The EU and the media – EU media policy and globalisation

What this chapter covers

Introduction: the EU and the media in the 21st century

The EU, globalisation and media

The EU and localisation Glocalisation

The EU and ‘Europeanisation’

Defining and understanding the EU

Europe and the EU: contexts for media policy

The EU institutions, policy-making and the media

The structure of the EU

Other direct and indirect pressures on the EU media

Learning objectives

When you have completed this chapter you will be able to:

Understand some of the debates about globalisation and Europeanisation that provide working definitions and refinement as we review the media in situ.

Appreciate that the EU media policy is not only evolving all the time but is an example of multi-factor policy development at many levels of interaction, from the global to the local.

Outline the principal EU media policy agreements over the past 20 years and more.

Identify the EU institutions and their decision-making that is bringing parts of the media policy together.

Themes

Below you will find a simple statement or series of statements around the six themes. They should not be read as a given fact. They are more like hypotheses (see Chapter 2) which need to be proved, discussed, debated and then used in your own analysis of the subject. The ideas and approaches in this book are always to be considered with an open mind; this is important in university study and is what makes it distinct from pre-university study.

Diversity of media

Many commentaries on the media will stress correctly the importance of viewing the media generically as if the media and its technology, for example, are the same anywhere. However, when we investigate the media in situ, within a context such as the EU, we notice differences and diversities which are just as important in our analysis as the similarities. In the EU this is most distinct in the press and publishing industries, but it can be found equally in the audio-visual sector.

Internal/external forces for change

Inside the EU the nation states (member states) will have ever-evolving national, legal and regulatory controls, which reflect a national point of view. Mergers and takeovers, for example, will occur within national settings. At the same time, European and global pressures, some technological, some regulatory and some legal, are also forcing change upon the market and the regulators.

Complexity of the media

More so than many geographical regions, the EU works through a public sector ethos as well as private industry. This is especially pertinent in the audio-visual television context, and it complicates the provision and even the distribution and consumption practices across the member states of the EU. In reviewing the media in the EU we quickly become aware of complexity within the market which is often centred on major debates about the public and private sector balance within given societies.

Multi-levels

National ways of thinking and controlling the media in the EU are the norm, although this is beginning to change. However, relying on our national knowledge is not enough to understand the reality of media provision across the EU. For example, in the press, regional newspapers often taken precedence in circulation figures over national papers, and this is a reflection of the social, cultural and even political shape that is the foundation for most EU states. In the market place, and the EU needs to reflect this, there are many layers of social cohesion, which are national, but also often sub-national at a regional and local level, as well as global.

European integrative environment

The EU is essentially an organisation designed to be economically integrative for its member states with a political aim of ‘union’. The debates this throws forward, however, are often very contentious. In the field of media analysis there are heated arguments about the type of governance, effectiveness and efficiency that EU policy-making has created for the media: not least the battle about the degree of control that should be in the hands of the EU member states and their institutions on the one hand and the traditional national frameworks on the other. The evidence shows an uneasy consensus on these matters but step-by-step over the decades, the EU and its institutions have evolved into a more integrated view of the media, for the press and the audio-visual sectors.

Cultural values

There is no one ‘European’ culture or one set of ‘European set-values’, and this is reflected in press and national consumption, where the national, regional and differences of language hold sway. Nonetheless, with policies increasingly overlapping from the EU Single European Market, created from 1985–1993, media policies, such as the Television without Frontiers Directive, not only encourage diversity of provision but also lay down shared fundamental principles such as anti-racism, anti-discrimination, equal opportunities, right of reply, anti-ageism and shared business practices. All of these have their cultural sides to them and are, slowly, reshaping the cultural horizon of the EU member states.

Essentials

To understand the contemporary media architecture in Europe and the EU means to understand a multi-national and cross-frontier world. In analysing

its market, we need to look at both national and European levels of provision: it is a multi-layered system. As a collected group of societies within the global community, European markets are relatively sophisticated and, moreover, changing.

Although there are forces that we can call loosely globalisation, pushing states together for trade and communication, there are also counter pressures that uphold cultural diversity and traditions. Not least, it is the declared aim of the EU, for example, to continue an integrative purpose. This has defined itself as different to other more loosely connected trans-frontier organisations such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It too though wants to be a major trade player on the global stage, and therein lies the media industries’ dilemma for European states.

The media is inextricably linked to the markets, but it is also fundamental to political and cultural communication. The media is like a bridge between competitive products and cultures that, having been produced and distributed, are then consumed by societies but in their own context.