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Media Ownership appeal: £10,000 is the target
162/Granville Williams
DATELINE: 12/2/08
The CPBF believes that media ownership is a vital issue. When media are concentrated in the hands of powerful proprietors deep damage can be inflicted on democratic societies. Look at Italy, at the heart of the European Union, but with a media system dominated by Silvio Berlusconi. He will be standing again in the April election, with the odds on him winning.
One business leader, who supported Berlusconi in the 2001 election, said, 'I supported Berlusconi because I thought he was pro-business. I didn't realise he was pro his own business.' In government Berlusconi, who owned three commercial television stations, was able to influence all the broadcast media. RAI, the public service broadcaster, stripped out critical programmes and became the microphone for his political power. Newspapers too came under indirect control with papers like La Stampa, owned by Fiat and dependent on government support, abandoning their independent watchdog role.
Political opponents, fearful of Berlusconi, have also been unable to deliver reform of the media to eradicate his conflict of interests.
In the UK and the USA there is concern about Rupert Murdoch. When Murdoch officially took control of The Wall Street Journal in December 2007, Bill Moyers, the veteran US journalist, commented: 'With The Journal, Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox News channel, and his new Fox Business Network, Murdoch now controls four of the major outlets that compete every day for the space in our heads. And when it comes to using his power for his own agenda, he's no shrinking violet.' Moyers then quoted from The Journal when it was still owned by the Bancroft family. It pointed out that Murdoch 'has blurred a line that exists at many other US media companies…a line intended to keep the business and political interests of owners from influencing the presentation of news.'
One crucial item is missing from the list of outlets Moyers cites that Murdoch uses to compete for 'space in our heads' - Fox Interactive Media, owners of MySpace, which was purchased in July 2005 for $580 million, and part of the social networking phenomenon.
Long-standing concerns about the power and influence of media moguls in traditional media (film, television, radio, newspapers, books and magazines) now have to be revised to take in the big implications of converged media and the transition to multi-media and multi-platform (PC, mobile, interactive TV) systems.
Consolidation is occurring at an alarming rate, with $30 billion spent in 2007 in mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft, Time Warner (AOL), Yahoo! and WPP on interactive advertising companies. And the stalled $44.6 billion bid by Microsoft for Yahoo! in February highlights the continuing battle for dominance of the online advertising market.
These are big media policy issues. The new information providers - search engine companies, telecom companies, internet service providers, and the like - play an important role in the selection, organisation and flow of information and therefore need to be brought into a new analysis of media ownership in the age of convergence.
Growing consolidation will undermine diversity of both content and ownership, and the transformation of the internet from an open, global means of communications into one designed primarily to serve the interests of corporate brands and commercialism.
Privacy also will be eroded as massive databases of information on internet users become more intrusive. For example, the Google/DoubleClick merger (not widely reported or analysed in the media) will be an information colossus that combines information about consumers that Google collects through its search engine with the tracking data that DoubleClick collects about users as they surf the net.
In debates on media ownership the powerful amplifying force of global media groups is deployed at national and European forums, relentlessly linking attacks on public service broadcasting, portrayed as anachronistic in the age of multi-channel TV and the internet, with intense lobbying to abandon old-fashioned concepts of placing limits on media ownership.
That is why last year the CPBF launched its media ownership project to research the changing patterns of ownership in our rapidly converging media. We have so far raised over £30,000 from Unison and the Open Society Institute, but we still need more cash to realise our plans.
We want to:
- chart the patterns of ownership which span converged communications media
- produce a clear set of relevant policies on media ownership for the UK and Europe
- challenge the oft-repeated mantra that media ownership is irrelevant in the age of the internet
- ask the questions and give the answers to what kind of regulation is required to protect public service content (news, children's programmes, documentaries) in the digital age
- produce a chart, popular campaigning pamphlet and book with the facts, arguments and analysis on media ownership
- hold a major conference to launch our polices in autumn 2008
- ensure that in the run-up to the next election our ideas are at the centre of political debate.That's why we need you to dig deep and help us raise £10,000 to realise these plans. Please send your donations to the CPBF national office.
Last modified: Friday, May 30, 2008
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Notices
Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
CPBF Annual General Meeting
DATELINE: 1/3/13
Make a note in your diary
Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
NUJ HQ, 308/312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.
Leveson, media ownership, CPBF future work.
DOWNLOAD FREEPRESS NOW
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Download Freepress in PDF, ePub or mobi format. Issue 194 now available.
MEDIA FOR ALL CONFERENCE
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DATELINE: 26/3/10
The media’s job is to inform and entertain us but we rely on them too to tell us what our rulers and representatives are up to. In the run-up to the Iraq war the government used spin and disinformation in the media to create panic and mislead people. The truth is coming out now, but we need stronger, more independent media to be able to scrutinise governments and make informed choices.
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Previous stories
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