merrion street

If media is fettered, either by the interests of owners, by fear of authority or by simple groupthink, then our democracy is worse off.

Good morning all.

First, I would like to thank the IIEA for organising this event, and Brendan for his introduction and all of the work that has gone into today.

Second, I want to welcome Commissioner Kroes to Dublin. We have a very busy and diverse schedule lined up for her time here, from 100 megabyte connected schools to business incubator programmes, but first we have a more philosophically complex issue to address.

As the debate in our nearest neighbour over the last week or so will indicate, media matters. As citizens, as consumers, as voters, we need a free, diverse media – not beholden to a single sector of society, to large commercial concerns or to a single political party. Whether we chose to admit it or not, for both politicians and those we serve, media play a central and critical role in conveying information, parsing outcomes and passing judgement – they create the written and recorded account of what happens. In a very practical sense, they create the reality within which we exist and act.

Because of this, the nature and character of media matters too. Its ability to speak truth to power and to challenge authority is one of those slender columns that sustain democracy. If that capacity is reduced in any way, then we are all the poorer for it. If media is fettered, either by the interests of owners, by fear of authority or by simple groupthink, then our democracy is worse off.

This centrality is reflected in the Report of the High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism. It’s always refreshing to read an ab initio exploration of media policy, and all the more so when done at a European scale and done so well. The breadth of the recommendations made in the report in and of itself conveys the expansive nature of media’s role.

For me, however, the key outcome from the report is around the deeper structural trends emerging from the impact of technological change and the consequent shifts in the economics of media. The nature of the dialectic between market and technology for media at the moment is such that long established relativities are shifting. This has implications at a general EU level, at Member State level, and particularly for smaller Member States.

At the highest level, we are seeing a deep structural reformation of traditional media players, with a move away from a long standing vertically integrated model of media provision where a single company owned the editorial process, the advertising sales mechanism and the means of distribution. Contemporary media tends instead towards a more disaggregated and internet focussed model.

More recently, the rise of social media and the advent of highly flexible and tailored internet based advertising threaten the basic advertising income of all media, national and local, print and broadcast. Accepted scales of operation, for a newspaper, a television station, or for a radio station, are being rendered redundant by the emergence of a vast crop of new, small and infinitely flexible media players, on the one hand, and by the slow growth of a small number of supra national media operators, on the other, often characterised by cross-media ownership.

Some of these concerns have been with us for decades, while others are much more recent arrivals. Underlying this are some worrying trends for newspapers in particular: a report published earlier this week in the US showed that the value of print ads displayed has fallen from $45 billion to $19 billion since 2003, while online ads have only grown from $1.2 to $3.3 billion over the same period. The value of mobile advertising is growing very rapidly on the other hand, but much of that value flows to a small number of technology companies – and flowing out of national economies (and in many cases, out of the European economy). Clearly, the stream of revenues upon which media depends is being redirected by the market. This is the future, whether we like it or not. The internet, and converged media, is not about to be ‘un-invented’ after all.

At a Member State level, it is generally safe to say that our respect for democracy and for freedom is shared, even though there are some marked cultural differences across the EU – a function no doubt of the long and often troubled journey many States have made towards freedom. Critically, technology has often worked in favour of democracy – the arrival of the printing press being a case in point – and there are aspects of the present revolution in media that have similar positive characteristics at a Member State level, not least in terms of the rise of inclusive and dynamic social media. But there are real challenges too.

On the one hand, the rise of online media brings huge benefits but, on the other hand, it also both fractures and disaggregates audiences and ensures that the scale and degree of editorial competence that traditionally existed in newspapers cannot be easily replicated. This is an issue in all markets, regardless of scale.

Equally, issues arise at the other end of the spectrum, that of the multi-national converged media operators. There is a natural tendency for merger and acquisitions activity in mature businesses, for them to agglomerate, to achieve greater economies of scale. This is generally good for consumers, in terms of providing choice and competitiveness and getting access to services that may not otherwise be provided.

