Media concentration in Europe, a growing threat to democracy

Media concentration refers to the phenomenon of media ownership gradually falling into the hands of a small number of investors. In recent years the issue has become one of crucial importance: the current trend is for media companies to merge in order to consolidate their brands, as highlighted in the 2022 Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) report, produced by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom.

The expression and visibility of diverse opinions are essential to the maintenance of a true democracy: they are the guarantors of pluralism, which implies an equilibrium of divergent voices. Media owners and shareholders exert considerable influence on the editorial line of the companies they own: this is known as the „power of opinion“. In fact, this is the main return on investment that buyers of media companies hope to gain. Although media companies are far from being among the most lucrative investments, they continue to attract the interest of speculators.

This phenomenon is now commonplace. Examples include the Australian-American Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox News and The Sun, and the businessman and politician Silvio Berlusconi, who died last June and owned Italy’s largest private TV channels.

In France, it is Vincent Bolloré who fuels much of the debate: Bolloré owns the Canal+ Group, which encompasses 3 national channels (C8, Cnews and CStar), as well as Prisma média, which runs 35 magazines ranging from the celebrity magazine Voici to Harvard Business Review and the magazine for (very) young audiences, Mortelle Adèle. The Bolloré group also owns the video platform Dailymotion, publishing giant Hachette, and the mainstream radio station Europe 1. For several years now, Bolloré has been pursuing a strategy of pushing the brands he buys to the political right, a practice that has been denounced on numerous occasions.

This trend is also evident in other European countries: in the UK, Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount of Rothermere, controls 40 percent of the national press. In Germany, the Bretelsmann group publishes books, broadcasts television and radio channels and produces films. Finally, all 18 regional press titles in Hungary are owned by Andy Vajna, Heinrich Pecina or Lőrinc Mészáros .

The figures are worrying: in 2022, the Media Pluralism Monitor estimated the risk associated with media concentration in the European Union member states to be 82 percent on average. No country on the European continent presents a low risk, and only 4 of them are at medium risk.

This risk factor is calculated according to legal variables – whether the country has legislation preventing media concentration, whether this legislation is effective, and whether it is enforced by an independent authority – as well as economic variables – whether the sector’s financial situation is considered to be more or less conducive to media concentration.

News media concentration: map of risks per country

European merger regulations are the ultimate safeguard against the failure of national legislation, as historian and publishing history specialist Jean-Yves Mollier explains to our colleagues at Alternatives Economiques. According to Mollier, the Bolloré and Lagardère groups were successively stopped in their tracks by Brussels just as they were about to establish themselves as absolute masters of the publishing sector.

But media concentration cannot be curbed by competition law alone: there are far more important democratic issues at stake than mere economic considerations. Indeed, even if different owners share European media companies, plurality of opinion remains at risk if the owners in question all come from the same background or the same political camp.  

Another lever in the fight against the influence of predatory investors is the obligation to be transparent. Some believe that explaining to readers the potential biases of a publication could help them to take a more objective view of the – sometimes biased – information they consume. For example, an article about the ecological commitment of fossil fuel companies will be interpreted more objectively if the reader knows that the owner of the media outlet publishing it is also the head of several oil companies.

European merger regulations are the ultimate safeguard against the failure of national legislation, as historian and publishing history specialist Jean-Yves Mollier explains to our colleagues at Alternatives Economiques. According to Mollier, the Bolloré and Lagardère groups were successively stopped in their tracks by Brussels just as they were about to establish themselves as absolute masters of the publishing sector.

But media concentration cannot be curbed by competition law alone: there are far more important democratic issues at stake than mere economic considerations. Indeed, even if different owners share European media companies, plurality of opinion remains at risk if the owners in question all come from the same background or the same political camp.  

Another lever in the fight against the influence of predatory investors is the obligation to be transparent. Some believe that explaining to readers the potential biases of a publication could help them to take a more objective view of the – sometimes biased – information they consume. For example, an article about the ecological commitment of fossil fuel companies will be interpreted more objectively if the reader knows that the owner of the media outlet publishing it is also the head of several oil companies.

In this context, cooperative media outlets go against the current trend. In fact, the owners of this type of media are its employees and member readers. An individual investor cannot become a majority shareholder, and the editorial policy remains totally independent of the General Assembly, thereby avoiding any risk of conflict of interest. Finally, the raison d’être of these genuinely independent media outlets is greater transparency in decision-making between employees, engaged members and readers.

In short, media concentration in Europe is a cause for concern. The devastating consequences of this phenomenon on the plurality of opinion, and consequently on the state of democracy, have been amply demonstrated. There is an urgent need to bring about lasting change in the European media ecosystem to enable the expression of its diversity. The emergence of alternative shareholding models, such as the cooperative, and a continent-wide legislative effort are among the driving forces behind this change.