The fact that media has changed utterly will not be news to anyone in this room but the nature and extent of this change remains startling, as is the fact that this process shows no signs of relenting. The evolving nature of convergence, which is proving as much economic and behavioural in nature as it is technical, is challenging media and Government all over the world. And, while we are subject to these same universal – and universalising – forces as everywhere else, we often feel them more intensely that many other jurisdictions, mainly due to how open and international our economy and society is.
The ‘convergence’ process was originally thought to be simply about the traditional role of large broadcasting and publishing concerns being undermined by online content. But this has in turn been fractured by the rise of social media and other actors that further atomise content and opinion. Media is now more plastic and more diverse than any of us thought possible a decade ago.
This matters, because media matters – the presence of an active and diverse media sector, both in terms of ownership and in content, is a prerequisite of any modern democratic society. Diversity of ownership is critical because it allows for the representation of dissimilar, and often contradictory, positions in the press. And diversity of content is critical because it ensures that the full spectrum of views, interests and concerns prevalent in Irish society are represented fully in media. If either of these is threatened, then so are central elements of our democracy.
Our Constitution reflects the importance of the media in the lives of the citizen and the State. You are referred to in the Constitution as ‘organs of public opinion’ and your ‘rightful liberty of expression’ is constitutionally guaranteed.
That guarantee quite properly appears in the Constitution in the context of the personal rights of the citizen rather than the corporate rights of the media, because any diminution of your freedoms impacts on the right of citizens to receive and impart information and opinions.
As news and communications media, it is your function to mediate information between citizens, whether at the individual level or at the level of citizens organised into sectors, lobbies, interest groups – or even political parties.
Obviously, while fundamental principles must remain in place, policy must adapt to changing circumstances. The market and technological forces we’re now experiencing are global in nature and their effects are felt on a global basis. But the implications for media and society in Ireland, a small market subject to larger market forces on a regional, EU and international scale, are particularly complex and challenging and pose significant questions for the media industry and for Government.
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 fundamentally challenged by emerging realities.
Our policy framework is as I’ve said premised on preserving the constitutional rights of the citizen to receive and impart information and opinion, rather than on the protection of individual businesses, and this will remain at the core of policy.
But many of the certainties that underlined our traditional policy framework are dissolving.
The key challenges, at least as I see them, are as follows.
On a high level, the deeper structural reformation of traditional media players, moving away from a traditional vertically integrated model of media provision, towards a more disaggregated and internet focussed model continues. In turn, this has particularly severe implications for these, often Irish owned, players, some of which have disappeared already – either gone out of business or merged with others.
Similarly, changes in the television market place has long since allowed outside broadcasters to target advertising at Irish consumers without any significant presence here.
International media actors, including those operating from our far larger next door neighbour, in both television and print, continue to compete for market share.
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.
For the media industry, the effects of all of these are, clearly, compounded by the general economic situation. It has meant job losses, changing terms of employment and the disappearance of previously venerable institutions.
However, while these challenges are marked, it is important to note that, many of the key contextual drivers of the industry, and of national policy, remain the same; we remain a State that, despite significant outside influence, retains a very distinct identity. We retain a national economy and a national polity that drive a considerable volume of media, and we retain a population with a huge thirst for news, local and national, political, sporting – and sometimes a mix of the two. The market for media in Ireland is still many times the size it was 25 years ago – when there was a very limited local radio sector by comparison. While media will always change, these changes, disruptive in nature though they may be, bring new opportunities as well as new challenges.
If you look internationally at those media actors who seem to be weathering this process relatively well, like the Guardian in the UK, or the New York Times, it is clear that content is king. In an era when transmission and dissemination are multilateral and cheap, content is where the ‘value add’ occurs. This remains the case as much at local level as it does at national or international level – if people want to consume media, the market must provide.
In many ways, what we are talking about is how the market provides this content and, for Government, the challenge is to arrive at a policy set that ensures that this market continues to meet the public interest.
At this point, it is important to note that the EU and the Council of Europe are developing an ever more active role in this space and offer us a profound opportunity to influence events on an international level which is, in some cases, the only way in which policy can hope to have any real effect on steering the development of the sector. Already policy initiatives have emerged, particularly on internet governance, and more can be expected.