Media is no different in that regard. There is no difficulty with the concept of media companies being owned by large corporations, so long as there are adequate checks and balances. There are difficulties, on the other hand, when media ownership and control becomes the plaything of a small group of like-minded individuals – not because there is anything necessarily wrong with what these people may believe or choose to reflect in their newspaper titles or on their television channels, but rather because of the fact that this crowds out other media – because diversity suffers. For many years, Member States have sought to ensure some degree of plurality and diversity in their domestic media through controls on mergers and acquisitions, admittedly with varying degrees of success. Even this notional degree of control appears to be under threat, however.

The collapse in advertising revenue in some technologies, together with the commercial opportunities afforded by technologies like Connected TV, means that the long rise of media businesses with feet in multiple jurisdictions appears to be gaining pace. In and of itself, this isn’t an issue: we all understand and accept that economic, technical and political changes are a fact of life. We accept too that, while different Member States sometimes operate in very different political and cultural contexts, cultural diffusion by shared media is not just a fact of life, it is of profound benefit.

But upwards agglomeration of media has an immediate impact for Member States in terms of keeping a degree of plurality at an indigenous level. The issue is no longer about simple questions of plurality, or even freedom, but about commercial survival for entire sectors of domestic media, and about ensuring that national political systems and national news stories receive sufficient and diverse coverage.

Some countries, Ireland being one of them, have a longer history of this type of interaction than most. International media actors in both television and print, including those operating directly from the UK, continue to aggressively compete for market share with domestic players – but with the benefit of far larger budgets for programme making and for investments in new technology. As a small nation operating within several interlocking spheres of media influence for centuries, we have developed a well understood and articulated policy framework but it is one that is being fundamentally challenged by the emerging realities.

In particular, changes in the television marketplace has long since allowed outside broadcasters to target advertising at Irish consumers without any significant presence here. Preserving a degree of domestic plurality is going to become increasingly difficult, as supra-national media operators move towards internet based distribution systems that allow them much greater flexibility and reach in terms of what they offer customers. These processes – and they are very much still in process – are exciting and dynamic, but they hold potential difficulties as well as potential gain.

Historically then, this is an important moment. The development of a free and pluralistic media – both in terms of the technology and the legal and economic frameworks – has proceeded stepwise with the development of democracy. In simple terms, it is impossible to conceive of a modern democracy without a free and diverse press – the two are generally regarded as being intrinsically linked. Regardless of whether democracy brought forth the modern media, or vice versa, the question now arises as to whether the character of democracy can be sustained in this emerging media ecosystem. The simple answer is that we don’t know, and we won’t know until we have a clearer idea of where this is going, where – if anywhere – it will end, and what the business models of the future look like.

All of this raises a simple practical question. Should the State or the EU now intervene somehow to ‘preserve’ media? Should we seek to hold up one particular model or type of media operator as exemplar and seek to support that model in all sectors to the detriment of all others?

My answer to this question is No, and not just because of the acute difficulties associated with Governments taking control of large pieces of their media ecosystem. The primary reason is that to try to preserve media in some sort of legislative aspic would be to remove one of the primary reasons for media’s assertiveness and, sometimes, downright belligerence.

It is also important to recognise that in Europe, characterised for the very most part by a clear separation between Government and the press, there are some profound limitations to action. You cannot proactively ‘force’ a diverse media into being. While States can theoretically step in to prevent concentrations of media, it remains the case that there are very few positive steps available and that much of what can be done is difficult and potentially dangerous. In many ways media is a bit like that delicate flower – it is easily trampled, even by the well intentioned.

This is not to say for a moment that I’m suggesting that all will be for the best, in the best of all possible worlds, but rather that the media ecosystem we are faced with in Europe is the result of a long series of compromises and, in many cases, careful and sensitive decision-making by governments. States across the EU have had a long, complex and variably articulated relationship with their media sectors. Clearly, any interfaces or policy interventions with media have to be handled with extreme sensitivity, both for the general reasons I’ve already discussed, and for country specific reasons.

However, it must be recognised that individual Member States, and the EU institutions, have long had constructive involvement in media at a number of different levels. Not alone does every Member State have a Public Service Broadcaster (or Broadcasters), but the EU has collectively had a series of Directives governing trans-frontier television, with the most recent, the 2007 Audio-visual Media Services Directive, also dealing with aspects of video on demand.

