A report in the Brisbane Times, 12 June 2014, revealed Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin, spent more than 2½ hours at Mr Murdoch’s apartment near Central Park in New York on Tuesday evening, 10 June. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Media Plurality (Page 2 of 3)
The central argument in a new book, Big Media and Internet Titans is that media pluralism must be put back on the political agenda. The book has been published by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.
“We identify key policy issues,” said the book’s editor, Granville Williams, “and argue that governments need to recognise that unless there are clear rules and limits on media ownership, democracy suffers. The Leveson Inquiry demonstrated this unequivocally.” Continue reading
Pay-TV operator BSkyB has confirmed its intention to buy the share that Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox owns in Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia. Des Freedman of Goldsmiths, University of London argues that these moves to consolidate a “European” Sky might not be raising alarms at the national level, but merits intervention from European competition authorities. Continue reading
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? Continue reading
While much of the headline debate on plurality tends to revolve around undue concentration at the national level – how to define it, how to measure it, how to prevent it – a growing local problem risks being ignored. Continue reading
The House of Lords Select Committee on Communications’ Report Media Plurality puts forward an innovative, multi-faceted approach to tackling excessive concentrations of media ownership in the UK. Continue reading
The House of Lords Communications Committee has just published its report into media plurality and few media moguls will be losing much sleep tonight. In its 82 pages, the Committee describes the issue very well – in terms of the need both to provide citizens with a proper range of information and to break up undue concentrations of power – but steps back from taking immediate or decisive action. Continue reading
There are two ways of looking at the House of Lords select committee’s report on Media Plurality, published today. The less charitable view is that it has ducked the crucial issue of how Parliament should lay down clear, unambiguous guidelines to prevent undue concentrations of media power. Continue reading
This week saw the announcement of half-year results from BSkyB. There was a slight dent in its relentless profitability following recent competition from BT for Premier League rights, but very little deviation from the last full-year results: annual revenues of £7.2 billion with an annual operating profit of £1.3 billion. One and a third billion is an awful lot of spare cash to be generating each year. Continue reading
One of the great paradoxes of media reform debates is that the biggest cheerleaders for government control over media regulation are none other than the private media themselves. The war over rival charters for press regulation earlier this year was waged on a number of fronts, but it pivoted on the question of whether power to change the charter should reside with ministers, or parliament. Continue reading
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