For Government then, the challenge is to adjust to changing market, technological and social trends, in the broader context of European policy – and to do so in a flexible way. Critically, this is going to be an ongoing process – there is no silver bullet – and we must remain as flexible as the industry itself when it comes to governance and regulation.
This may take us all into new space in terms of policy: I recently pointed out that I do not see a case for a single ‘Department of the Media’, not least due to the need for the media to remain entirely separate from Government and most certainly not relying on it for fear or favour. Yet the nature of the situation we find ourselves in, where the media ecosystem is increasingly diverse and dynamic, and subject to some very powerful commercial forces, is such that Government intervention is already required in some areas.
Pressing issues around the ownership and control of media have led the Government to pursue the development of revised media mergers legislation, the heads of which have already been brought to Government by my colleague, Minister Bruton. My Department is now working on the drafting of this Bill in conjunction with the Department of Jobs, Innovation and Enterprise, and we expect to publish a draft early next year.
It is my intention that both the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, to which I answer, as well as the Committee on Enterprise and Innovation, which will deal with the Competition Bill as a whole, will have opportunities to consider and debate our proposals on media mergers.
This legislation owes its origins both to the Competition & Mergers Review Group of 2000 and the Report of the Advisory Group on Media Mergers, which was presented to Government in 2008.
The first report stated that: ‘The nature of the media sector is such that issues such as the plurality of ownership of titles and the position in the media market generally of enterprises constitute public policy issues, as they inevitably overlap with questions of editorial and cultural diversity.’
They concluded that we needed: ‘a set of criteria for the analysis of [media mergers] which are qualitatively different from those criteria which make up conventional micro-economic competition analysis’.
And the second report, from the Advisory Group on Media Mergers, recommended that the ‘media’ aspects of such mergers be separated from the more generic ‘competition’ aspects and that there be both a statutory definition of media plurality and a statutory test to be applied by the Minister when making a determination on media merger cases.
It is important to stress that diversity of ownership and diversity of content are separate, albeit related, concepts. The Advisory Group on Media Mergers gives a purely quantitative definition of diversity of ownership: the spread of ownership and control of media businesses amongst individuals and other undertakings, linked to the market share of those media businesses as measured by listenership, readership or other appropriate methods.
While diversity of content is a term altogether more qualitative in nature. It refers to: the extent to which the broad diversity of views and cultural interests prevalent in Irish society is reflected through the activities of media businesses in this State, including their editorial ethos, content and sources.
At its most basic, the criteria which make up conventional micro-economic competition analysis are inappropriate for media mergers because the proper functioning of our democratic system depends ultimately on liberty of expression and all that that entails. It is clearly the case that an excessive concentration of media ownership and control involves risks that go beyond those involved in the case of ordinary goods and services.
This is why we are adopting the approach and the recommendations set out in these reports. We will accordingly legislate for new, media-specific and principles-based criteria to be applied when assessing any future proposed merger. These will include:
- the likely effect of the media merger on plurality (which, as I’ve said, includes both diversity of ownership and diversity of content)
- the undesirability of allowing any one individual or undertaking to hold significant interests within a sector or across different sections of media businesses
- the consequences for the promotion of plurality in media business in the State of intervening to prevent a media merger or attaching conditions to the approval of a media merger
- the adequacy of other mechanisms to protect the public interest in plurality in the media if the Minister decides not to intervene
- the commitments that the undertakings are prepared to offer and which are capable of being effectively incorporated in any decision by the Minister
- the extent to which the public interest can be secured by the imposition of any such conditions in a decision by the Minister to approve a merger.
And our Bill will also include a definition of ‘media’ that explicitly includes material published on the internet.
The importance of media, of the long held role of mediating information between citizens, whether at the individual level or at the level of citizens organised into sectors, lobbies, interest groups – or even political parties – cannot be underestimated.
The news business is different from other businesses, for those constitutionally explicit reasons, and Government is already acting to preserve this in one vital way. As the sector develops, so too will policy – and Government may need to engage with the sector in other ways also.