European Media Governance

Description

A multitude of factors affect how the European media industry is governed, including commercialisation, concentration, convergence and globalisation. George Terzis’ collection, European Media Governance, is the first volume to concentrate on analysing and explaining how European countries are slowly conceding control of the media from the government to the market, professional and public forces.

This impressive volume provides a detailed examination of all aspects of media governance, including media ownership structures, government policies, citizen’s organisations and union’s accountability systems, for 32 European countries. European Media Governance includes recent research into technological developments and provides sources for more information in each country. In addition to this incredibly diverse scale of research and analysis, the book provides a companion website with regular updates. Terzis’ European Media Governance addresses all aspects of media governance in Europe, reflecting contemporary developments in both the countries analysed and their media, creating a comprehensive and reliable source.

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• General officer
• History of Europe
• Central
• General
• Cultural Studies
• ART
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841502199
• Langue: English

Extrait

European Media Governance: National and Regional Dimensions
Edited by Georgios Terzis
European Media Governance: National and Regional Dimensions
Edited by Georgios Terzis
First Published in the UK in 2007 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2007 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2007 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Typesetting: Mac Style, Nafferton, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-192-5/EISBN 978-1-84150-219-9
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
To Myria
C ONTENTS
Foreword
Giuseppe Zaffuto
Editor s Preface
Georgios Terzis
Introduction
The Current State of Media Governance in Europe
Denis McQuail
The North Atlantic/Liberal Media Model Countries
Introduction
Dan Hallin Paolo Mancini
The Irish Media Landscape
Wolfgang Truetzschler
The United Kingdom Media Landscape
Michael Bromley
The Northern European/Democratic Corporatist Media Model Countries
Introduction
Lennart Weibull
The Austrian Media Landscape
Josef Trappel
The Belgium Media Landscape
Els de Bens
The Danish Media Landscape
Per Jauert Henrik S ndergaard
The Finnish Media Landscape
Jyrki Jyrki inen
The German Media Landscape
Hans J. Kleinsteuber Barbara Thomass
The Icelandic Media Landscape
R nar P lmason
The Luxembourgian Media Landscape
Mario Hirsch
The Dutch Media Landscape
Piet Bakker Peter Vasterman
The Norwegian Media Landscape
Helge stbye
The Swedish Media Landscape
Lennart Weibull Anna Maria J nsson
The Swiss Media Landscape
Werner A. Meier
The Mediterranean/Polarized Pluralist Media Model Countries
Introduction
Stylianos Papathanassopoulos
The Cypriot Media Landscape
Myria Vassiliadou
The French Media Landscape
Bernard Lamizet Jean-Fran ois T tu
The Greek Media Landscape
Maria Kontochristou Georgios Terzis
The Italian Media Landscape
Fabrizio Tonello
The Maltese Media Landscape
Joseph Borg
The Portuguese Media Landscape
Fernando Correia Carla Martins
The Spanish Media Landscape
Ram n Salaverr a
The Turkish Media Landscape
Ruken Bar
The Eastern European/Post-Communist Media Model Countries
Introduction
Karol Jakubowicz
The Bulgarian Media Landscape
Vessela Tabakova
The Croatian Media Landscape
Nada Buric
The Czech Media Landscape
Milan m d
The Estonian Media Landscape
Urmas Loit
The Hungarian Media Landscape
Ildik Kaposi
The Latvian Media Landscape
Ilze ulmane
The Lithuanian Media Landscape
Audron Nugarait
The Polish Media Landscape
Ania Lara
The Romanian Media Landscape
Alex Ulmanu
The Slovakian Media Landscape
Andrej kolkay
The Slovenian Media Landscape
Marko Milosavljevi
Conclusions
Converging Media Governance Arrangements in Europe
Johannes Bardoel
About the Authors
FOREWORD
E UROPEAN J OURNALISM C ENTRE : 1992-2007
For fifteen years now, the European Journalism Centre has monitored, researched, reflected and conducted trainings on the present and future challenges facing the media in Europe. The EJC celebrates its 15th birthday at the service of the media community with this new publication: European Media Governance: National and Regional Dimensions .
The publication would not have been possible without the support of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture Science (OCenW) to which the EJC would like to express its gratitude for the fruitful cooperation.
I would also like to thank the EJC Executive Committee: Ove Joanson (President), Vicent Partal (Vice-President), Hugh Stephenson (Founder) and Wilfried Ruetten (Director) for their invaluable guidance and constant input to our intellectual endeavours.
A final note of appreciation goes to Professor Georgios Terzis, EJC s dedicated and knowledgeable publications editor, for his tireless efforts in the last two years and for his overall conception of this project.
Giuseppe Zaffuto Director of Programmes, European Journalism Centre (EJC)
E DITOR S P REFACE
Georgios Terzis
Associate Professor, Vesalius College-Vrije Universiteit Brussel Chair, Journalism Studies Section, European Communication Research and Education Association
