EU Study Suggests Need to "Monitor" News

Bureaucracies like setting up commissions and groups to study things.  They get time off from real work to "study things", free travel to group meetings in nice locales, invite their friends to participate in the group, and spend money for others to really study whatever they're supposed to look at and tell them what to say about it.  And the EU is really just a gigantic bureaucracy with a veneer of democracy for show.

In this case, it's the "High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism" releasing their report last week after pondering various "threats" to media independence and the independence of journalists for more than a year.  As the norm, any complaint by any group got treated as a threat,  Too much government oversight? A threat.  Too little government oversight? A threat.  Media too big and powerful? A threat. Media too weak and powerless? A threat.  27 separate sets of libel and privacy laws (one for each EU nation)?  Almost as many distinctive sets of ethical standards, professional norms, and legal rights for journalists?  A real problem in a digital world where content easily flows across national borders.

The good news is the report only outlines concerns and makes suggestions, rather than drafts new laws and regulations.  Still, you can see the underlying intent in many of the suggestions in the report and in the comments made by the group's Chair, former President of Latvia Vaire Vike-Freiberger, in a well-attended press conference announcing the report.  Frances Robinson, covering the story for the Wall Street Journal, offered a few of the juicier bits.

• Oversight needed to reign in "journalists"
  

  “There is a responsibility that goes with being a journalist,” Ms. Vike-Freiberga told the assembled hacks. But with new technology “enabling just about everybody” to access information, form an opinion, and blog it, from their phone, “trained monkeys could probably do it.”

  The report suggests a need for someone to determine who gets to be a journalist and who doesn't (i.e. licensing), although that power shouldn't be in the hands of government or left to the discretion of news outlets or journalists self-identifying.  In other words, you need an "independent body".  One that will probably also have the job of determining which journalism is "quality," and which isn't.
• One Ring to Rule Them All
  The final report actually likes the idea of "politically correct" national Media Councils with the power to punish possible offenders.  Although Europe really, really needs an EU-wide "independent" Media Council with ultimate authority, under the aegis of the European Commission (i.e. the unelected, unaccountable, EU bureaucracy).
  

  Recommendation: All EU countries should have independent media councils with a politically and culturally balanced and socially diverse membership. … Media councils should have real enforcement powers, such as the imposition of fines, orders for printed or broadcast apologies, or removal of journalistic status. The national media councils should follow a set of European-wide standards and be monitored by the Commission to ensure that they comply with European values.

•  Set a single EU standard
  The report seeks to apply to same approach EU bureaucracies favor in virtually all regulatory circumstances - replace local and national standards and regulation (outside the EU's control) with a single standard/regulation/law determined and enforced by the EU bureaucracy.
  

  Recommendation: For improving the functioning of the Single Market, further harmonisation of EU legislation would be of great benefit.

  While greater consistency in libel and privacy rules would be helpful, "harmonisation" is the most widely-hated aspect of the EU and its bureaucracy.
• Punish (successful) Intruders
  Robinson notes one recommendation suggesting using regulation to punish "dominant information providers" (i.e. Google) for being more popular than local sources and thus "restrict(ing) media freedom and pluralism."  In other words, let's promote pluralism by removing media sources... particularly those you can't control.  As the line goes, "Yeah, that's the ticket."
• Fund (and control) investigative journalism
  Not enough good investigative journalism?  Let the EU fund it, and thus influence what reporters and stories investigate.
• We Need Good PR
  The report suggests that the various EU Presidents need to meet with groups of journalists from a range of EU countries, and get wider coverage of pronouncements in other EU press.  Robinson succinctly phrased the problem that poses.
  

  EU Presidents aren’t known for breaking news in panel interviews, and hypothetical situations don’t sound promising – will a Finnish reader really want to know the Spanish commissioner’s answer to a question from a Slovenian journalist?

While I had some fun with this, there are some real issues and threats confronting journalism generally.  Some do emerge from the different roles journalism and news organizations play in different countries, and the resulting mash-up of policies, professional standards, regulation, oversight, and libel & privacy laws across the EU.  Some harmonization, or lessening of differences, would be helpful in a world where media, content, and news cross borders.  I'm just pretty doubtful that a centralized bureaucracy is the best way to accommodate cultural, political, and economic differences around the world (or within Europe).  Or how greater politicization and oversight/control promotes media freedom in the Western tradition.

Sources -  EU, Media, and Trained Monkeys, Wall Street Journal
High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism website and final report,  EU Task Force on Co-ordination of Media Affairs

EU on E-book Price-Fixing

Apple made news a few years ago by conspiring with major publishing houses to fix prices for all E-book sales.  Last spring, most of those involves settled a U.S. antitrust case by agreeing not to set minimum prices for the sales of E-books.  Antitrust regulators in the EU have now reached a similar deal.
  Apple and major E-book publishers have agreed to allow retailers to set their own prices, and allow them to offer discounts - at least for the next couple of years.

While this is a good first step, there's a caveat.  In both settlements, their promise to not conspire to price-fix is temporary.  US and EU regulators are likely to have to restart their anti-trust probes and lawsuits in a few years.

Source -  Amazon Trumps Apple In E-book Battle, OnlineMediaDaily

Europe - Getting Connected

Research firm Parks Associates estimated that there were 155 million households with broadband connections at the end of 2011.  Their research suggests that there is a growing demand for services delivered by IP/broadband, from audio and video streaming to gaming to connected home management services.

