Event, 11 June 2015 – Media, power and plurality: old problems, new policies

Democratic governments throughout the world aspire to plurality and diversity of voice as a policy goal which is fundamental to a healthy democracy. Over the last 20 years, however, economics, technology, political ideology and global corporate power have often conspired to frustrate those normative aims. More recently, different plurality problems have been prompted by access issues and the burgeoning reach and power of digital intermediaries such as Google, Facebook and Amazon.

This seminar marks the publication of a new edited collection featuring a number of international scholars. It takes place in the aftermath of a UK election in which media plurality was an explicit election issue, and whose outcome some commentators believe was heavily influenced by political campaigning in the traditional press. The seminar will discuss some of the policy issues around media plurality and media ownership in the UK and Europe, to what extent new policy thinking and ideas might be politically feasible, and whether such initiatives are applicable across different nation states.

Programme

3.30–3.55pm – Refreshments and registration

3.55pm – Introduction and welcome: Prof Steven Barnett, University of Westminster

4pm – Keynote: Prof Des Freedman, Goldsmiths College, University of London

4.15pm – Brief presentations from (provisional list):

  • Prof Lorna Woods, University of Essex
  • Dr Judith Townend, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
  • Prof Raymond Kuhn, Queen Mary, University of London
  • Dr Martin Moore, Media Standards Trust

5pm – Plenary discussion

6.30pm – Drinks

7.30pm – Ends

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.

Rosemary Butler: Addressing the ‘Democratic Deficit’ and the media in Wales

As part of this research project on media power and plurality, we have been looking at media diversity in Wales and Scotland. This post, authored by the Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales, Dame Rosemary Butler AM, discusses the ‘democratic deficit’ in Welsh news coverage.

Rosemary ButlerIn October 2012 I gave a speech to the Royal Television Society’s annual lecture in Wales. In that speech, I first used the phrase “Democratic Deficit” to describe the gap in coverage that Welsh people face in the newspapers they read and the news programmes they watch.

By “Democratic Deficit” I mean who is relaying, or perhaps more importantly, who will be relaying the work of the National Assembly to the people of Wales in the future, and, of course, performing that crucial role of holding the decision-makers here in Cardiff Bay to account?

We have a UK Media, both broadcasters and print, which fails to report the huge differences in approach to public policy in devolved fields such as health and education. It means their substantial Welsh audiences often get information that does not apply to them.

Research by Professor Anthony King and Cardiff University’s School of Journalism highlighted the fact that some of our leading UK broadcasters often default to an Anglo-centric position.

A position which promotes policy issues affecting only England as though they apply to the whole of the UK.

Professor King’s original report was published in 2008, and at the RTS annual lecture in 2012 he noted that despite efforts by some broadcasters, the problem persists.

BBC Wales and ITV Wales do a great job in covering Welsh public life, but the fact remains that many people in Wales prefer to listen to, or view, network news platforms and programmes which ignore any Welsh perspective.

But in fairness to the BBC they are the least worst offender, particularly when you look at the record of the commercial broadcasters in terms of coverage of Wales and Welsh issues

And it is not just the broadcasters who are at fault!

Depending on which source you believe, between 600,000 and one million people in Wales read a UK newspaper every day, and that’s not to mention the numbers who access UK media websites and mobile apps. Again these organisations fail to portray the different policy approaches taking place in Wales

The problem is further compounded by the financial pressures on our indigenous Welsh national and regional press, which leaves many unable to resource comprehensive coverage of Assembly news.

Last year, the Assembly held a series of sessions to start a discussion about the issue and to possibly find solutions.

We had a fascinating discussion with a panel of leading UK Journalists including Kevin Maguire, Peter Riddell and Peter Knowles – which was chaired by former head of global news at the BBC, Richard Sambrook.

Another session was held with Wales’s local regional press and digital media platforms that perhaps offered more hope and scope for action.

As a result much of the Assembly’s current communications strategy is focused on what support can be provided to the emerging digital platforms in covering the work of the Assembly, as well as ensuring that we have engaging content on our own platforms.

The National Assembly must, and will, play its part in addressing this issue and I look forward to working closely with all those interested in ensuring plurality of media coverage and scrutiny of the National Assembly for Wales.

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.

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: 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: Onora O’Neill on media plurality, diversity and the interests of owners

Introductory remarks by Baroness Onora O’Neill at 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.

The Post Leveson Context

It is nearly three years since the Leveson Inquiry was established, with its dual remit

a) to investigate the culture, practices and ethics of the press, including contacts between the press and politicians and the press and the police;

b) to consider the extent to which the current regulatory regime has failed and whether there has been a failure to act upon any previous warnings about media misconduct.

