Page 201 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

180 Critical investigations in political economy

market competition yet also endorsed corporate consolidation. European Union
policy in the 1990s endorsed the case for relaxing ownership rules to enable
private firms to grow to generate the resources required to deliver the ‘global
information infrastructure’ required for the information society. This, it was
argued, would sustain large firms capable of competing with foreign (principally
US) cultural producers. This links to another tension, between market liberal-
isation and policies to protect ‘national champions’. When the UK government
removed restrictions on non-EEA ownership in the 2003 Communications Act it
favoured market liberal principles over national protection, influenced by arguments
that foreign ownership and investments were required to revitalise the creative
industries sector. In the UK (Hardy 2012b) and elsewhere there have been
policy tensions between the promotion of global competitiveness (corporate
growth) and local competitiveness (plurality in services) and, more fundamentally,
between market-based and citizen-based models of empowerment and account-
ability. There are contradictions between projections of self-correcting markets
realising digital plenitude and the persistence of problems of media concentration
and market control.
There has been a wave of liberalisation. Yet, across a variegated landscape of
ownership regulations, two prominent features stand out. First, most states retain
at least some rules on media ownership. To explain this we need to consider the
importance for states of not relinquishing important levels of control at national
(or sub-national) levels, the economic, cultural and political significance of media
ownership policy, and the strength of contending forces influencing policy.
Media ownership continues to be one of the most sensitive issues in media
regulation and a principal means to influence the operations of private media
firms in markets. The second prominent feature is a shift from media-specific
rules to general competition regulation. The latter has been regarded as more
flexible in adapting to rapid changes in media markets, whereas specific rules on
cross-ownership have been regarded as rigid, prone to obsolescence and
increasingly difficult to enforce. This also represents a broader shift from qualita-
tive judgement to precise economic measurement and legal processes that ensure
regulation is more predictable, transparent and consistent for market actors.
Within the European Union, competition regulation also developed in the gap
created when various efforts to establish and harmonise media ownership rules
across the community foundered.
When News Corporation sought total ownership of BSkyB in 2010 it persued
and obtained approval on competition grounds from the European Commission,
although the Commission (2010) reaffirmed that, under Article 21 of the EU
Merger Regulation, the United Kingdom ‘remains free to decide whether or not
to take appropriate measures to protect its legitimate interest in media plurality’.
As many commentators, including the Commission, acknowledge, the provisions
of competition policy address market dominance and cannot grasp the more
complex operations of cultural or symbolic power which regulation of media
pluralism has traditionally sought to address. The EU lacks rules on media