SUMMARY
Media plurality is not a goal in itself but a means
to an end. That end is generally conceived in terms of UK democratic
life; if there is sufficient media plurality, we can expect that
citizens have the opportunity to be informed through access to
a diversity of viewpoints, and that media owners do not have too
much influence over the political process.
Issues surrounding media plurality have come under
the policy spotlight during the present Parliament, prompted by
concerns raised about the proposed (and then dropped) acquisition
of BSkyB by News Corporation; Ofcom's report on Measuring Media
Plurality; the Leveson report; the report by the European Commission's
High Level Group on Media Freedom & Pluralism; and most recently
the Government's own consultation on media ownership and plurality.
Together these have raised a number of ways in which the policy
and regulatory framework currently surrounding plurality needs
updating.
The focus placed on plurality across these various
institutions might create the expectation that a consensus is
forming and that momentum is now building behind reform. However,
the questions we raised in our call for evidence elicited a range
of submissions with very different views about how to proceed.
We have found that making clear comparisons between different
policy approaches to media plurality is not straightforward. This
is not only because they do not generate consensus, but because
the different perspectivesat least those we have heardtend
to enter the debate on such different terms: technocratic, polemic,
and pragmatic.
Against that background, we have evaluated the different
proposals put to us, giving consideration to their merits and
demerits; our survey of the evidence can be found in chapters
2-4 of this Report. Our analysis highlights major concerns with
some of these proposals and as such helped us arrive at a clear
set of principles which we believe any reform to plurality policy
should respect. For example, the focus for assessment should be
on news and current affairs rather than other genres, and there
must be a way to assess the impact on plurality of organic market
change as well as the impact of specific transactions. In addition,
assessing plurality properly requires more than one form of measurement,
although these should be limited so as not to proliferate out
of control. It follows that certain automatic interventions such
as statutory caps are not the best option; they have to be set
on a single scale and thus inherently impoverish the assessment
that can be made about whether and how to intervene. Following
an assessment, plurality policy should be revised to strike a
new balance between the regulator and Government in terms of decisions
to be made about intervention: there should be accountability
for politicians where appropriate but the onus should be on Ofcom
to balance the citizen and consumer interests. More generally,
the Government should revise the present system of reviews of
media transactions in order to clarify the relationship between
competition and plurality policy.
Bringing these principles together, we submit our
own proposal for reform; this is contained in chapter 5. Our intention
is to help the Government to find a way through the vexed maze
of debates surrounding media plurality. We call on the Government,
in their ongoing work, to build on our approach, which incorporates
elements from a range of sources and provides a model,
around which we believe a consensus may be found.
Our proposal is for a framework of two key elements.
The first, which is new, is the undertaking of a plurality review
on a predictable periodic basis, which should set the context
for the second: a modification of the existing arrangements for
a review of specific transactions which occur in the interval
between one periodic review and the next. We would expect the
latter to happen infrequently.
In a nutshell, Ofcom's task in conducting the periodic
review will be to identify plurality concerns which exist in relation
to specific media markets and across media, or with particular
players. This should provide guidance about the prospects of any
subsequent transaction being called in for a specific transactional
review. Only in the most extreme circumstances should interventions
in the interests of plurality be imposed outwith the context of
a transaction, but where immediate and pressing concerns resulting
from organic change are discovered in a periodic review, it should
be possible for Ofcom to recommend that a media enterprise be
forced to divest. A high bar should be in place for Ofcom to make
such a recommendation and indeed the Secretary of State should
have a role to play, on the basis that he or she should accept
the recommendations in Ofcom's report or publish good reasons
for not doing so.
Transactional reviews should consist, where relevant,
of two distinct processes: one concerned with plurality to be
conducted by Ofcom; the other concerned with the competition aspects
of the transaction to be conducted by the competition authorities.
In reality, we expect that these would occur infrequently, not
least because periodic plurality reviews should be written so
as to limit the need for transactional plurality reviews. The
final step in the transactional review should be the submission
of the competition and plurality assessments to the Ofcom Board
which should be responsible for reconciling the recommendations
of the two reports and implementing them as a single Public Interest
Decision. The Ofcom Board would be expected to carry out this
function mindful of its twin statutory duties to further and,
therefore, balance the consumer and the citizen interest.
There are a number of important reforms in our proposal.
We strike a new balance between the regulator and Government in
terms of decisions to be made about intervention; Ofcom, not the
Secretary of State, should have the final say about media transactions.
However, the Secretary of State should have a role in giving political
authority to the conclusions of periodic plurality reviews which
establish the context in which transactions are made. There should
be clear blue water between competition and plurality policy and
their assessments should be distinct with the responsibility for
reaching a final Public Interest Decision falling to a body with
the appropriate statutory duties to give all considerations due
weight. Interventions in the interests of plurality should, generally
speaking, only be imposed in connection with specific transactions,
but there must also be a mechanism for intervening where this
can be justified and organic market change causes immediate and
pressing concerns.
Many of the detailed questions of implementation
remain to be answered, but we hope we have submitted a set of
recommendations which the Government can accept and which will
stimulate greater consensus and action towards reform than appears
hitherto to have been possible.
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