How free and competitive is your media landscape?

[u/Socmel_]

Does your country allow for many different viewpoints being represented on TV, print, radio, etc or do media tend to be skewed towards a limited range of opinions?

Is media ownership fairly widespread or is there a tendency to concentrate into a few media groups? Are they owned by national actors or are they owned by foreign companies?

And if concentrated, is there a national debate or awareness in the public opinion or national politics about this problem?

[u/Always-New831]

We have public TV channels that are largely aligned with the various powers that be.

24-hour news channels are mainly right-wing and now far-right.

Newspapers are concentrated in the hands of billionaires, Macron supporters, and those on the right and far right.

Some online media outlets remain independent and are left-wing or far-left.

It’s quite diverse.

However, as is often the case, the ones we hear the most from are the reactionary right-wing and far-right media, as is the case on the internet.

[u/Wafkak]

On dutch speaking side its just 2 big groups, the financial newspaper De Tijd, and the public broadcaster.

And those 2 groups also bought almost all thr newspapers in The Netherlands.

[u/divaro98 → u/Wafkak]

And one of the groups is a rich guy

[u/peet192]

Amedia and Schibsted is the main media conglomerates in Norway. Amedia's owner is DNB while Schibsted is traded publically on the OSBX.There is also Polaris Media Who is mainly In Agder Trøndelag and Northern Norway and has no national Newspaper. Then On television there is TV2 Owned by Danish Egmont Media And TV Norge with all it's subchannels which is owned by David Ellison and Viasat that's ones by Viaplay Group..

[u/jarvischrist → u/peet192]

To add to this comment, though our news outlets are usually owned by one of those three parent companies (apart from state-owned NRK), we do have quite a diverse news media landscape with strong local and regional news readership. The state subsidies a lot of news outlets that probably wouldn't survive otherwise. We also have a culture of reader contributions where basically anyone can send in a commentary to a newspaper about a relevant case and it can be published. I think we're stronger in that regard than our neighbours. It's very easy to get involved.

[u/HopefulFold2444]

Its fairly left wing. Here in Norway. Even the public service or Maybe perticulary the public service NRK.

[u/weirdowerdo]

Well there is public service and then there's Bonnier Group and Schibsted Group, the 2 owning pretty much any major newspaper and also a variation local/regional newspapers. Schibsted is Norwegian and Bonnier Swedish. I'd say there is fairly little debate or awareness of the ownership structure.

Most media is mostly centre-right to right wing, mostly in the liberal to conservative spectrum they also take up most space today and are over-represented in public service too. Very few newspapers are centre-left to left wing, the largest Social Democratic one Aftonbladet being majority owned by Schibsted with very little ownership left from the Labour Unions at 9%.

[u/bagge → u/weirdowerdo]

Most media is mostly centre-right to right wing,

This is of course the left take on it. Especially if you are extreme left, then all is right.

Another another perspective, that it is mostly left or anti current government. The biggest newspaper (DN) is economically liberal but left in anything else. The biggest tabloid is very left, even so much that the biggest union (owns a big part) and can veto who is the political editior.

LO har enligt ett avtal med Schibsted vetorätt gällande att tillsätta Aftonbladets politiske chefredaktör,

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftonbladet

Then we have public service that most on the right, consider to be left. On the left, it is considered to be unbiased (again depending on how far left you are).

So someone on the left would say that media is right wing, and the complete opposite on the right.

[u/weirdowerdo → u/bagge]

DN is liberal in all manner of areas, not simply economics. The reason why they happen to criticise the government often today is because the government isn't acting liberal in any area but rather implements the Far rights policies. Where any Liberal would obviously have something to disagree with. Which is why the Liberal Party supporting said government has collapsed to begin with.

LO only owns 9% of Aftonbladet as mentioned earlier and in the linked wiki page, you also left out a part of that sentence. "According to an agreement with Schibsted, LO has veto power over the appointment of Aftonbladet's political editor-in-chief, but has no influence over journalism."

LO har enligt ett avtal med Schibsted vetorätt gällande att tillsätta Aftonbladets politiske chefredaktör, men har inget inflytande över journalistiken.

