Media policy

Project round up: Online resources and next steps for media plurality research

Our media plurality project, based at University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), is now formally coming to an end and we want to thank everyone who engaged with us online, or participated in any of our events over the last 18 months. The project has benefited hugely from the knowledge, experience and contributions from all those who generously gave their time and commitment.

We want to draw your attention to some of the outputs and resources which emerged from the project and which we hope will continue to provide useful material for continuing research and policy debates on media plurality in the UK and in other countries. This issue is becoming more rather than less urgent, with implications for media freedom and diversity in virtually every democracy in the world. In the UK, we are hopeful that it will now be recognised as sufficiently important to feature in party political manifestos for next year’s general election.

Our main resource is this website, mediaplurality.com, which includes:

We will also be publishing next year an edited collection of essays by 13 national and international scholars addressing the policy themes raised during the project. We are hoping to stage a major event in May/June 2015.

We would also like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this project and our colleagues at University of Westminster, and other organisations with which we collaborated, for their support. We hope you will continue to find the website and its associated resources useful for ongoing work in this area.

For more details of media and communications research at University of Westminster please visit the CAMRI website.

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

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

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.

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

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.

 

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

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.

#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.

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

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:

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our collaborative survey

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

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

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

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

The questionnaire can be accessed at this link:

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

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

For further information, please contact:

Or leave comments and questions below!

 

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

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.

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

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

According to organisers OneWorld:

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

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

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

Full interview here.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Recommendations on plurality to the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications

After wide-ranging discussion at a seminar at the University of Westminster involving leading figures in media policy, law and regulation, a group of academics reached agreement on a number of policy reforms. Our recommendations, set out below, were sent for consideration to the House of Lords select committee inquiry on media plurality, which is due to report in January 2014.

[A more detailed overview of the discussion is available to download here – PDF]

 

  • There should be periodic plurality reviews more often than those proposed by Ofcom.
  • The scope of media involved in such reviews – and in the current PI/merger regime – should be broadened and not tied to old technologies.
  • A sliding scale of market concentration (with soft rather than hard caps) should  be considered, with discretion to impose behavioural remedies on those with the largest share.
  • Parliament needs to set guidance on sufficiency, and on regulatory discretion.
  • Decision-making discretion on individual mergers or whether a PI inquiry has been triggered should be invested in an independent board/body rather than Secretary of State.
  • That might be a statutory Board of Ofcom, of equivalent status to the Content Board.
  • Data gaps in relation to measurement need to be addressed by Ofcom.
  • Plurality also needs financial support. Ideas might include some kind of consolidated fund, subject to contestable funding bids for media start-ups in local, regional areas.
  • New ideas for revenue-raising should also be considered, based on media subsidies and transfer of resources (within reason) from new technology companies which have benefited from the creativity/journalism of others.
  • Ways of harnessing BBC expertise should be sought without top-slicing the licence fee.

 

Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of Westminster

Natalie Fenton, Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London

Tom Gibbons, Professor of Law, University of Manchester

Peter Humphreys, Professor of Politics, University of Manchester

Martin Moore, Director, Media Standards Trust

Horatio Mortimer, Consultant, Sovereign Strategy

Stewart Purvis, Professor of Journalism, City University London

Justin Schlosberg, Lecturer in Journalism and Media, Birkbeck, University of London

Damian Tambini, Director, LSE Media Policy Project

Judith Townend, Research Associate, University of Westminster

Lorna Woods, Professor of Law, University of Essex

Launch of new media plurality blog series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Programme

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

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

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

4.00 – 5.00pm Wine reception to follow the talks.

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