Source - Parks Associates Consumer Analytics e-mail

UK Ad Revenue Forecasts: Press, TV down - Digital Up

  Analyst firm Group M has revised its forecast for the UK ad market in 2012 upward, now calling for it to reach a total of 13.2 billion pounds - in part due to expected windfalls from the Euro 2012 and London Olympics sporting events.  In their new forecast, though, the increase in projected ad revenues is not uniform across media.  The earlier forecast of 3% growth in TV ad revenues has been slashed to project minimal growth (0.1%).  Forecasts for the UK national newspaper ad revenues also dropped, shifting from a projected 3% decline in total ad revenues, to a 6.3% decline - a loss of 81 billion pounds from 2011 levels.  Advertising revenue forecasts for other print sectors also dropped - with regional newspaper revenues falling 11% (revised from 7.8% decline), consumer magazines dropping 8% (revised from 3% drop), and business magazines falling 10% (revised from 8%).
  The new projections showed modest gains for the radio (5% growth, up from 4.7%) and outdoor advertising (6%, up from 5.1%) sectors.  But the big gain was in digital advertising revenues, with an projected increase of 14.2% in digital/Internet ad spending, for a forecast of 5.35 billion pounds in digital ad revenues in 2012.  At that level, online advertising will account for more than 40% of all UK advertising revenues. 

Adam Smith, a director at Group M, said the overall market was sluggish. "UK advertising investment remains at maintenance levels, lagging even nominal GDP growth."  ... UK growth level was "robust" compared with levels expected in other European markets this year. "Germany and France are barely positive in 2012 while Italy and Spain are expected to contract by about 8%,."

 Source -  TV and press ad revenues 'to fall by more than £350m this year',  The Guardian

EU Dumps ACTA

  ACTA is a highly controversial anti-piracy trade agreement pushed by the music and movie industries, pretty much under the cover of darkness.  When scholars and public interest groups asked the US government to share the draft treaty and the government's negotiating positions, they were refused under the claim of national security.  The US assured them that their concerns were unfounded, and the things they feared were in the treaty weren't.  When parliaments in a number of European states were asked to vote on the treaty, they were told that they would not be allowed to see or read it in advance.  Still, leaders managed to ram ratification through 22 EU nations. Once again, assurances were given that public concerns were unfounded.

  Just before a meeting to ratify ACTA, a copy of the draft proposal was leaked, and it turned out that every single concern raised was in fact embodied in the treaty, in many cases in more egregious forms than initially thought.  This didn't stop the meeting last October, or stop President Obama from committing the US to this international treaty, without the normally necessary step of getting the Senate's ratification.  At the time he claimed that since the treaty doesn't directly change US law, it was an "executive agreement" rather than a treaty and didn't need ratification.  So how bad was ACTA? - think the anti-piracy SOPA and PIPA bills on steroids, applied internationally.

  While there was a growing anti-ACTA movement in Europe, the popular criticism of PIPA and SOPA and their eventual defeat in Congress encouraged European critics and activists, and prompted hundreds of protests throughout the EU (see earlier post for map).  The anti-ACTA movement helped start a new political party (the Pirate Party), and other political parties (notably the Greens) adopted stances in opposition.  Yesterday, the European Parliament rejected the ACTA treaty by a vote of 478-39.  As a result of the vote, no country in the EU can be part of ACTA.

"The European Parliament vote is a triumph of democracy over special interests and shady back-room deals," (UK Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye) told the BBC. "It is becoming increasingly politically poisonous to be 'anti-Internet.'"

  Many credit the widespread protests, many of which were organized and coordinated online, for catching the attention of European politicians.  Another early Pirate Party leader contributed this take -

But the key takeaway here is that it was us, the activists, that made this happen. Everyone in the European Parliament are taking turns to praise all the activists across Europe and the world for drawing their attention to what utter garbage this really was, not some run-of-the-mill rubberstamp paper, but actually a really dangerous piece of proposed legislation. Everybody thanks the activists for that. Yes, that’s you. You should lean back, smile, and pat yourself on the back here.

  Or as several members of Parliament tweeted -  “your protesting won it” and “you may stop sending anti-‪#ACTA emails now, thank you,”

 The EU Parliament vote makes it difficult for proponents to keep arguing that the treaty's provisions have widespread support, and is likely to impact upcoming votes in other countries.  But one of the more egregious provisions of ACTA, in my opinion, is the language that says ACTA will go into effect globally as soon as six countries (out of nearly 200 around the world) ratify it.  If the ACTA supporters try to enforce that provision, it should provoke both political and public resistance, and even more bad PR for Hollywood's heavy-handed approach to what is a serious issue.  Not a good strategy.
  Like SOPA and PIPA, ACTA needs to be reworked - but in a more public and transparent way that takes into consideration the interests of the public and the myriad transmission channels as well as the interests of copyright-holders.  Rather than lawyers for one industry writing legislation that pet legislators try to introduce and pass before anyone knows what's in the bill and how it will impact others, copyright industries should consider and address the concerns of their customers, and the impact of proposed legislation on the public weal.

Sources -  Europe declares independence from Hollywood with ACTA vote, arstechnica
European Parliament's Rejection of ACTA Demonstrates Again the Power of Digital Activism, Slate's Future Tense blog
Europe reacts to ACTA - The Other Problematic Anti-Online Piracy Policy, Media Business and the Future of Journalism blog