Who owns the media clearly has an enormous bearing on the way in which they will cover elections - or any other political issue. State-owned media are often under direct government control and will therefore tend to favour the ruling party. Privately-owned media may also serve the political interests of their proprietors, while in some countries the political parties themselves may own significant media outlets.
The structure of ownership is also likely to have a bearing on questions such as how far political advertising is permitted during elections. It is well known that the United States, with media that are almost exclusively in private hands, organizes direct access by political parties to the media by means of paid advertising. But that is not an isolated example. For example 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. Countries like Britain and Denmark, with a stronger tradition of public ownership of the media, do not allow paid political advertising at all, but instead have a system of free direct access broadcasts.
Media ownership is sometimes seen as a simple reflection of political conditions: dictatorships or authoritarian regimes control the media directly, while democracies allow pluralism of ownership. There is a grain of truth in this, but it is clear that the reality is much more complex. Most Western European democracies, for example, had a state monopoly of broadcasting until relatively recently. Britain legalized private commercial broadcasting in the 1950s, but France, Germany and Denmark did not do so until the 1980s. Britain and France are particularly important examples because of their extensive colonial legacy - one that influenced the organization of broadcasting along with much else besides.
In Britain and France there was historically a strong distinction between broadcasting, with its strong public element, and the privately-owned print media. The argument for the involvement of the state in broadcasting - or at least in the allocation of broadcasting licences - has been that the frequency spectrum is a finite resource. Access should therefore be allocated impartially. However, in some long-standing democracies - for example in Scandinavia - there is a tradition of public funding of the print media, usually as a means of ensuring pluralism.
Conversely, the private media in Latin America were often closely identified with the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s. Far from facilitating pluralism, these media houses advocated its suppression. Indeed, many would argue that the large corporations 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 not a direct correlation between private ownership and pluralism.
Economics also play an important part in determining the structure of media ownership. The size of the advertising 'cake' varies according to economic conditions, but there is generally not much that individual media organs can do about it. All private - and some public - media are dependent upon advertising to make their business pay. One reason for the great weight of the public sector in the media of poorer countries is the small size of this cake - and in particular the fact that government advertising comprises a large proportion of it.
In African countries, for example, as well as parts of Asia and Latin America, this explains why national radio stations, broadcasting on medium and long wave frequencies, are almost entirely a publicly-owned phenomenon. Private advertisers are 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). Even when broadcasting regulations permit - and often they do not - neither private broadcasters nor advertisers have much interest in broadcasting to the entire nation. In this context, pluralism over the airwaves can only be ensured by developing a clear public service mandate for the state media.
The emergence of media such as satellite and cable television complicates this picture but, contrary to some of its most fervent advocates, does not change it fundamentally. Obviously those who can afford to subscribe to a pay channel will not be among the poorest - television owners seldom fall into that category anyway. Local cable and satellite providers are subject to the same political and economic constraints as those broadcasting on terrestrial channels. International broadcasters such as Cable News Network (CNN) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) can play an important role in breaching broadcasting monopolies. That is why many countries, especially in the Middle East have prohibited ownership of satellite dishes (a prohibition that was circumvented in one memorable North African case, by the widespread substitution of cous-cous pans). The Middle East has been fertile soil for satellite viewing because it shares a single language, Arabic. Few other regions of the world have a common language, with the result that English-language broadcasts from Atlanta or London will have only limited impact.
For the sake of simplicity the different types of media ownership can be summarized thus:
