Ownership
has an enormous bearing on the nature of a media outlet’s elections coverage –
or, for that matter, any political coverage. State and government owned media
are under direct state or ruling party control and may therefore tend toward
favouring incumbent parties or candidates. Public Service Broadcasting (PSB)
acts independently of any political body, but is often financially supported by
the state. Privately-owned (whether
corporate or otherwise) media may be independent, but may also serve the
political interests of their proprietors. In some countries, these proprietors
might be political parties and candidates themselves. Community media may tend
to focus only on specific issues that pertain to the specific “community” it
serves. The nuances go further: economics, trust, and historical context all
contribute to the dynamics of differently owned media. Yet, undoubtedly, it is the establishment of
the right diversity and balance within the media ownership landscape that is one
of the keys to fostering democratic processes in any given country, not least
fair and free elections.
First,
it is important that we know what is meant by each of the media types:
- Public media: This refers
to two types: public service broadcasting (PSB) which is focused on the
public good and is independent; and state-owned media which is controlled
and funded by the state (tax-payers) and may be more or less focused on
the public good, but is sometimes simply a mouthpiece for the government
of the day.
- Private and corporate
media: Private media are those that are independently owned, for-profit,
and funded mostly from advertising and sales. They range in size from
international conglomerates to small local outlets.
- Community media: These are
usually small outlets that are community-owned and -oriented,
participatory, and non-profit.
- Party and politician-owned
media: These cover the range of different types of mass media created by
parties, from small party propaganda sheets to media owned by rich
politico-businesspeople.
All of these ownership types include both
traditional and new media. There are significant overlaps between the above
ownership models, and the categorisations are simplified here for ease of
discussion.
Media
Ownership in the Context of Elections
A
country’s portfolio of media ownership is likely to have a significant bearing
on a range of electoral issues, including questions such the extent to which
political advertising is permitted, citizens’ access to civic and voter
education as well as campaign material, and the extent to which elections are
covered in a balanced and fair manner.
In the
United States, where private media is predominantly owned by mega corporations,
access to media by parties and candidates is organized by way of paid
advertising. Similarly in Finland, where commercial broadcasting developed
rather earlier than in most of Europe, has a far freer approach to paid
political advertising than most European countries. Unlike its neighbours,
Finland provides no free airtime on public media and allows contestants to
purchase unlimited private airtime.[i]
Conversely countries such as Britain and Denmark, with a strong tradition of
public ownership of the media, do not allow paid political advertising at all,
and instead have a system of free direct access broadcasts on private
broadcasters.
Licensing
of broadcasters is one way in which governments manage media ownership and
promote media pluralism. Many countries have some form of regulation in place.
For example, in Australia:
The cross-media ownership laws brought in
by the federal Labor Government in 1987 was the start of modern media change.
The laws strictly prohibited the control of more than one commercial television
license or newspaper or commercial radio license in the same market, thus
aiming to reduce the potential for undue media concentration.[ii]
Such regulations are not easy to implement
fairly, however, and can be victims of political competition. In Australia “these changes also led to increased concentration
in some markets, and were widely seen as rewarding Labor allies,”[iii]
and were later rolled back when the other major party gained power, which then
led to further concentration of ownership.
In
addition, due to their influence and reach, broadcasting licenses for private
radio and television often include clauses with various requirements related to
elections. For example, the Equal Time rule in the US Communications Act (1934)
requires broadcasters to provide an equivalent opportunity to any opposing political candidates who request it;
and forbids broadcasters to censor campaign advertisements. Other regulations
require private broadcasters carry paid political advertising (see the section
on Provisions Affecting Both Public
and Private Media).
Media
ownership directly affects media’s important watchdog role during elections. State
and government media are sometimes measurably biased in favour of the incumbent
parties or candidates. This is
particularly the case in newer or transitional democracies such as Cambodia in
2007.[iv] During the 2012 Russia elections, the fact
that most broadcast media was owned by either the government or by powerful pro-Putin
businesspeople, translated into overwhelming bias in election coverage.[v]
Much of the discussion about "regulation" of the media in elections
is in fact to address this problem - ensuring that publicly funded media
operate with due independence of the government of the day - rather than trying
to restrict the operations of media that already enjoy full editorial
independence.
