The European Commission takes a bold step

By Mark Thompson

One bold step (Courtesy European Commission)

The MPM is the latest product of a major project on media pluralism that was launched by the European Commission in 2007. The first stage of the project was a Commission Staff Working Paper (which, by the way, cites the Open Society’s Television across Europe reports as a source).

The authors of the MPM, contracted by the Information Society & Media Directorate General (DG INFOSOC), in the European Commission, are a consortium of media academics, experts and consultants from Ernst & Young, under the leadership of Professor Peggy Valcke of Leuven University.

The team describes the European Media Pluralism Monitor as “a risk-based, holistic, user-friendly and evolving monitoring tool that includes indicators of a legal, economic and socio-demographic nature.”

Introducing the draft Indicators to a meeting of more than a hundred ‘stakeholders’ from the media and communications industries, civil society, member state governments, regulatory bodies and universities, J.E. de Cockborne from DG INFOSOC explained that the European Parliament’s attention to media pluralism, dating back to the 1970s, had eventually “made it impossible for the Commission to ignore the subject”. The aim of the exercise was, he added carefully, not to regulate but simply to monitor.

Despite this assurance, which was often repeated by the authors during the day, several industry representatives expressed grave concern that the Indicators conveyed a clear threat that the European Commission wished to increase the regulatory burden on media organisations. Nothing that Professor Valcke and her colleagues said could allay these concerns, which were sometimes voiced in such frightening terms that one wondered if the speakers’ real purpose was to scare the Commission away from making use of its new instrument.

Professor Valcke insisted that the Indicators do not represent a quest for a uniform definition of media pluralism, but rather a first step in developing a EU-wide monitoring tool that will “provide an evidentiary basis for national policy-makers”. She quoted the nineteenth century scientist, Lord Kelvin: “To measure is to know, and if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

There are 166 indicators in all, falling into three broad groups – legal, socio-demographic, and economic – and “integrated within a risk-based analytical framework”.

Asked how the MPM would be put to use, the authors were unable to say much more than insist that it is – despite its complexity – entirely practicable; and that the application of the MPM would “enhance transparency for everyone.”

This was a disappointingly brief reply, but hardly a surprising one: the authors’ task was to prepare an instrument that would be ‘fit for purpose’, and in this they seem to have succeeded admirably (final judgement on this has to await implementation). Hopes that Commission officials from DG INFOSOC might shed more light on possible next steps, in the final session of the meeting, were, however, sharply frustrated. Such is the apparent sensitivity of the topic of media pluralism that these officials would not be drawn to say anything helpful.    

Two conclusions may be drawn at this stage: first, that eventual implementation of the MPM will have to be endorsed by member state authorities – national regulators, if not governments – if the findings are to have any traction in terms of policy. And second, that the initial decision of what will be done with this extraordinary instrument will rest with the next Commissioner at DG INFOSOC, as well as with the incoming members of the European Parliament.

The best decision would lead to the implementation of the Indicators in all the 27 member states of the EU. This is unlikely to happen any time soon, partly because certain – perhaps most – member states will be in no hurry to let the MPM loose in their own media sectors, and partly because the MPM is such an intricate and finely-tuned instrument that its application is bound to be lengthy and expensive, even before it yields results that will almost certainly prove to be controversial, and perhaps hotly contested.

Nevertheless, the Commission and the MPM’s authors are to be congratulated on having taken a bold and long-overdue step toward meeting an important need at the European level.