Elda Brogi and Marie Palmer / Oct 2024
European Commissioner Vĕra Jourová. Photo: European Union, 2024
In 2024, the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) - a diagnostic tool designed to evaluate potential risks to media pluralism developed by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy - celebrated its tenth birthday. Despite a more informed public debate on media pluralism across Europe (that led to the approval of a first-of-its-kind European Media Freedom Act-EMFA), the MPM continues to detect persistent risks to media pluralism across the European Union and beyond that the EMFA itself will hopefully, even if partially, deal with in the near future.
Based on the MPM analysis (and this is a trend across the last decade), one major threat to media pluralism in the EU deals with the working conditions of journalists. In many countries, journalists tend to evolve in a precarious and hostile environment. In many of the countries studied, the working conditions for journalists are poor, and journalistic associations have little leverage to bargain for better working conditions, given their low popularity and the limited economic resources. Besides, worrisome statistics regarding physical or verbal threats and intimidation of journalists are common across the countries analysed. Other forms of threats can be SLAPPs - Strategic lawsuits against public participation -, defamation, which is still criminalised in some countries, and arbitrary detention.
The significant deterioration of the access to information is another major threat to media pluralism in the European Union. In its previous implementation, the MPM highlighted that access to information suffered a massive blow when the EU Court of Justice invalidated in November 2022 a provision of the 5th EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive that guaranteed public access to information on companies’ real Owners Registers (Joined Cases C‑37/20 and C‑601/20). Such a decision was motivated by the respect of the right to privacy and personal data protection under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. However, in order to correct the disastrous effect of the CJEU decision, the 6th EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive - adopted in April 2024 - granted special rights to access information to the press and civil society in case of “legitimate interest”. Besides, the transparency of media ownership will be substantially affected by the provisions of the European Media Freedom Act, which require media providers to make information easily and directly accessible.
As far as the economic dimension of media pluralism is concerned, three main trends were observed in 2023: First, an increased number of mergers and consolidation in the media industry, which reduces market plurality. The debate regarding consolidation, for instance, is particularly vivid in France where vertical, horizontal and diagonal/conglomerate concentration is at its peak, with the acquisition of the Lagardère group by Vivendi in recent years. Several senatorial commissions on media concentration as well as ‘General Estates of information’ initiated by President Macron were conducted to find solutions these growing problems. Second, the dominance of digital intermediaries in the advertising market, with Google breaching EU antitrust rules for example, as well as (third) discontinuous attempts of negotiations between platforms and media regarding accessibility, and the remuneration of content. In such a context, editorial independence from commercial and owners influence was, for the first time in the history of the MPM, evaluated as high risk. Economically, vulnerable newsrooms are less resistant to non-editorial interests – including the interests of their owners who often have stakes in multiple sectors of the economy.
In such a context, the newspaper sector pursues its long-lasting decline, especially at the local level. Innovative practices and models are still not enough to counterbalance the crisis of the traditional models. Given their financial vulnerability, newspapers are most affected by media capture through direct and/or indirect ownership means. And, in the absence of common safeguards preventing political influence over the appointments and dismissals of editors-in-chief in most of the countries, the consequences of media capture are visible in many countries.
Finally, a growing threat to media pluralism is disinformation and foreign interference. In most of the EU member states, on top of the EU initiatives, like the Digital Services Act or the Code of Practice on Disinformation, the fight against disinformation consists of individual and stand-alone initiatives such as local fact-checking projects, but it often lacks a comprehensive and long-term perspective. Some inspiration could come from the Baltic countries, which have developed policies and tools to deal with foreign information and manipulation interferences. For example, Estonia has adopted a comprehensive strategy to tackle disinformation, based on five core elements: 1/ Strategic communication, 2/ Media policies, 3/ International collaboration, 4/ Media literacy, and 5/ an interagency task force that depends on the State Electoral Office that is in charge of monitoring possible foreign influence on the democratic process, especially during elections.
In the coming years, such a situation may change, and let’s hope, improve, with the implementation of the very ambitious toolbox to preserve media pluralism developed by the previous Commission, and pushed on the agenda by former Commissioner Vĕra Jourová. The MPM will look for this progress in 2025.
