Journalism

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

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

New report: The State of UK Hyperlocal Community News

Today we have published our findings from an extensive survey of the UK hyperlocal sector, the product of a research collaboration between Prof. Steven Barnett, Judith Townend (University of Westminster),  Dr Andy Williams (Cardiff University) and Dave Harte (Birmingham City University), with help and advice from TalkAboutLocal.

This research was conducted by two different AHRC-funded projects: the Media, Community and the Creative Citizen project, based at Cardiff and Birmingham City Universities; and the Media Power and Plurality project, based at the University of Westminster. Although not originally planned as a joint enterprise, our combined resources have enabled us to produce the most comprehensive empirical analysis to date of the current practices, funding, staffing and outlooks of those who run hyperlocal sites.

We have created a special open access site, in an attempt to make the research as usable and accessible as possible. Alternatively, download the report here or here. More detailed analysis and discussion of the findings will follow in due course.

More information at http://hyperlocalsurvey.wordpress.com/

 

#Mediaplurality14: William Perrin – Six questions for hyperlocal media policy from Carnegie UK Trust

Ahead of our Media Power and Plurality event on 2 May, William Perrin, founder of Talk About Local, discusses new policy recommendations from Carnegie UK Trust

We have been working with five great but very different community news projects for Carnegie UK Trust – in Brixton London, Alston in Cumbria, Harlow in Essex, Port Talbot in Wales and Wester Hailes in Edinburgh. Carnegie is exploring how to bolster accountability and democracy in communities, in which news and information plays a vital part.  Talk About Local is helping Carnegie evaluate and support the Neighbourhood News projects – there is an interim report from Talk About Local and from Carnegie.  Each project receives relatively small sums – two payments of £5,000 – for creating new or expanding existing local news and information output.  The emphasis is very much on community news, information and accountability, rather than technology or business process innovation.  Even at this interim stage Carnegie have isolated some pertinent questions for UK local media policy:

1. Why do we see so little support for  local news projects by grant making  foundations, charities and grant  makers, who are interested in the wellbeing of communities and  individuals? What role could such  organisations play?

 2. Would the approach adopted in  Neighbourhood News – of spreading  risk by supporting a small number of  well-organised community media  projects with small pots of funding  and using an independent expert  advisory group to help select winners  – be attractive to other funders?

 3. Could government interventions in  the local news market, such as the  Community Radio Fund, be adapted or expanded to provide opportunities  for local news providers who operate  on other platforms, including web-based providers?

 4. In the debate on regulating media plurality, which is largely about managing market exit of  independent outlets, is there a role  for encouraging market entry by many small web-based providers?

5. What scope is there for amending the regulations relating to the advertising of statutory notices to ensure that the outlets awarded such contracts meet clear requirements in relation to population reach and  provision of at least some ‘public interest’ content, irrespective of the platform used?

 6. What is the best strategy for supporting start-up local news  projects? Can traditional community development structures play a role or is a new infrastructure required?  How can local news projects be  supported to learn from each other?

It would be great to hear from UK hyperlocal practitioners and anyone else in the comments.

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 hereWilliam Perrin will take part in a panel asking ‘Local media plurality: is it all doom and gloom?’. This post originally appeared on the TalkAboutLocal 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.

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

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.