The phenomenon of 'media concentration' - the prevalence of narrow ownership bases and dominant sources of information - and growing concerns over its possible effects on pluralism and freedom of expression has prompted Commissioner Reding and Vice-President Wallström (who is responsible for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy) to set out three steps following suggestions made at the UK's Liverpool Audiovisual Conference in 2005.
"While the media face radical changes and restructuring due to new technology and global competition, maintaining media pluralism is crucial for the democratic process in member states and in the European Union as a whole," said Reding. "This requires a sound understanding of the economic and legal reality of today's European media landscape, which our three-step approach seeks to achieve."
Wallström added: "Communication – understood as a lively and civilised debate among citizens – is the lifeblood of democracy. The media are its veins and arteries. Information they provide should be comprehensive, diverse, critical, reliable, fair and trustworthy."
A new Directive, "Audiovisual Media Services Without Frontiers", as proposed by the Commission in December 2005 already obliges member states to guarantee that their national regulatory authorities are independent from their national governments and audiovisual media service providers. The Commission's proposal on this will be debated again during the Directive's second reading in the first semester of 2007.
The 'Reding-Wallström' approach is as follows:
- A Commission Staff Working Paper on Media Pluralism, which outlines efforts to promote pluralism by third parties and organisations, notably the essential work undertaken by the Council of Europe;
- an independent study on media pluralism in member states to define and test concrete and objective indicators for assessing media pluralism in member states (in 2007), and;
- a Commission Communication on the indicators for media pluralism in member states (in 2008), on which a broad public consultation will take place.
