Media industry in EU lobbying offensive PDF Print E-mail
Granville Williams, 19 October 2004

This article was originally published in Free Press, No 142

Media industry in EU lobbying offensive

The European Union is changing. The accession of ten new countries, mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, will have a major impact. The new President, Jose Barrosa, the former Portuguese Prime Minister, has appointed economics and trade commissioners who are pro-market and free trade and there is a real sense that the European social model is under threat.

This has particular implications for the future of public service broadcasting in Europe, as well as for policies dedicated to promoting media pluralism and media diversity. Associated with these are also concerns about professional journalistic practices, and protecting a European cultural identity.

The Council of Europe seeks to promote policies which typify the social market model for the media. A good example of how these policies are presented is in the 2002 report, Media Diversity in Europe. The report emphasises that ‘the private sector alone, that is, the market, cannot guarantee per se a pluralistic media landscape’ and ‘a public broadcasting system detached from State influence is absolutely essential to provide diverse information, culture and content to all citizens’

In terms of threats to media diversity, pluralism and cultural diversity, it identifies particularly trade liberalisation and negotiations within the World Trade Organisation on trade in goods (GATT) and services (GATS) and asserts, ‘the audiovisual field holds a special position because of its cultural value and should therefore be granted a privilege and an exemption from total liberalization (which if applied to the audiovisual sector would preclude measures in support of audiovisual industries, i.e. subventions). The second argument is linked to the wish to avoid “Americanisation” or “globalisation” of culture and the loss of European national/regional cultural values.’

The core concerns of the CoE’s position are echoed by other pan-European political and media organisations. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is active in arguing the case for the preservation and spread of public service broadcasting in Europe. The European Parliament, until the elections held in June 2004, had a number of socialist or social democratic MEPs who were strong supporters of the same range of ideas. The accession of the new member states, and the June 2004 election results across the EU countries have diminished that support, however, and shifted the political composition of the European Parliament more to the right.

The EU Commission has also been subject to sustained lobbying, and through this activity we see most clearly how the social market model is been challenged. This is part of a wider process which encompasses attempts to dismantle EU policies which are deemed to create excessive regulation, put up barriers to free trade, and in terms of media policy, create conditions which give public service broadcasters unfair competitive advantages over commercial broadcasters.

There are two broad coalitions which want to see fundamental changes in media policy within the enlarged EU. One is the grouping of European commercial media organisations: the European Publishers Council, the Association of Commercial Television in Europe and the Association Européenne des Radios. Their membership is overwhelmingly West European, with the exception of the Polish publishing group, Agora, and ARCA, the Romanian commercial radio association.

An important intervention in policy debates was the production of Safeguarding the Future of the European Audiovisual Market (2004) which essentially threw down the gauntlet, charging the EU in the audiovisual sector with,‘ a lack of political will, unimaginable in other sectors’ by allowing market distortion through massive subsidies to publicly funded broadcasters (PFBs), which the report defines as ‘TV and radio broadcasters with public service remits funded either wholly through State Aid or through a combination of State Aid and commercial revenues including advertising.’

The report uses data from the 15 member states before EU enlargement to argue that PFBs have a privileged position: ‘PFBs received State Aid equalling a massive €15 billion (more than €82.2 billion between 1996 and 2001). The magnitude of this subsidy effectively makes PFB the third most subsidised “industry” in Europe.’ The report also cites numerous examples where, they claimed, PSBs breached EU competition law, but the EU had not acted against them. PFBs have also been placed in a privileged position, compared with private radio and TV broadcasters, because they could use a ‘predictable, stable and reliable income stream’ to build a position at the expense of private radio and TV broadcasters as well as press and internet publishers.’ Another charge is that PSBs are weakly regulated so that they are able to build audience share through scheduling serious, distinctive programming off the main channels and scheduling popular programming. In adopting such tactics they move away from their PSB remit.

This report is part of a systematic attack on PSB at a European and national level. For example, the genesis of the Report of the Independent Review of BBC Online (DCMS, 2004) was the lobbying efforts of the British Internet Publishers Alliance (BIPA), which six years ago began to argue that the dominance of BBC Online had a detrimental effect, by inhibiting commercial investment in other online initiatives. Also local and regional newspapers in the UK, through their organisation, the Newspaper Society, have been unhappy with the way BBC Online has developed local content which intrudes on their business activity. The chair of the online report, Philip Graf, was former chief executive of Trinity Mirror, which owns national newspaper titles (the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People), but is also the largest owner of local and regional newspapers in the UK.

The report’s recommendations were seen by BIPA as a ‘victory’ for their lobbying efforts: in future the BBC’s online activities must be carefully monitored, with a priority given to coverage of news, current affairs and education; the BBC board of governors should appoint two new governors, one with new media experience and another with competition law experience; and the BBC should source 25% of its content from outside suppliers, except for news.

Intriguingly, the contact for further information on BIPA’s response to the Graf report is Angela Mills Wade, the same person who is listed to contact for further information on the EPC/ACT/AER report discussed above. She is a ubiquitous lobbyist who has worked for Rupert Murdoch’s News International for several years.

The second broad coalition organisation has a global as well as a European focus. The International Communications Round Table (ICRT) represents 25 leading media, computer and communications companies, including Time Warner, Walt Disney. News International/News Corporation, Reed Elsevier, Sony Entertainment, Bertelsmann, Philips, Siemens and Microsoft. ICRT has put considerable energies into lobbying the European Parliament and European Commission on the revision of the Television Without Frontiers directive.

It argues that the aim of a future directive, ‘should be to create a liberal and clearly less restrictive regulatory framework for the audiovisual sector to replace the TV without Frontiers directive.’ It rejects regulation: ‘Content, in particular broadcasting content, must be free from the straightjacket of regulation developed in a different – historically changed –media world.’ Quotas on EU-originated programmes are ‘no longer viable or justifiable in a global and technologically converging environment.’ On advertising, the EU should ‘trust more market forces and self-regulation’ and ‘the advertising rules in the TV Without Frontiers Directive are classic examples of how technological progress can render obsolete legislation that was intended for the television of the 1980s…The time is thus ripe for a determined modernisation and deregulation of restrictions on TV advertising.’

Some conclusions
Despite fears about the impact of multi-channel TV, publicly funded broadcasters such as France Télévisions, Spain’s RTVE, Germany’s ZDF and ARD and the UK’s BBC have retained their audiences, been able to diversify into new digital initiatives and develop online activities, in contrast to commercial broadcasters who had been affected by loss of income in the advertising recession.

However a new ideological and political offensive seems to be underway against the concept of PSB. The accession of the new member states (many of which have extremely weak and politically compromised public service broadcasting structures) will weaken some of the traditional bases of support for both PSB and the body of ideas associated with the social-market broadcasting model. Also policies associated with the defence of Europe’s cultural identity, and interventions to protect EU-originated programming through the Television Without Frontiers directive, are also likely to be modified, partly through intense lobbying by European and global commercial groupings. Also CEE countries may be reluctant, because of structural weaknesses within their indigenous broadcasting industries, to apply them.

As a new commercial media policy dynamic, driven by primarily economic goals, develops wider support in Western Europe, countries from CEE will also be likely to focus their media policy objectives on achieving the same goals.
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