One of the instruments that remains available, and which retains immense value, is the fact that Member States can still support, due to the space made in EU law, national Public Service Broadcasters. This is thanks in no small part to Protocol 29 of the EU treaties, which recognises that each Member State’s public service broadcaster aims to meet the democratic, social and cultural needs of the society in which it operates and which also speaks of the need to preserve media pluralism.

We can conceive of or construct media in a number of different ways, as a sector of the economy, as a means of communication, as a means of entertainment – but it is also something much more fundamental. It is central to the freedoms that we hold as core values in our democracy: the freedom to speak, to be heard, and to hear. This is reflected in the Irish Constitution and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.

But media is changing. It is far too soon to proclaim what the end state of this process will be but we already know that it will challenge – and quite possibly undermine – aspects that currently underpin the character of our democracy.

Moreover, while there are real and exciting opportunities opened up by new media, these have limitations and bring their own very new challenges. To begin with, we have a digital divide which still tends to exclude the old, the less well off, the remote – the less ‘media literate’. How will social media serve them? In the words of William Gibson: “The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed”.

In addition, we have pressing questions around Net Neutrality and emerging questions around the editorial powers conferred on search functions and other interactive media. And we still do not fully understand the reach and persuasiveness of social media; for instance, in an extreme case could we really rely on a diverse but balkanised new media as a pluralistic counter weight against an increasingly simplistic but hugely well-resourced mass media? I’m sure it would make a positive contribution, but as a realistic and reliable alternative for the great mass of people? I’m not so sure.

In dealing with all this, a connected Europe is critical, and is only going to become more so. Europe is not just more economically interconnected than ever before, it is more connected as a media space. This occurs on an editorial basis – a story here is after all increasingly likely to be related to a story elsewhere – but also because of the fact that a single European market means that larger players operate across Member States. This is a good thing, but States still need to ensure that plurality persists, both across the Union and within each State.

In the future, we may have to look to new measures to safeguard this but, before that, we need to know a lot more about what is happening. The work of the Fundamental Rights Agency is critical and I note with interest the suggestion in the High Level Group report that this agency take a more expansive role in monitoring media plurality across Europe. Equally, the recently published CMPF Policy Report from the European University Institute is a very useful contribution to the debate; I’m sure that Professor Parcu’s presentation later this morning will be useful for all. In both cases however, it is clear that more research is needed, within Member States and at an EU level, before we can definitively say that we know what is happening, particularly with regard to media consumption.

Moreover, in the medium term, we may need to consider introducing measures into EU Competition law to allow public value tests, akin to those already in place in a great many member states for domestic media merger approval, to be applied to mergers that are subject to approval at European Commission level.

But what should we do now? In the first instance, it falls to Member States to ensure that their domestic provisions to safeguard plurality remain appropriate and technologically adept. In this country we have a Bill in preparation to do exactly that – to incorporate the Sreenan Principles into national law. We will therefore be strengthening the criteria to be applied when assessing a proposed media merger, to include:

• its likely effect on plurality, which includes both diversity of ownership and diversity of content, and

• the undesirability of allowing any one individual or undertaking to hold significant interests within a sector or across different sections of media.

National broadcasters, so crucial in giving voice to our differing cultures and different political structures, are likely to become more important over time. However, their economic position is almost universally difficult, and sustaining a critical mass is going to be difficult in many Member States. But it must be preserved, in a way that is sensitive to commercial broadcasters of course, but preserved nevertheless.

But there is more to be done: online media needs to be promoted and encouraged, not only to enable their continued existence but to encourage them to flourish – to speak truth to power, to challenge authority, to act as truly independent voices. This will require a stable, comprehensive and accommodating regulatory framework, incorporating data protection, intellectual property and defamation. The framework must be designed with modern media in mind but must incorporate all the democratic protections that we take for granted today.

The media of the future will be diverse, in terms of resources, in terms of reach and, most critically, it will mainly be online. It will be global in reach, but capable of almost infinite specialisation because it will harness communities, virtual or otherwise, in the delivery of their own news. That much we can tell already. But there is much that we cannot yet tell. Democracies, States, must remain vigilant so our media ecosystem remains plural and diverse – we owe that much to future generations.