A digital market research company recently reported that “the top 10 publishers make up a huge chunk of the U.K. media market and own more than half of the entire industry”. The statement was based on data that SimilarWeb collected over 2015, specifically the number of page visits to the top 300 news websites. They found that 65 percent of this traffic was concentrated in the websites of the top 10 news publishers, and the top five alone attracted more than half of all traffic across the sample. Continue reading
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Tag: Media Reform Coalition (Page 2 of 4)
James Murdoch, younger son of billionaire media mogul and keen tweeter Rupert Murdoch, has been appointed as chairman of the UK’s biggest broadcaster, BSkyB. Normally, top boardroom appointments would merit perhaps a mention in business blogs and the City pages of the press but this is more significant for what it tell us about corporate power and governance in the UK today. Continue reading
New research by the Media Reform Coalition shows how large sections of the press appeared to set out systematically to undermine Jeremy Corbyn in his first week as Labour Leader with a barrage of overwhelmingly negative coverage. Continue reading
In a recent article the Press Gazette pointed out that in 60% of the UK national newspaper market the election campaign coverage has been pro-Conservative compared to 33 % of prospective Tory voters. Research by the Media Standards Trust also points out that the Conservative party gets the most positive coverage in newspaper leader columns and Labour the most negative. Continue reading
Figures in a new poll reveal that there is overwhelming public support for action to confront the unaccountable power of media proprietors in the UK. 74 per cent believe that, in order to own a UK newspaper, radio station or TV channel, companies should be based in the UK and pay full UK tax while 61 per cent are in favour of compulsory rules (such as independent editorial boards) in order to limit the influence of owners over editorial output. Continue reading
When Peter Oborne resigned from the Telegraph last week, his parting outpouring of rage at the paper’s ‘fraud upon its readers’ for failing to properly report the HSBC scandal was wrong in only one discernable respect: the rot had set in before 2010 when he arrived as chief political commentator and long before the advent of Jason Seiken as editor-in-chief in 2013. Indeed it set in shortly after the newspaper was taken over by the Barclay brothers in 2004. Continue reading
In 2011, as the phone-hacking scandal unfolded, Prime Minister David Cameron pledged a new era of transparency in the government’s dealings with the media. All meetings between senior government and media figures were to be recorded and published on a quarterly basis and a major public inquiry was launched – partly with a focus on the relationship between press and politicians. Continue reading
For the first time since the start of the hacking enquiries, the British Press is speaking with one voice in its condemnation of the police use of special powers to investigate journalists’ phone records. Continue reading
Those HR people in the Culture Department are a hard-nosed bunch. Instead of letting civil servants working on the media ownership brief have a well-deserved rest in Tuscany, they keep them at their desks in the hottest months of the year publishing policy statements when the sun is shining. Continue reading
On 24 April 2014, the Media Reform Coalition published its newest report ‘The Elephant In The Room: a survey of media ownership and plurality in the United Kingdom.’ [pdf] Continue reading
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