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
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Plurality (Page 1 of 2)
Heading into the 1992 election, polls pointed towards a hung parliament. The Sun turned up the heat on election day with a front page asking that: ‘If Kinnock [the then Labour leader] wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.’ The Tories duly won the election with 42% of the popular vote leading Britain’s best-selling title to boast ‘It’s the Sun Wot Won It’. Continue reading
The House of Lords inquiry into media pluralism this past year and the Department for Culture Media and Sport’s request that Ofcom consider how pluralism should be measured are healthy developments that bring significant attention to the challenges facing news and public affairs content. It comes simultaneously with the EU’s Media Pluralism Monitor study of the UK that has identified some areas for concern that UK policymakers should consider. Continue reading
On 9 October 2014, the Media Standards Report published a new report entitled Addressing the Democratic Deficit in Local News through Positive Plurality Or, why we need a UK alternative of the Knight News Challenge [pdf] Continue reading
When asked what he thought of western civilisation, the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi replied that ‘I think it would be a great idea’. The verdicts handed down from the phone hacking trial together with the information contained during the eight months at the Old Bailey suggest pretty much the same thing. We need a free and fearless press because we certainly don’t appear to have one now. 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
Since the emergence of human rights and civil liberties discourses there has been a widespread consensus about the role of the media to foster democracy. Continue reading
That media ownership rules have been progressively relaxed in many democracies is certainly not news. But that Australia, with one of the most concentrated media markets in the world, is thinking of further deregulation is astonishing.
Based on his latest research that examined civil society proposals for media plurality measures and models their suggested ownership limits against current market conditions, Justin Schlosberg of Birkbeck, University of London argues that such limits and thresholds could limit media power with minimal impact on the market. Continue reading
At the heart of any discussion about plurality and media ownership lies the concept of power: for democracy to function properly, the exercise of power over public opinion, law-makers, opinion-formers and elite decision-makers must be properly distributed and not become concentrated in a small group of individuals or organisations. Continue reading
Recent Judgments
© 2023 Inforrm's Blog
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