In practice, as we all know, ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions limited what could be investigated or considered by the Inquiry. Nevertheless the Leveson Report emerged and recommended a two tier structure—self regulation by the media, the standards achieved to be audited by a body that is independent of the press. The political parties have come together on this. So has Parliament. And the public support it.

Self Regulation with Standards?

As I think everyone here will also know, the seemingly archaic structure of a Royal Charter has been used to set up an audit body that any future government or parliament would find it hard to alter. What nobody knows is whether this will work: at present the only self regulatory body in existence is IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation), aka ‘son of PCC’, which has indicated that it will not seek recognition or audit by the Royal Charter body. This is thought by some to indicate that their preferred form of self-regulation remains self-interested regulation. We don’t know yet whether there will be other self regulators that will seek recognition by the Royal Charter body —IMPRESS (Independent Monitor of the Press) may do so. But it is not clear what the upshot will be: about a month ago at question time I asked “Does the Minister consider that the Leveson recommendations will be adequately implemented if the only self-regulatory body declines to seek audit by the royal charter body?” The Minister tried two answers and the house spluttered (which by Hansard’s convention has to be rendered as ‘Oh! Oh!’). So, as everyone here knows, these matters are not done or dusted. But today other matters are central.

Regulating Content, Act and Structure

Regulation of the media can focus on several matters, including speech content, speech acts and media structures. For example, the regulation of speech content may require or prohibit the publication of some sorts of material, so is of limited use if there is to be a free press; it but can be used by exception, for example by prohibiting sexualised content in children’s programmes. Regulation of speech acts can take many forms, running from prohibitions on defamation, fraud or perjury to requirements for truth in advertising, disclosure of relevant matters in legal disputes, and requirements for accuracy in filing income tax returns. Regulation of media structures can aim to secure plurality without directly requiring or prohibiting specific types of speech content or speech acts. (However, somewhat confusingly, regulating media structures by requiring specified amounts of certain types of content, as in the regulation of public service broadcasting is often called ‘content regulation’ (e.g. by Ofcom) although it does not however mandate or prohibit specific speech content.

Discussion of media plurality

Discussion of media plurality was to some extent set aside during the period of the Leveson Inquiry, but has now assumed greater importance as shown by the DCMS consultation, by Ofcom advice to DCMS, by the recent HoL Committee on Communication report on Media Plurality published in February, and by several other analyses, including Steve Barnett’s instructive paper on the subject. But I think that it nevertheless remains somewhat unclear what media plurality is and is not, so I shall make a few comments on the point or purpose of plurality, and leave it to others to say more about some possible forms that it might take. What I shall try to say is intended only as a stimulus, or if you will a target, for discussion today.

Diversity First

It is quite widely agreed that plurality is not a goal in itself, but a means to an end, such as a well functioning democratic society, or a vibrant culture, or limiting the concentration of media power. Plurality may help to ensure that there is a diversity of viewpoints is available, and perhaps accessed. Plurality may prevent any single owner or controller gaining too much power or influence.

Why, one might ask, if the real aim is either diversity or limiting media power, should we focus on plurality? I think there is a very basic reason why diversity is not the immediate target of regulation. It is that any attempt to impose or demand diversity of content might require a degree of dirigisme and control of the media that was incompatible with rights to freedom of expression, and specifically with media freedom. Diversity has, so to speak, to be secured by oblique methods. It may (as noted) be possible to ensure some diversity of types of content by controlling structures and prescribing limits to the quantity or proportion of content of certain types (e.g. News coverage, religious broadcasting, sport, contemporary music), but go too far in regulating content and you end up without press freedom.

By contrast, some sorts of plurality requirement are no threat to media or individual freedom of expression. In particular, classical anti monopoly provisions do not work by controlling content. Even if a powerful media organisation is required to divest itself of an asset, there need be no threat to freedom of expression, or to diversity. (I note, however, that there was considerable resistance to the thought that plurality mattered at the time of the passage of the Communications Act 2003, and that Ministers insisted that size would matter in the digital world.)

Which Sorts of Plurality?

Plurality is therefore an attractive surrogate for diversity because it does not dictate content, yet seems likely to secure some or quite a lot of diversity. But which sorts of plurality actually matter, and which are likely to contribute to which sorts of diversity? There are a lot of possibilities: a plurality of organisations (publishers, broadcasters); a plurality of owners or controllers; a plurality of political orientations; a plurality of platforms; a plurality of content providers, a plurality of media products. However, I suspect that the awkward reality is that none of these forms of plurality will guarantee diversity, although lack of plurality may jeopardise diversity, as notably in societies where the media are wholly state controlled.

Plurality without Diversity?

