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Jurisdictional Review of Plurality Policies, Guidelines, Practices and Rules

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Jurisdictional Review of Plurality Policies, Guidelines, Practices and Rules Jurisdictional Review of plurality policies, guidelines, practices and rules. Prepared on behalf of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) Deirdre Kevin, Commsol Ltd March 2018 1 Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction and outline of report .............................................................................................. 12 Note on methodology .................................................................................................................. 14 Section I: the European and international context ............................................................. 15 Chapter 1. Placing the pluralism debate in a market context ......................................... 16 1.1 Traditional media ...................................................................................................................... 16 News sources, trust and reliability .................................................................................................... 17 1.2 The new digital media world..................................................................................................... 17 Digitisation, proliferation of TV channels and their distribution ...................................................... 17 New online players in the provision and delivery of news ................................................................ 18 Enhancing understanding of new forms of access to news .............................................................. 20 1.3 Audiovisual market trends and the impact of new media players ................................................. 21 Audiovisual sector revenues .............................................................................................................. 22 Advertising ........................................................................................................................................ 22 Specific impact on small countries .................................................................................................... 25 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................... 26 Chapter 2. European and international obligations and guidelines ...................................... 29 2.1 United Nations .......................................................................................................................... 29 2.2 The Council of Europe ............................................................................................................... 29 2.3 The European Union ................................................................................................................. 32 2.4 Studies and reports ................................................................................................................... 33 Media pluralism ................................................................................................................................ 33 Public opinion on media diversity ..................................................................................................... 34 Fake news and “information disorder ............................................................................................... 34 Chapter 3. Pillars of pluralism: public service media, and local and community media ..... 35 3.1 Public service media.................................................................................................................. 35 Public service media’s core role in promoting pluralism ................................................................... 35 Independence and sufficient funding of public service media .......................................................... 36 3.2 Local and community media ..................................................................................................... 36 Local and community media as contributors to pluralism ................................................................ 36 Sustainability of local and community media ................................................................................... 37 Section II: Pluralism policies in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom ..................................................................................................................... 39 Chapter 4. Media pluralism: definitions, frameworks and measurement .............................. 40 4.1 The concept of media pluralism................................................................................................ 40 National definitions of media pluralism and media diversity ........................................................... 41 4.2 Frameworks for assessing and measuring media pluralism ..................................................... 42 The European Media Pluralism Monitor ........................................................................................... 42 Measurement of media pluralism in the United Kingdom ................................................................ 43 The German media diversity monitor ............................................................................................... 45 The German Commission for determining media concentration (KEK) ............................................ 46 The Dutch MediaMonitor .................................................................................................................. 46 Belgian CSA Pluralism database ....................................................................................................... 47 Chapter 5. Media pluralism: laws, regulations and policies ................................................... 47 5.1 Media ownership and control – ownership rules and thresholds ............................................ 47 Austria ............................................................................................................................................... 48 France ................................................................................................................................................ 48 Germany ............................................................................................................................................ 48 United Kingdom ................................................................................................................................ 49 2 Denmark and the Netherlands .......................................................................................................... 50 5.2 Ownership, control and pluralism in the licensing of audiovisual media services ................... 50 Limiting concentration of ownership and promoting transparency of ownership ........................... 50 Preventing certain types of ownership – political, cross-media........................................................ 51 Promoting pluralism of content ........................................................................................................ 52 5.3 Competition policy and media mergers ................................................................................... 52 Austria: media mergers that impair diversity ................................................................................... 52 United Kingdom: media mergers and the public interest test .......................................................... 53 Germany: controlling the dominant influence on public opinion...................................................... 54 France: impact assessments of media mergers ................................................................................ 54 5.4 Transparency of media ownership........................................................................................... 55 Transparency of media ownership for the public .............................................................................. 55 The MAVISE database on European audiovisual services ................................................................. 56 Databases, lists and websites of the national regulators ................................................................. 57 National reports on media markets, and on media concentration ................................................... 58 5.5 Bringing pluralism and diversity to the programming decisions .............................................. 59 France ................................................................................................................................................ 59 Germany ............................................................................................................................................ 59 5.6 Funding initiatives that promote media plurality ..................................................................... 60 Austria - diversity of programming and development of journalism ................................................ 60 Denmark - supporting innovation and diversity in news media production ..................................... 60 France – funding audiovisual content and protecting cultural diversity .......................................... 61 Germany – reduced VAT for national print media ............................................................................ 61 Netherlands – journalism promotion fund .......................................................................................
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