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 .......................................................................................