Background Note on the European Media Market
John Lloyd - Director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University

The media in European countries differ widely, as do the cultures. Italian newspapers, which are largely “upmarket”, are full of politics: British newspapers, which are dominated in circulation terms by tabloids, are full of celebrities and show business. Swedish public television is determinedly independent of the government which funds it; Spanish public television has been, at least until recently, heavily influenced by the administration in power.

There are, however, some common features. First, publicly owned broadcasting remains a significant factor in the media of all European states. In all cases, too, it functions at least to some extent as public service, as well as publicly owned, media. That is, it is the provider – increasingly, as commercial television and radio withdraw more and more from any kind of programming which is not entertainment or sport, the provider of last resort of news, current affairs and arts programmes.

Second, there is a strong disposition to some form of “objectivity” or “balance” in the remit of all broadcasters, and an avoidance, at least on TV, or overtly biased or polemical programming which consistently plays to one point of view.

Third, newspapers (as in the US) now rarely see themselves as representing a party, or even a consistent ideology. They remain broadly liberal, conservative or leftist – but are less likely to wish to have their support for this or that party “taken for granted”.

Fourth, the trend away from newspapers, and from broadcast news, varies from country to country but is visible everywhere in Europe. It is true in countries with relatively low newspaper readership, as in Greece, and in countries with historically high levels, as in Scandinavia. Broadcast news and current affairs are everywhere under pressure, first of all from their own viewers and second from their own executives, who see news and current affairs as a sure way to lose audiences.

Fifth, there are trends – worldwide, though at vastly different speeds – in two directions. One is towards greater concentration of media ownership, with fears voiced by politicians, journalists and others of a loss of plurality. It is a concern which crosses normal political lines: in the UK, the Conservative-led House of Lords Media Committee is beginning, in the new parliamentary term, an examination of media ownership concentration, and in a recent report (Media Power in Europe, EFJ, 2006), the European Federation of Journalists wrote that “many politicians, particularly those in the European Parliament have repeatedly expressed concerns over the growth of huge media companies that are exercising unprecedented levels of political and commercial influence. In the process they threaten diversity and pluralism in society”.

At the same time, the Internet, relatively young, has put a series of new media tools in the hands of a vast and rapidly growing public. The uses it makes of the Net varies across the range of human activities, including criminal ones: but in a number of ways, the internet has put powerful new media tools in peoples’ hands. One is the blog: a personal opinion, news and information column which may be read by three people or 3m: the other is the use of personal mail-boxes-cum-biographies-cum social networks, through such media as MySpace and YouTube.

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Offered with this brief summary for those who wish greater detail is an extract from a paper, “Media Power in Europe”, adapted from a 2006 report for the European Federation of Journalists, which gives an overview of major media holdings, their reach and their ownership.