5. Media pluralism in the EU

Chapter summary

• Media pluralism in the EU has significantly weakened over the past 10 years. Key reasons for this include:
  • The weakened editorial media economy, due to long-term and intense competition from social networks, along with the short-term deterioration furthered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • High levels of political and economic interference in media operations in many countries.
• In one of the areas measured, “Fundamental protection,” improvements are expected in the coming years, resulting from new legislation both nationally and at the EU level, in areas such as:
  • Media freedom (European Media Freedom Act)
  • Legislation to strengthen the role of whistleblowers
  • Legislation to limit the use of Strategic Legal Actions Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
  • The EU flagship regulations: Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. 
• Several of these new laws have been recently adopted and will go into full effect in the coming years.

Data from Media Pluralism Monitor 2024 (MPM2024) and trends from the last decade, including comments from the MPM2023-report.

To complement the insights on editorial capacity in EU countries provided by the report “Uncovering News Deserts in Europe”, which focuses on local and community media, we should also consider the findings from the CMPF’s Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) report. MPM tracks the entire media ecosystem, with regular assessments beginning in 2013/2014 and conducted annually since 2020, offering a perspecive on its development over time.

Method and data foundation

CMPF presents its Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) in this way:

The Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM) is a tool developed by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom to assess the potential weaknesses in national media systems that may hinder media pluralism. Based on 20 indicators, summarizing 200 variables, it covers four areas: 

• Fundamental protection,
• Market plurality,
• Political independence
• Social inclusiveness.

The MPM evaluates the state of these four areas, using five indicators for each. The method is presented as follows in the MPM 2023 report:

MPM covers 32 European countries. EU candidate-countries of Albania, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey are included, in addition to the 27 EU countries. In the 2024 report, preliminary studies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, and Ukraine have also been conducted.

Media Pluralism Monitor 2024

We focus on the MPM 2024 report, which shows results for 2023, and the parts of it that are most relevant to the themes in our analysis.

“Fundamental Protection” is the broadest and most fundamental area evaluated in the MPM. This area analyzes the basic prerequisites for media freedom and media pluralism, protection of freedom of expression, and laws and regulations that  ensure free access to information. The MPM2024 shows a slight increased risk in this area between 2022 and 2023, with a risk assessment of 37% compared to 34% two years before. The term ‘risk’ is used in the same way in MPM as explained in the methodological review of the report ‘Uncover news deserts’ in section 4.1.2.

For 14 of the 32 countries, the risk is assessed as low, while 17 countries are considered to have medium risk. France moved from the medium-risk category in 2022 to the low-risk category in the 2023 report, due to new regulations protecting whistleblowers.

Formal protection

One of the indicators of “Fundamental Rights” is “Freedom of Expression”, and here the risk score is 35%, indicating medium risk, but still very close to the low risk-area. According to the report, a primary reason for not achieving a clear low-risk status on this indicator is the significant work still needed to decriminalize defamation. Additionally, there remains a significant lack of transparency concerning the platforms’ moderation of content. All the surveyed countries have formal protections for freedom of expression, but there are challenges in how this freedom is managed in reality. 

 One of the most serious concerns in this category is the increase in threats against journalists from the political elite in many countries. Those who should have the responsibility to protect media freedom and journalistic work are at the forefront of attacks in several regions. The MPM2023 report cites ‘Carlini et al., 2023; Christophorou & Karides, 2023’ as the source of this observation. 

Deteriorating working conditions

The report also states that working conditions for journalists are deteriorating in some of the examined countries. Uncertainty surrounding employment status and weak financial conditions are forcing many to leave the profession.

At the same time, there are signs of improvements in the area of “Fundamental protection” over the past two years, primarily as a consequence of new legislation both nationally and at the EU level. France’s strengthened protection of whistleblowers has already been mentioned. Other examples include the Netherlands’ new legislation to improve access to information from the public sector and Lithuania’s progress under the indicator “Universal reach of traditional media and access to the Internet”. The latter primarily concerns improved broadband development and the strengthening of public service media.

New EU regulations, primarily the European Media Freedom Act and the legislation against Strategic Legal Actions Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), are expected to have positive impact on the area of “Fundamental protection” in the coming years. Flagship regulations such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) are also likely to yield similar positive effects.

The illustration shows the risk assessment for ‘Market Plurality,’ rated 69%, placing it within the high risk category – consistent with the score from MPM2023.

Market plurality is about the economic dimension of media plurality, as cited in the report: 

The Market Plurality area assesses the risks resulting from opacity of media ownership, from the concentration of the market, in terms of both production (media service providers) and distribution (digital intermediaries), from the economic sustainability of the media, and from the influence of commercial interests and ownership on editorial content.

The illustration on the right shows the distribution of the 32 countries across the three risk classes. Here we see that no country is assessed as having low risk, 13 countries are classified in the medium risk group, while 19  countries are considered to have high risk.

Increased market concentration

The primary reason cited in the MPM2023 report for this high risk is increased market concentration, with fewer, larger media owners and a significant dominance of a few platform providers who largely control media content distribution.

“Plurality of Media Providers” is one of five indicators under the “Market Plurality” measurement, and it holds the highest risk score among the 20 total indicators in MPM2023, rated at 85%. These evaluations indicate that markets with few, dominant media providers, i.e., media owners, pose a significant risk. The reasoning is that a major owner can render a substantial portion of a country’s editorial media ineffective or effectively hold it “hostage” to serve the owners’ economic or political interests. However, this remains a politically contentious issue, partly shaped by historical experiences. 

The Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency 2019-2024, Věra Jourová, has talked about the need to avoid the “oligarchization” of European media, in connection with the work on the European Media Freedom Act. The political debate on media ownership centers on finding a balance between allowing media corporations to grow to benefit from economies of scale, without allowing them to become so dominant that they threaten media pluralism and freedom. In several countries, stronger requirements for corporates on ownership transparency and regular reporting on key parameters have served as a compromise, leading to positive results in the media freedom index previously mentioned, as is  the case in Lithuania, for example. Requirements for transparency regarding media ownership are also included in the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), which was recently adopted by the EU.

The second key factor contributing to increased risk to media pluralism in MPM 2023 is the economic recession and high inflation in 2022, which has weakened the financial results for media companies. 

The overall risk for “Political Independence” is assessed at 48%. The sub-indicator “Political Independence of the Media” and the indicator “Editorial Autonomy,” have risk scores of 55% and 61%, respectively, indicating a relatively high risk of illegitimate political interference in editorial independence.

Another interesting indicator under “Political Independence” is “Independence of Public Service Media”. This indicator is given a medium risk score of 53% overall. 

In the unwritten playbook for illiberal leaders, Public Service Media (PSM) appears to be one of the first targets for taking control of the population’s information. Leaders and journalists in PSM companies who are not government-friendly are replaced with pro-government staff, transforming it into an effective propaganda apparatus relatively quickly. The reason this is easier and quicker to achieve with PSM than other media companies is, naturally, that PSM companies are state-owned.

This is also why the EU has been eager to provide better protection for PSM companies and ensure their independence in the new European Media Freedom Act.

The risk score in the area of “Social Inclusiveness” remains stable at 55% compared to the previous year. This area addresses the representation of various groups such as women, cultural and ethnic minorities, and local/regional communities in editorial media. 

The report finds that the most significant decline is in the “Gender Equality” indicator, highlighting poor gender balance in media leadership, where women are significantly underrepresented. Limited representation of diverse groups in editorial media is also believed to impact both media usage and public trust.