, Event, Media plurality

Attempts to carve up the licence fee are the real threat to the BBC

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Today sees the opening salvos in a debate that will determine the BBC’s future. At the Oxford Media Convention, Tony Hall will mount a strenuous defence of the BBC licence fee – and address the notion (now gaining support among the BBC’s detractors) that its proceeds should be shared with competitors, through either top-slicing or “contestable” funding models.

At the same time, a new Reuters Institute report from economists Patrick Barwise and Robert Picard will spell out, for the very first time, what will happen to the UK’s creative economy if the government continues to refuse to raise the licence fee in line with inflation. It is ideal timing for their forensic analysis.

It has been, to put it mildly, a rocky couple of years for the BBC, with its competitors and critics gleefully painting a picture of terminal decline. Two Newsnight fiascos – a murky editorial decision to drop a story exposing Jimmy Savile as a paedophile, followed by untrue allegations that former Tory party treasurer Lord McAlpine was involved in child abuse in North Wales – resulted in the resignation of a director general after just 54 days in the chair. The newly installed Lord Hall was immediately faced with evidence of inflated senior management salaries and, even worse, payoffs to departing executives far in excess of their entitlement, all apparently sanctioned by the BBC Trust.

It was therefore not difficult to portray the BBC as suffering from a fundamental malaise which demands wholesale restructuring of both its funding and constitution. To its critics, this is the worst crisis in the BBC’s history. Something must be done.

In fact, it is no such thing. Narratives about the BBC in crisis have been all the rage ever since Michael Leapman’s apocalyptically titled book Last Days of the Beeb was published in 1986. From the Hutton Inquiry to “Queengate” to fake callers on phone-in programmes to the Ross-Brand Radio 2 saga and the corporation’s refusal to broadcast a charity appeal in aid of Gaza refugees, anyone under 50 will barely remember a time when the BBC wasn’t apparently in crisis. The current wave of schadenfreude is the latest attempt to taint the BBC with an image of managerial incompetence, editorial mismanagement and general institutional turmoil.

Each episode is deliberately and mischievously exploited by those ideologically opposed to publicly funded institutions, and particularly by powerful press groups which have long been deeply antagonistic to the size and scope of the BBC on both political and commercial grounds. In that respect, little has changed. But the noise of these self-interested attacks has become louder, the excuses are flimsier, and the commercial imperatives behind them are even stronger – especially as the long-standing business model of print journalism is undermined by the flight of advertising revenue to online providers.

So while we should demand that the BBC rectify its corporate and governance mistakes, we should also be frank about the blatant exaggerations of crises that simply do not exist. Much more importantly, we should also focus on the real life-threatening crisis that could eventually engulf the BBC completely: the erosion of its funding base.

Funding the real crisis

As the detailed economic analysis by professors Barwise and Picard shows, the real danger for the BBC is a progressive decline in funding to the point where it is no longer capable of fulfilling its task as a comprehensive public service broadcaster. The authors note the gradual diminution of the licence fee as a proportion of total industry spending on television, projected to fall from its current 22% of the total to 18.5% by 2016.

This “salami-slicing” was seriously exacerbated by the 16% cut that the newly elected coalition government imposed in October 2010, and it is inexorably eroding the BBC’s ability to maintain its status as a major cultural force in Britain.

According to the authors, “It is not scaremongering to project that, if the current policy continues (even if the more radical proposals for scaling back the BBC are rejected), within a generation it will have been reduced to a barely relevant sideshow, the UK equivalent of PBS in America.” As well as public and consumer detriment this continuing decline will impact on the UK’s independent production sector since the commercial sector cannot make up the shortfall.

That is the real threat to the future of the BBC. If Britain wants to sustain a cultural institution which is still trusted and enjoyed by the vast majority of its own citizens while being consistently praised and admired throughout the world, we must have the political will to make the resources available. We urgently need manifesto commitments from all three major parties to guarantee that they will, after 2016, reinstate a licence fee that is index-linked to inflation. They must also commit to withdrawing from the dangerous BBC “top-slicing” strategy, which now sees the licence fee being used to fund broadband rollout and local television stations.

That agenda will not be pursued by our national or regional press. Instead, over the next 18 months, we can expect a concerted attack on the BBC’s size, funding, governance, impartiality, competence and standing in British society as anti-BBC MPs (mostly from the Conservative benches) join forces with ferociously anti-BBC national newspapers determined to undermine the BBC’s legitimacy and funding base.

During the last review of the BBC Charter in 2006, there was an unprecedented joint submission by three major UK newspaper conglomerates –- Associated Newspapers, News International, and the Telegraph Group -– which combined forces to call for a below inflation increase in the licence fee to “curtail the width of the BBC’s remit in the digital arena”. That submission was also signed by the Commercial Radio Companies Association and the Newspaper Society, representing the local and regional press.

Whether explicitly or not, that same alliance will be operating again this time around, with the same goal: a financially diminished BBC. It will not be the first time BBC supporters both inside and outside parliament (who still represent the great majority of the British public) will struggle to make themselves heard over the megaphones of BBC competitors. But if the BBC is to survive as a dynamic and thriving institution at the heart of Britain’s creative and cultural life, it might be the most important.

This is an abridged version of Steven Barnett’s chapter in a new book being published on March 1: Is the BBC in Crisis? Eds, John Mair, Richard Tait and Richard Lance Keeble

The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Comment, Media plurality, Media policy, Regional and local

[Oxford Media Convention] Plurality begins at home: policies for invigorating local media

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In a preview of his upcoming remarks at the Oxford Media Convention 2014, Steven Barnett, University of Westminster, shares preliminary findings from a collaborative study on hyperlocal media and argues for policy to enhance its role in sustaining media plurality. An abridged version of this post can be found at the LSE Media Policy blog.

