Goal

A bet­ter legal guar­an­tee of infor­ma­tion pluralism

Pro­posal

• Mod­ify arti­cle 11, 2. of the Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights of the Euro­pean Union:

Replace: ‘2. The free­dom and plu­ral­ism of the media shall be respected.’

With: ‘2. The free­dom and plu­ral­ism of the media are guar­an­teed. This plu­ral­ism is under­stood to be exter­nal, through a diver­sity of media own­er­ship struc­tures; and inter­nal, reflect­ing the diver­sity of society’s polit­i­cal opin­ions and cul­tural expres­sion.’

• Intro­duce the right for each cit­i­zen to ben­e­fit from access to infor­ma­tion on Europe

Explana­tory state­ment

We want to stress here the dis­tinc­tion between ‘exter­nal pluralism’ — meaning a plu­ral­ity of media own­er­ship struc­tures — and ‘inter­nal plu­ral­ism’, mean­ing a plu­ral­ity of infor­ma­tion pro­vided by these media, thus offer­ing space for the expres­sion of dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal view­points (polit­i­cal plu­ral­ism) and cul­tures (cul­tural plu­ral­ism) that make up society.

The EU Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights clearly con­se­crates media plu­ral­ism in its arti­cle 11. But this plu­ral­ism is above all con­ceived as exter­nal pluralism.

Now, expe­ri­ence shows that exter­nal plu­ral­ism alone can­not guar­an­tee inter­nal plu­ral­ism. It is also worth not­ing that the anti-concentration rules, which vary greatly from Mem­ber State to Mem­ber State, are appar­ently inca­pable of effec­tively guar­an­tee­ing this plu­ral­ity of media own­er­ship structures.

An illu­sion of plu­ral­ism is cre­ated by the mul­ti­plic­ity of titles and infor­ma­tion media. Yet the con­cen­tra­tion of media own­er­ship in a few hands, and the ratio­nal­i­sa­tion of jour­nal­is­tic labour in line with purely eco­nomic objec­tives, is lead­ing to homogenised edi­to­r­ial con­tent and to the “googli­sa­tion” of infor­ma­tion. Increas­ingly for­mat­ted and pre-packaged, this cov­er­age pre­vents the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of diverse polit­i­cal opin­ions and cul­tural expressions.

Action to address this is now urgent!

In 2007 Mar­got Wall­ström, Euro­pean Com­mis­sioner for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at that time, along with Viviane Red­ing, launched a three-step approach aimed at eval­u­at­ing, under Euro­pean coor­di­na­tion, the dif­fer­ent threats to infor­ma­tion plu­ral­ism in the Mem­ber States. The study defin­ing the rel­e­vant indi­ca­tors, pub­lished in June 2009, was qual­i­ta­tive and cov­ered all the dimen­sions of plu­ral­ism. But it was never imple­mented and Com­mis­sioner Viviane Red­ing, respon­si­ble for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion since 2009, has since left it on the shelf.

Today the Euro­pean Ini­tia­tive for Media Plu­ral­ism, led by Euro­pean Alter­na­tives and the Inter­na­tional Alliance of Jour­nal­ists, and sup­ported by four Euro­pean Par­lia­men­tary groups (ALDE, GUE/NGL, S&D, Greens/EFA), is try­ing to push the Com­mis­sion to carry on this work.

At the same time, we seek to clar­ify the def­i­n­i­tion of plu­ral­ism in the EU Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights:

It is right and proper that the Charter’s legal scope is lim­ited to areas under com­mu­nity com­pe­tence. But let’s not min­imise its polit­i­cal strength.

The Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Union also approved, on behalf of the Euro­pean Union, the UNESCO Con­ven­tion on the Pro­tec­tion and Pro­mo­tion of the Diver­sity of Cul­tural Expres­sions (2005). This states: “each Party may adopt mea­sures aimed at pro­tect­ing and pro­mot­ing the diver­sity of cul­tural expres­sions within its territory”.

Regard­ing the right to infor­ma­tion on Europe the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, in its White Paper on a Euro­pean Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Pol­icy (COM2006/35 final), stressed that peo­ple from all walks of life should have the right to fair and full infor­ma­tion about the Euro­pean Union. To that end it rec­om­mended the col­lec­tive elab­o­ra­tion, with Mem­ber States and civil soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions, of a fram­ing doc­u­ment, some­thing like a non-binding char­ter. Why don’t we go fur­ther with this ini­tia­tive and mod­ify the EU Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights itself?

Related posts:

1. Should media plu­ral­ism be legally guaranteed?
2. Guar­an­tee­ing media plu­ral­ism: bet­ter the devil you know?
3. Make infor­ma­tion on Europe an essen­tial part of pub­lic ser­vice information
4. Defend­ing media plu­ral­ism by mon­i­tor­ing threats in the Mem­ber States
5. Cit­i­zen ini­tia­tive for Media Plu­ral­ism: from Brus­sels to Bologna