Plurality does not guarantee diversity because a plurality of publishers, or owners, or content providers, may produce remarkably similar content, hence little diversity. This may happen if they are chasing the same demographic, or if a particular type of content is cheap, or popular or profitable.

I remember years ago, at a conference on media and democracy in Washington DC, a delightfully cynical old hack asked his audience to say was the best sort of radio programme. We were non-plussed, but he pointed out that it was obviously a programme about water safety for boy scouts. Those programmes were ideal because they could count towards the educational and the public service quotas, and because they were so thoroughly worthy and uncontroversial that they could not lead to litigation. Blandness did not matter, but being controversial or failing to meet one’s quotas did. Here one can see an example of plurality requirements reducing diversity. Or consider the Hollywood studios in their heyday: plurality, but limited diversity. Plurality of various sorts is compatible with convergence of content, lack of diversity, indeed dreary repetitiveness. So what matters is to work out which sorts of plurality are likely to have which sorts of effects in actual circumstances.

Plurality and Ownership

Questions about plurality of ownership will no doubt be a central theme for discussion today, but I want to mention one other aspect of plurality that seems to me rather often overlooked, and that is less plurality of owners, than plurality of their interests. One of the interesting features of UK newspapers today is that while there is a plurality of owners, they share certain interests. Many are not UK citizens (e.g. they include citizens of the US or Russia); others who are citizens, are not UK residents or (presumably) tax payers. In these respects they do not share their readers’ interests or fate, yet their newspapers comment extensively and influentially on matters such as UK taxation and membership of the EU. This is fairly unusual, and in many other jurisdictions foreign ownership of the news media would be prohibited or restricted. Opinions will differ on whether a lack of plurality of interests among newspaper proprietors is likely to have material effects. But consider this scenario: If at some future time Mr James Murdoch decides that British newspapers are not profitable enough and sells off some titles, would it matter the new owners increased the proportion of the UK media in foreign ownership, by adding added (say) a Qatari or a Chinese owner of a major title to our current list of expat owners? There is nothing to prevent that.

Onora O’Neill combines writing on political philosophy and ethics with a range of public activities. She comes from Northern Ireland and has worked mainly in Britain and the US. She was Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge from 1992-2006, President of the British Academy from 2005-9, chaired the Nuffield Foundation from 1998-2010, has been a crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2000 (Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve). She currently chairs the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission and is on the board of the Medical Research Council. She lectures and writes on justice and ethics, accountability and trust, justice and borders, as well as on the future of universities, the quality of legislation and the ethics of communication, including media ethics.

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

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.

#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.

Upcoming event: Media Power & Plurality conference, 2 May 2014

Policymakers throughout the world recognise the need to protect a diversity of voices and views in a democracy, but what does media plurality require in practice? How do you legislate to prevent undue concentration of media power? What interventions are needed to help new players flourish? How do you reconcile sustainable media businesses and a sufficiency of voices? How should policy approaches differ at national, regional and local level?

The government’s consultation last year focused on media measurement, but there are far broader policy issues at stake and possible lessons to be learned from other countries. This conference, in the wake of recommendations from the Leveson Inquiry and from the House of Lords Communications Committee, will explore UK policy on media ownership and diversity, as well as possible manifesto commitments in the forthcoming general election. Other panels, featuring a range of leading academic, industry and policy practitioners, will look at UK and European policy, options for local and hyperlocal initiatives, and the potential for “charitable journalism”.

The conference is organised by the University of Westminster’s AHRC-funded Media Power and Plurality research project and hosted by the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism at City University London (Room A130, College Building).

Tickets for this event are free and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Reserve your place here.

#mediaplurality14

Programme

8.45 – Registration

9.15 – Opening remarks

9.30 – Keynote

10am – Panel 1 – Priorities for national policy

11.30 – Coffee

11.45 – Panel 2 – Subsidies, non-profits and charity: ideas for regeneration

1pm – Lunch

2pm – Panel 3 – Local media plurality: is it all doom and gloom?

3.30 – Tea

3.45 – Panel 4 – What can the UK learn from other countries?

5.15 – Close / thanks

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

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.

Academics to give evidence to CMS select committee on future of the BBC on 1 April, 10.30am

Professor Steven Barnett and other academic specialists will give evidence tomorrow to the Culture Media and Sport select committee inquiry into the future of the BBC. Steven Barnett’s written evidence can be found here [PDF].

Information about the session at 10.30 on 1 April can be found here and will be available to watch on Parliament TV. The other witnesses include Professor Patrick Barwise, Emeritus Professor of Management and Marketing, London Business School; Professor Charlie Beckett, Department for Media and Communications, LSE; and Lis Howell, Deputy Head of the Journalism Department, City University.