Concentration of media ownership
[8] In 2008, Joseph Straubhaar, Robert LaRose and Lucinda Davenport described the landscape of corporate media ownership in the United States of America as an oligopoly.
Net neutrality involves a lack of restrictions on content on the internet, however, with big businesses supporting campaigns financially they tend to have influence over political issues, which can translate into their mediums.
[15] Also, it embraces all measures guaranteeing citizens' access to diversified sources so to allow the formation of a plurality of opinions in the public sphere without undue influence of dominant powers.
For example, "for multi-product television or radio broadcasters, the more homogeneity possible between different services held in common ownership (or the more elements within a programme schedule which can be shared between 'different' stations), the greater the opportunity to reap economies".
Here is a quoted text from PA web site: "The Press Association supplies services to every national and regional daily newspaper, major broadcasters, online publishers and a wide range of commercial organisations."
[19] According to the ASBU Report, these numbers serve as evidence of a decline in the percentage of state channels and a rise in national private and foreign public stations targeting the Arab region.
The reduction of direct government ownership over the whole media sector is commonly registered as a positive trend, but this has paralleled by a growth in outlets with a sectarian agenda.
Daily Mail & General Trust operate the Nova Entertainment commercial radio networks in metropolitan and regional areas of Australia.
[27] Television New Zealand, although 100% state-owned, has been run on an almost entirely commercial basis since the late 1980s, in spite of previous attempts to steer it towards a more public service-oriented role.
Its primary public-service outlet, TVNZ7, ceased broadcasting in 2012 due to non-renewal of funding, and the youth-oriented TVNZ6 was rebranded as the short-lived commercial channel TVNZ U.
)[35][36] The Senate Committee's final report, released in June 2006, expressed concern about the effects of the current levels of news media ownership in Canada.
[35][36] The Senate report expressed particular concern about the concentration of ownership in the province of New Brunswick, where the Irving business empire owns all the English-language daily newspapers and most of the weeklies.
"[37] The report provided 40 recommendations and 10 suggestions (for areas outside of federal government jurisdiction), including legislation amendments that would trigger automatic reviews of a proposed media merger if certain thresholds are reached, and CRTC regulation revisions to ensure that access to the broadcasting system is encouraged and that a diversity of news and information programming is available through these services.
Increasing acceptance of media/news as commercial enterprise in 1990s driven by: hegemony of new-liberalism, role of commodified information technology in economic growth, commitment to private sector "champions" of Canadian culture.
[47] Attempts in this direction have been pointed by the mainstream media as attacks on freedom of expression, the trend of the political left in the entire Latin American continent.
[52] Both the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Union (EU) have tried to formulate a distinctive and comprehensive media policy, including on the issue of concentration.
On the other hand, the European Commission has privileged the understanding that the media sector should be regulated, as any other economic field, following the principles of market harmonization and liberalization.
In the 1980s, when preparing legislation on cross-border television many experts and MEPs argued for including provisions for media concentration in the EU directive but these efforts failed.
[53] In the following years, during the process of amending the Televisions Without Frontiers directive, which was adopted by the EP and the Council in 2007, the issue of media concentration was discussed, but it did not represent the core of the debate.
The results of the monitoring activity in the field of media market concentration identify five countries as facing a high risk: Finland, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Poland and Spain.
[60] In the monitoring carried out in 2014, 7 of 9 countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, the UK) scored a high risk in audience concentration.
The emergence of major actors operating in this field has been made possible mainly thanks to the process of digitalization and benefit of specific economies of scale.
[63] In the Czech Republic about 80% of the newspapers and magazines were owned by German and Swiss corporations in 2007,[64] as the two main press groups Vltava Labe Media and Mafra were (completely or partly) controlled by the German group Rheinisch-Bergische Druckerei- und Verlagsgesellschaft (Mediengruppe Rheinische Post), but were both later purchased by Czech-owned conglomerates Penta Investments and Agrofert in 2015 and 2013 respectively.
An attempt to buy one of Germany's two major private TV Groups, ProSiebenSat.1, in 2006, was withdrawn due to large concerns by regulation authorities as well as by parts of the public.
The rise of the Internet has added a concentration problem as the highest-visited websites include those of the mainstream publishing groups like DOL, Pegasus and also MEGA channel.
[80] In the last decade, the problem of media concentration worsened significantly.,[81] as demonstrated by the following data: in 2008 the four leading publishing houses controlled 69.7% of the market compared to 57.3% in 2000, 62.9% in 1995 and 59% in 1990.
In March 2011, the United Kingdom provisionally approved Murdoch to buy the remaining 61% of BSkyB;[88] however, subsequent events (News of the World hacking scandal and its closure in July 2011) leading to the Leveson Inquiry have halted this takeover.
[93] Though concern about the existence of a duopoly had been around for some time, a press uproar sparked in 2006, when a controversial reform to the Federal Radio and Television Law, seriously hampered the entry of new competitors, like Cadena Tres.
[96] In the United States, movie production has been dominated by major studios since the early 20th century; before that, there was a period in which Edison's Trust monopolized the industry.
[citation needed] In a 2020 article, Herzog and Scerbinina argued that CNN's coverage in 2017 of a potential merger between its parent company Time Warner and AT&T was "self-centered, self-promoting, and self-legitimizing.