Media
ownership also affects the voters’ right to information. Voters’ access to
information on elections is limited in some countries by poor diversity of
media ownership, or by lack of policy-making and investment that ensures that
media reaches a majority of the population. As well as the impact of media
concentration, insufficient information can be caused by a lack of infrastructure
and disillusionment or mistrust by the public in the media on offer.
Media Ownership in the Global Context
The proportion of state (or government) to
private media ownership is sometimes mistakenly seen as a direct reflection of
a country’s political and social freedom: dictatorships or authoritarian
regimes with controlled media versus democracies with fostered pluralism of
ownership. The reality is more complex.
Numerous influences are responsible in determining the degree of media
freedom in any given country, including legal, economic, political and cultural
environments. Ownership also varies within countries as economic and democratic
development proceeds (or regresses).
However there are some discernable recent
trends. According to the editors of Negotiating Democracy: Media
Transformations in Emerging Democracies[vi], in the developed world, “the
restructuring of telecommunications “markets” exploded in the 1990s” with an
“unprecedented number of international mergers and acquisitions among transnational
media corporations, which aggressively pursued the opportunities that
privatization provided.” As a result in some of the most developed democracies,
including Australia and the United States, a few large companies own the vast
majority of private media.[vii] In middle-income
countries these are mirrored by “the national and regional dominance of some of
the world’s most powerful “second-tier media firms” of newly industrialized
nations, such as Brazil’s Globo, Mexico’s Televisa, Argentina’s Clarín and
Venezuela’s Cisneros Group—Latin American firms that have “extensive ties and
joint ventures with the largest media TNCs, as well as with Wall Street
investment banks”.”[viii]
Newly emerging democracies have experienced
their own dynamics in terms of media ownership:
Other regional trends, such as those in
sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, parts of Asia, and even to some measure in
the Middle East, bear witness to a transition into democratization that has
emerged alongside the dismantling of national broadcasting systems and the
reformation of the role of the press connected to authoritarian regimes, the
promotion of private independent and pluralistic media, and/or the
proliferation of new media channels…Yet despite a push to privatization above
all else] mass media have served remarkably well as a means to globalize the
democratic exchange of ideas and issues capable of challenging authority and of
fostering an atmosphere of optimism. And while the degree to which a civic
discourse has found a way to take root varies, when it does arise it is often
in conjunction with citizen-based media.[ix]
Most
Western European democracies had, until recent decades, state monopolies of
broadcasting. Britain legalized private commercial broadcasting as recently as
the 1950s. The establishment of the BBC in the 1920s was perhaps a
stepping-stone toward this privatization, arguably the world’s first form of
‘public services broadcasting’: state subsidized but independent of the
government and acting at the behest of the public. France, Germany, and Denmark
did not allow privatization of media until the 1980s. Britain and France are
particularly important examples due to their extensive colonial legacy that
influenced the organization of broadcasting and media in scores of countries.
In Britain and France, there is a strong distinction between broadcasting, with
its strong public service history, and print media, which has a distinctly
“privately-owned” history. However, in some long-standing democracies - for
example in Sweden and Norway - there is a tradition of state funding of the
print media as well. According to the Swedish government, subsidies to
secondary newspapers are “important for the diversity of media at local and regional
levels.”[x]
Conversely,
in Latin America, private media were
often closely identified with those in power – specifically the military
dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s. Similarly, under the Suharto dictatorship
in Indonesia (until 1998), private media were tightly controlled, while the
state owned a large media machine in its own right. In addition, the Suharto
family bought directly into major media businesses. Far from facilitating
pluralism, these private media advocated suppression of media. Indeed, many
would argue that the large corporations (as discussed on the page Private and
Corporate Media) dominating the US media are not conducive to the expression of
alternative political viewpoints. Whatever the truth of such contentions, it is
clear that there is no dependable correlation between the extent of private
ownership and pluralism.