While much of the headline debate on plurality tends to revolve around undue concentration at the national level – how to define it, how to measure it, how to prevent it – a growing local problem  risks being ignored. While local newspapers struggle with a failing business model, local radio stations centralise their newsroom operations, and fledgling local television stations are yet to demonstrate any appetite for original journalism, members of the public are increasingly starved of vital civic information. According to Press Gazette, more than 240 local newspapers closed in the seven years from 2004 to 2011 and some areas of the UK “are no longer covered by professional journalists”.

The implications for local democracy are profound. Issues of enormous relevance to citizens in their everyday lives – about their local hospitals, local schools, local transport, police forces, businesses and courts – are simply not being addressed. Local government officials, business leaders, and local politicians are not being questioned or held to account. Information required for knowledgeable participation in local elections is either not available or less reliable.

In the struggle to promote more editorial diversity and a more informed local citizenry there is, however, some room for optimism from the burgeoning number of new hyperlocal initiatives. The rise of online connectedness and broadband has made it easier for small, independent media enterprises to set themselves up and report to their local communities without massive capital outlay. The number of these sites is impossible to count precisely, but closest estimates suggest that around 500 are active in the UK.

As part of our Media Power and Plurality project at Westminster, we collaborated with Cardiff and Birmingham City universities in the UK’s first comprehensive survey of hyperlocals, with responses from around 180. While many of these are shoestring operations, more akin to a parish newsletter than hard-nosed journalism, our preliminary analysis shows that many are still capable of professional, independent local reporting. We found impressive evidence not only of important informational work but of investigative and campaigning journalism normally associated with mainstream news publishers: crusades over road safety and declining council standards, investigations over breaches of national emission limits, illicit council use of a greenfield site, and campaigns on over-spending on a local rail station development, cuts to the local youth service and plans to turn primary schools into academies.

Given the potential role of these sites in reinvigorating editorial diversity and local democracy, we should be asking serious questions about the kinds of policy interventions that would support them. Here are three, all of which have so far had little traction on the policy arena.

1. Charitable status

There is currently very limited scope for allowing journalism enterprises to secure the reputational and financial benefits that go with charitable status. According to the 2011 Charities Act, a charity must have a public purpose and be run for the public benefit. It lists 13 such purposes, two of which are potentially appropriate for local journalism: the advancement of education; and the advancement of citizenship or community development.

While the public purpose hurdles might, therefore, be negotiated at local level, the public benefit test is trickier. It is not enough simply to state or to assume that an enterprise will be beneficial; the public good has to be identifiable. This raises the spectre of finding measurable evidence that, for example, residents are better informed about local issues or more likely to participate in local elections after the launch of a local news initiative than before.

In its 2012 report on Investigative Journalism, the House of Lords Communications committee recommended that the Charity Commission “provide greater clarity and guidelines on which activities related to the media, and in particular investigative journalism, are charitable in the current state of the law”, particularly in light of the financial pressures and journalism’s democratic significance. The Charity Commission has yet to respond, but there is scope for a more relaxed approach, both in terms of its interpretation of the current legislation and – conceivably – in terms of an amendment to the Act aimed specifically at promoting local journalism.

2. Subsidies

There are already explicit and implicit subsidies for local media, a legacy of traditional print and broadcast regimes. The Community Radio Order of 2004 enables Ofcom to license not-for-profit community radio stations according to strictly defined criteria relating to “social gain”. These stations (231 by the end of 2011) receive small grants of around £15,000 out of a Community Radio Fund administered by Ofcom, which in turn comes from DCMS. That fund was worth £321,500 in 2010/11.

Given the rationale for that investment – in particular, to facilitate discussion and a better understanding of the local community – there is little sense in confining such direct subsidies to the medium of radio. It should be possible to expand both the technology scope and the pot: these are tiny amounts of money in terms of government expenditure, but with potentially massive benefits for resourcing local journalism.

Similarly, there are hidden subsidies for the national and local press both through VAT exemptions and through the regime on statutory notices. Figures from a Reuters Institute report put the value of VAT exemptions at £594m per annum in 2008 (though it’s difficult to know what proportion of that benefits the local press). In addition, the statutory duty on local councils to place notices in the local paper on planning, licensing and traffic orders is likely to be worth around £45m per year. It is surely an absurd anachronism that in the 21st century online world councils and other public bodies are obliged to use tax-payers’ money solely to advertise in local hard copy newspapers which in some geographical areas no longer exist.

3. The BBC

Finally, BBC Director General Tony Hall has indicated that partnerships – where the BBC acts as enabler rather than “senior” partner – will play an integral part of its future as the UK’s leading cultural institution. This is very different from top-slicing, which takes money away from the BBC and therefore weakens its effectiveness. At the local level, such partnership could enable those running hyperlocal sites to take advantage of BBC expertise in editorial, web design, legal advice, promotion and marketing. As with the redirection of subsidies, any such initiative would inevitably attract hostility from the major newspapers groups, and would require both central and local government support.

In fact, each of these initiatives will require serious investment of time and energy by those who are concerned about the inexorable decline in local media plurality. Policy thinking in this area – whether on Community Radio, newspaper subsidies or the role of the BBC – has always been predicated on the democratic and citizenship value of local media to their respective communities. That thinking now lags well behind real-world media activity, and takes little account of emerging forms of local and community online initiatives. It is time that changed.

See:

 

Blog, Comment, Media plurality

Lords Communications Committee report on Media Plurality: two cheers

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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 21st 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?

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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

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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.

Blog, Comment, Media plurality, Media policy

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

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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

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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.