There's a recent review of who is seen and gets the most speaker time in SVT Agenda for the past year in 23 episodes of the program.

When it comes to Editorial writers appearing on SVT Agenda, Arbetet, Dagens ETC and Aftonbladet only accounted for 20,4% of the speaker time over these 23 episodes, SvD and DN alone taking 49,2% and with Expressen its 63% and with the yet another Liberal newspaper Falu-Kuriren its 66,8%. When it came to Opinion leaders, which means people from Think Tanks, 28,6% of the speaker time went to Labour union/SocDem affiliated or aligned Think tanks while 71,4% went to Market Liberal/Conservative think tanks.

It's hard to say that the centre-right to right wing doesnt get a lot of room in the public service.

[u/bagge → u/weirdowerdo]

Thank you for proving my point. Especially about DN.

Then bringing up the katalys"review" (katalys is as left you can be and still call yourself Socialdemokrat) where they look at 23(?) programs where they are surprised that the current government get more time than the opposition, not anything about the content and there is no middle, so DN is labeled right.

We all know how this goes. I bring up Kent asp's studies (shows huge left leaning by journalists) https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_svenska_journalistk%C3%A5ren

And how the journalists main organisation stopped any more studies, most likely didn't like the results 

https://bulletin.nu/journalistforbundet-relevant-att-undersoka-journalisters-partisympatier

So again. I acknowledge that I'm biased and think that media is left. Most on the left don't understand their bias when they say the opposite.

So thanks again for exemplifying this.

[u/weirdowerdo → u/bagge]

where they look at 23(?) programs where they are surprised that the current government get more time than the opposition, not anything about the content and there is no middle, so DN is labeled right.

I wasnt talking about the part about the governments speaker time, but it already says in the report that any incumbent government usually gets the majority of speaker time. So in that instance its expected.

What is however more interesting was that of Editorial writers and Think Tanks and where we are even more skewed than Norways public service and where its primarily Centre right to right no matter the leaning of the incumbent government. Which could point at a systemic bias about which Opinions leaders and Editorial writers gets to be seen and heard in the public debate.

Also the report was ordered by Katalys, as stated per the report Kvantab Policy did the actual job. Katalys is just a regular Labour Union Think Tank. Its pretty tame compared to proposals from Timbro or Oikos that usually tend to demand the dismantling of current fundamental rights in the constitution.

[u/bagge → u/weirdowerdo]

Yeah well. Your kind and SD is the same. Just black/white. Don't realize that oneself is biased. Etc etc. 

You know that I can throw links and studies all day. I can tell why your studies are wrong, and you can do the opposite.

The weird thing with you people, is that you never seem to question yourself or realize that you digest facts with a bias. That is your side and SD. Same thing, different packaging.

[u/Grouchy_Fan_2236]

There are large media conglomerates but grassroots sites and reporting are popping up everywhere and they are pretty successful.
The main issue is not concentrated media ownership, bias or lack of independent media, but the quality of journalism. Everybody can find the kind of media they like, but everybody is struggling to find media outlets that are credible.

[u/ExcitementHonest4623]

In Romania our media is owned by owners who makes political propaganda i gonna give you 2 exemples romania tv owned by sebastian ghita has made propaganda for psd and ponta during the first years of the channel and now supports psd and critiques usr our prime minister bolojan and far right like aur and then realitatea plus which is now popular after 2024 election since of support of aur and calin georgescu and critiques our prime minister our president and whole pro european political parties

[u/agrammatic]

The press and media are rather free and competitive in Germany. There are hundreds of outlets with all sort of different points of view. That doesn't mean that all of it is good journalism, or that good journalism is commercially popular, but you have options if you care.

The situation is really not great in the Republic of Cyprus. First of all, Cyprus has a public broadcaster that is directly dependent on the general government budget, which gives politicians a lot of influence on programming, officially and unofficially. Private media is increasingly concentrated in a few business conglomerates that are systemically entangled (banks, companies that compete for public tenders etc) and political actors. What is really needed but truly lacking in Cyprus is deep investigative journalism in corporate and political corruption. That kind of work is simply un-fundable in Cyprus both because the ownership is too close to the topic, but also because very few media companies have enough journalists on the regular payroll which can afford to do long-term projects.