Economics
also play an important part in determining the structure of media ownership.
Public versus private broadcasting is sometimes more indicative of national
financial resources rather than gauges of media freedom. Public media (whether state, government or
public service broadcasting) has been particularly strong in the early stages
for many emerging democracies due economic conditions that make it more
difficult for private broadcasters to start up operations.
The
size of the advertising ‘cake’ varies according to economic conditions. Most
private[xi]
- and some public - media are dependent upon advertising to make their business
sustainable. The public sector is often important in media in poorer countries
for two reasons: the small advertising cake often means less private media, and
a dominant public broadcaster; and where there is advertising revenue for
private media, it is often from government agencies, or donors working with
government. In wealthier countries, companies now use the Internet to advertise
their goods and services. This has led to further drops in advertising revenues
for traditional media.
In
many countries in Africa, for example, as well as parts of Asia and Latin
America, this explains why until recently national radio stations, broadcasting
on medium- and long-wave frequencies, were almost entirely a state-owned
phenomenon. Even where broadcasting regulations permitted - and often they did
not - neither private broadcasters nor advertisers had much interest in
broadcasting to the entire nation. Instead, private advertisers were primarily
interested in reaching an urban audience with disposable income - the type of
audience served by private FM stations (most of which primarily broadcast
music). The fast growth of private and new media in these countries is now
changing the public versus private paradigm, however. Nonetheless state-owned
broadcasters are still important and in some cases remain the only choice for
listeners.
Technological
developments such as satellite and cable television and the Internet complicate
the media ownership landscape further. Economic factors are still at play:
those who can afford to subscribe to a pay channel or use the Internet will
generally not be among the poorest. Local cable and satellite providers are
subject to the same political and economic constraints as those broadcasting on
terrestrial channels, in that they are dependent on advertising and subscriber
revenues to survive and grow. Mass media using the Internet and other new media
can often publish or broadcast more cheaply than in the past, and they are
freer from some of the regulatory and constraints that are imposed on
traditional mediums. Meanwhile, multinational broadcasters such as Al Jazeera,
Cable News Network (CNN) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) can
play an important role in breaching broadcasting monopolies. That is why some
countries have prohibited ownership of satellite dishes (a prohibition that was
circumvented in one memorable north African case by the widespread substitution
of couscous pans). Internet news sites also help to challenge broadcasting
monopolies, though caution should be exercised in celebrating pluralism on the
Internet. In Australia, for example, “all but one of the 12 news sites in
Australia’s top 100 most visited sites are owned by major existing media
outlets.”[xii]
Cultural
and attitudinal factors also impact on media ownership. For example according to a report published
in the Political Research Quarterly
in 2009, “in post authoritarian African democracies [audiences] trust
government-owned broadcast media more than they trust private broadcasters
[despite] the public media’s lack of independence as well as a history of state
propaganda.” The report suggests that this trust gap is due to a number of
factors such as audiences’ levels of political sophistication, support for
incumbent leaderships, and illiberal attitudes. The study also found that
audiences also tended to prefer public broadcasters in countries with lower
corruption and greater press freedom.[xiii]
This trust gap no doubt impedes, to a certain extent, the growth of private
media.
[i] Christina
Holtz-Bacha and Lynda Lee Kaid, Political Advertising In
International
Comparison, (Sagepub, 2006), 10
[v] “Russian Federation, Presidential Election 4 March 2012”,
(OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report, Warsaw, 2012), 13 http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/90461
[vi] Patrick D Murphy, “Media and Democracy in the Age of Globalization”, SUNY Press,
2007, http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61516.pdf
[viii] Patrick D
Murphy, “Media and Democracy in the Age of Globalization”, SUNY Press, (2007):6, http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61516.pdf
[xi] With the
exception of some state-subsidised private media, for example in Scandinavia as
described above.
[xiii] Devra C.
Moehler and Naunihal Singh, “Whose News do you trust? Explaining trust in
private versus public media in Africa”, Political
Research Quarterly 64 no. 2, (December 16 2009):1
