Media Capture in Europe

Comunicación y sociedad, 2010

Research Paper, 2022

This policy study aims to shed light on the media capture strategy that the current autocratising governments in Hungary and Poland have pursued since coming to power. In the first part, the four tactics of this strategy are described: Concentrate, nationalise, centralise; weaponise state advertising; Polarise to delegitimise, and Enforce (autocratic) law. The second part reviews the actions of the European institutions to protect media freedom and pluralism in these two countries by dividing them into three main categories: Finding, Funding and Fining. In the last part, four policy recommendations are proposed to contribute to the EU policy making on this increasingly strategic battleground in the fight against autocratisation in the Union. Data was collected first-hand through semi-structured interviews with nine investigative journalists, recent reports from independent research centres and secondary literature.

The ability of the media and especially journalism to operate freely is crucial in order on the one hand to hold governments and other institutions accountable for their actions and on the other to allow citizens to make informed decisions. To discuss the current state of affairs for media and journalistic freedom in Europe, the authors draw on the findings of two of independent projects awarded a grant by the European Commission —the Safety Net for European Journalists and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECpmf)—. First, the article offers insights as to current threats and other impediments experienced by journalists, and highlights their structural basis. In the second section it shows how, despite the European commitment to media freedom, developments in 2015-16 suggest that both the «war of attrition» and the 'toxic environment' identified by Safety Net are expanding and apply to more countries in Europe. Revisiting issues of the political economy of journalism, issues of representation and contents, and questions pertaining to the audience, the article concludes with a set of reflections on the possible future of journalism and media freedom.

Trípodos, nº34, 2014

Political control is one of the central and conditioning aspects of the relationship between journalists and politicians. Through the perceptions of journalists and politicians, this article analyzes the validity, characteristics, and functioning of one of the principal mechanisms of political control: the journalistic oversight of politics, which is linked to the watchdog theory and political pressures on the media. In addition, the degree of mediatization of politics is measured with regard to media autonomy. The methodology is based on in-depth interviews of 45 participants in Spain. The results indicate the pre-eminence of political pressures that are principally exercised via indirect means (i.e., communications offices and media enterprises). The latter are a vehicle for channeling political control, which reveals the weight of the factors associated with political economy in the relationship between journalists and politicians. Finally, the low incidence of journalistic oversight of politics reveals a reduced level of mediatization in Spain.

2015

This essay explores the applicability of the concept of capture to media integrity and regulation. The term is used to analyze the recent institutional history of the Turkish press and to depict how media has become the handmaiden of the very forces it is intended to hold accountable. More especially, capture is used to examine the media’s shifting role in a country where the relationship between political and economic interests is itself in a process of transformation.

The article examines the problems resulting from employing the perspective of media reform in relation to the development of post-socialist media systems in Eastern Europe. The perspective of media reform is normatively rooted both in normative (value) expectations and in narrow focus on regulatory success, ahistorical and descriptive. The article substitutes this approach with the media systems approach, which allows for a broader analysis of media system dimensions in their historical context, as well as in terms of their relationship to each other. Several examples of failed reforms, a consequence of the misunderstanding of the media system and the misfit with the type of regulatory model employed, are examined. The chapter finally questions whether the relationships between main media system dimensions are still valid in conditions of digital networked media and increased media commercialization. As one example of this it questions the present “health” of the normatively expected relationship between journalistic professionalism and the market-oriented media in terms of the contemporary developments in “predatory” media and citizen journalism.

Pan-European media offer the same content to all Europeans at the same time, without giving preference to any one national point of view, but adopting a European perspective. Previous research work on this subject aimed at explaining why an authentic pan-European news outlet does not exist, and prominent media actors have brought the questions into public debates. At the 2014 International Journalism Festival in Perugia, the former online news director of The Guardian Wolfgang Blau was wondering: “In the EU, the world's largest economy, how can it be that there is not a single media organisation, from the Continent, that addresses European as such?” This thesis aims at overcoming the existential questions on pan-European media, and analysing the current EU media landscape. The final purpose is to understand and discover how to get out of the niche audience, that is to say, how to widen the public of the pan- European media and improve their contribution to the European public sphere. In order to do that, we assume that present and future pan-European media must proceed towards a more conflict-oriented (or debate-oriented) and less consensual editorial line, and become increasingly more accessible not only for the Brussels bubble, but also for the general public. We examine the main obstacles and difficulties in the business and editorial choices of these media that currently slow down this process, and propose suggestions. The role of EU institutions is equally given a great importance. This research work is based on: • a theoretical framework for a federalist approach to the European media sphere; • a methodology, that is provided by the author to empirically evaluate pan-European media; • several interviews with media and institutional actors from Brussels and outside Brussels.

Media Portraits in Times of Crisis (2008-2014). Public Views of the European Union and the Austerity Policies in the National Leading Press, 2019

This article-based doctoral thesis revisits the role of the national printed press in supplying political information related to the European Union during the years of economic crisis and austerity policy-making (2008-2014). The supply side of political information plays an important function in establishing a general information environment at the national level that affects the process of citizens’ opinion formation regardless of people’s direct exposure to media outlets and news consumption (Vliegenthart et al. 2008). However, empirical research is still scarce. I argue that this information is particularly relevant in times of crises and in relation to the European Union, of whom information is usually scant. The managerial role of the European Union during the economic crisis opened up extraordinary opportunities for making it known and, furthermore, for reconnecting European citizens to the project of European integration. First, through gaining visibility in the national public spheres, which are usually dominated by national political actors advancing their interests. Second, through public debates, addressing political and social issues that, at the time, profoundly concerned wide sectors of the national populations. This chapter presents the theoretical framework for the three empirical articles that follow, each of which builds upon the preceding one. It discusses the link between theoretical and empirical analyses of the mass media within deliberative democracy and the question of legitimacy of the European Union.

Journal of Media Business Studies, 2016

This paper examines risks for political independence of public service media (PSM) in European Union Member States by examining legal safeguards for guaranteeing independence of PSM’s governance and its funding mechanisms, and also the extent to which these are implemented. The analysis was conducted in 19 EU countries through a questionnaire-based method. The questionnaire was completed by a local team consisting of national media scholars. Results point to differences in media policies concerned with PSM’s independence among EU countries, with many risks associated with these policies and their implementation. Specifically, significant risk for PSM’s political independence has been identified in more than half of the EU Member States included in the sample (n = 11), most of these being countries of Southern and Central Eastern Europe.