This volume concentrates on the analysis of the national dimensions of media governance in 32 European countries [the 27 EU Member States, the 2 candidate countries, Croatia and Turkey, as well as Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, which have special political relations with the EU and where most of the EU media governance-related regulations and programmes are applicable]. Further, the publication analyses four regional dimensions of media governance: the North Atlantic/Liberal, Northern European/Democratic Corporatist, Mediterranean/Polarized Pluralist and Eastern European/Post-Communist, as defined by the criteria set by Hallin and Mancini (2004).
Governance, according to the European Union, consists of rules, processes and behaviour that affect the way in which powers are exercised, particularly as regards openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence. 1 Despite efforts of the EU to regulate part of the media industry, media governance is considerably different in the various national and regional domains in Europe.
A trip to the media landscapes of Europe offers us the variety of unique characteristics such as the Berlusconi phenomenon in Italy, pirate media in Ireland and a public broadcasting station (PBS) with audience rating quotas in Belgium. In Croatia the law forbids the media to promote war, while Turkey, with 5 hours daily viewing, has one of the highest TV audience ratings in the world. A German company is the biggest newspaper owner in Bulgaria, and almost all the daily newspapers in the Czech Republic and Hungary are foreign owned, while in Slovenia there is almost no foreign ownership of newspapers.
In Luxemburg the biggest newspaper belongs to the Catholic archbishop, and media activities have always been almost exclusively the domain of private initiatives, while in Malta 98 per cent of the population watches PBS or stations that belong to public institutions. In Switzerland private television does not exist, and PBS has the responsibility to promote cultural understanding among the different linguistic communities. On the other hand, in Poland the programmes of PBS should respect the Christian system of values, strengthen the family ties and combat social pathologies .
At the same time that Finland sees the introduction of mobile television, Norway boasts the most successful newspaper website and one that has more readers on the Internet than on paper. In Sweden more than 80 per cent of the population reads a newspaper every day, while Greece and Portugal have some of the lowest newspaper readerships in the developed world. In Iceland there is home delivery of free sheets and in Spain newspapers are making more money from the sale of products than the sale of newspaper copies.
In Germany there is fierce competition among news agencies, while in Romania newspaper title numbers go up and competition is also fierce during election periods. Competition is also fierce in the second biggest media market in the world, the UK, where some newspapers saw circulation declines of up to 4.4 million. Finally, in the Netherlands one company owns almost all daily newspapers.
Four regional dimensions rest among these unique characteristics and Europe-wide trends described above. According to Hallin and Mancini, the social and political characteristics of a country shape its media system and, thus, there is a systemic parallelism . As such, and despite their differences, European media landscapes share regional media dimensions parallel to their social and political regional dimensions. These are analysed in the introductory chapters of each section by the respective authors.
Despite those and other unique characteristics of the media landscapes of the 32 countries, the same voyage through their media landscape offers us a clear picture of the common characteristics that exist across all these national and regional dimensions such as commercialization, convergence, concentration, transnationalization and audience fragmentation. The introduction of cable, satellite and digital radio and television stations, for example, and the consequent channel proliferation and new types of media content, put must carry regulations and public funding of PSBs under pressure, while digital convergence makes it hard to differentiate between sectors and, thus, hard to sustain sector-specific regulation.
In the meantime, ideological and social shifts such as the prevalence of neo-liberal thinking, the reliance on market forces for delivering choice and individualism and diversification of lifestyles put the whole concept of PSB and state policies of media governance in Europe into question (Iosifidis 2006). And as our journey to the different media landscapes reveals, market forces and technological developments do not necessarily protect media pluralism or the national public sphere and democratic participation. Instead, they might allow the flourishing of multiple identities across borders, since Europeans can now afford to take their media and politics with them, as well as their food, when they migrate to another European country.
External and internal media pluralism, however, depends not only on state policies as the country media landscapes reveal, but also on geographic and linguistic market sizes and the country s civil society organizations relating to media (the so-