ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the media concentration problem from three perspectives: pluralism, competition, and culture. The European Court of Human Rights thus seems to require affirmative action on the part of signatory states to promote pluralism in the media, just as constitutional courts in France, Germany, and Italy have required the enactment of laws to promote media pluralism. The combination of new technologies, a national regulatory environment increasingly tolerant of private broadcasting and renewed and expanding activity of the European Community had by the 1990s wrought fundamental changes in the political, economic, and legal framework of the mass media in Western Europe. The aspect of the pluralism perspective involves the effect of programming requirements, such as representation of political and social groups in broadcasting councils or requirements that broadcasters transmit a sufficiently varied range of programs. Competition law allows regulators to prevent some concentrative arrangements that media ownership regulations or programming councils may not be able to reach.
