Media ownership: Big deal? CRIS Campaign Issue Paper 4

Media ownership has undergone a radical shift during the last decade. A handful of international and regional media corporations – AOL-Time Warner, News Corporation, General Electric, Sony, Vivendi, Viacom, Televisa, Globo and Clarín, along with a few others, now control vast sections of the media market. For example, close to 35% of newspaper circulation in the UK belongs to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Silvio Berlusconi controls three of Italy’s four private broadcasting stations and has recently appointed a friend of his to head the public broadcasting station, RAI. This trend towards media concentration is linked to the spread of neo-liberal economics, technological developments and the emergence of global and regional agreements on multi-lateral trade. In fact it mirrors the pattern of global economics in which 225 of the richest people have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people.

What happens when media ownership is concentrated to this extent within and across media sectors?

The emphasis on profit-oriented, advertising-fuelled content has already led to a decline in the range of options available and a loss of space for informed debate. Media content, media channels and distribution systems are in the hands of a handful of corporations. There are threats to the current system that oversees ownership and allocation of Internet domain names. Even the audiovisual spectrum, which is public property, is under siege from commercial interests. As a result, ordinary people are denied access to independent media channels and alternative visions of economic, political and social futures.

Convergence and concentration

Technological developments, particularly convergence characterised by the coming together of previously unrelated technologies, have led to a scramble for market leadership and to further media concentration. The buy-out of the ‘traditional’ media conglomerate Time Warner by the upstart ‘new’ media company America Online is one example of these new alliances. The intent was to unite Time Warner’s ‘content’ and cable systems with AOL’s broadband distribution system. Hundreds of such mergers have taken place over the past ten years, though some have since fallen victim to the dotcom bust.

Some of these take-overs have come about under rather dubious circumstances. Take for instance the continuing saga over the ownership of the Internet domain ‘.nu’ that once belonged to Niue, an island in the Pacific. .Nu was sold for a small fee to an entrepreneur from the USA in rather unclear circumstances. The entrepreneur went on to profit from this deal at the expense of the cash-strapped government of Niue. Such examples of prospecting for the world’s information resources by fair means and foul are commonplace and characterise the global media economy.

Trade and intellectual property rights

These developments in media concentration need to be seen against the backdrop of global and regional trade negotiations, in particular the emergence of global trade forums such as the World Trade Organisation and the development of regional trade blocs such as NAFTA, Mercosur and ASEAN. With the decline of traditional industry, the global cultural and service industries have become a premier source for corporate profits. The WTO has overseen the liberalisation of audiovisual trade, the privatisation of telecommunications and the opening up of media markets throughout the world. One of the key ways in which corporate media monopolies have extended their interests is by including intellectual property rights (IPR), in particular ‘copyrights’ and ‘patents’.

It is common knowledge that the global power of the Windows operating system is maintained by Microsoft’s assiduous protection of its software codes and its licensing system. And intellectual property (IP) has become the means by which Donald Duck is maintained as private property by the Disney empire. As IP is extended to cover products and practices related to traditional media, mass media and digital media, concerns have been raised about the impact on culture as the global heritage of humankind.

What are the issues for civil society?

While it is true that in many countries people nowadays have access to a lot more alternative media sources than twenty years ago, mainstream media networks continue to account for a significant proportion of audiences throughout the world. In addition, alternative media sources themselves are coming under increasing pressure to bend to market-driven realities. This poses a number of questions for civil society.

· What needs to be done to achieve a more level playing field in media ownership? How can civil society contribute to this?

· What does the media ownership map look like in your city?

· What role ought the state to play in regulating media ownership?

· What can be done at local levels to democratise IPR?

· What needs to be done to ensure that affordable access to information and communication becomes a reality locally nationally and globally?

· What kind of media ownership leads to the development of people-friendly cultural environments?

Additional resources

The book by Edward S. Herman & Robert W. McChesney (1999), The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, Cassel: London and Washington, is a good introduction to global media ownership. Also check out Media Development 4/1998, an issue dedicated to Media Ownership and Control, or Gillian Doyle’s (2002), Media Ownership, Sage: London.. There are some informative web sites related to this issue. Check out The Media Ownership Chart at www.mediachannel.org and FAIR resources at www.fair.org