Media outlets and their moguls: why concentrated individual or family ownership is bad for editorial independence

This article investigates the levels of owner influence in 211 different print and broadcast outlets in 32 different European media markets. Drawing on the literature from industrial organisation, it sets out reasons why we should expect greater levels of influence where ownership of individual outlets is concentrated; where it is concentrated in the hands of individuals or families; and where ownership groups own multiple outlets in the same media market. Conversely, we should expect lower levels of influence where ownership is dispersed between transnational companies. The articles uses original data on the ownership structures of these outlets, and combines it with reliable expert judgments as to the level of owner influence in each of the outlets. These hypotheses are tested and confirmed in a multilevel regression model of owner influence. The findings are relevant for policy on ownership limits in the media, and for the debate over transnational versus local control of media

Generalized Cut-Set Bounds for Broadcast Networks

A broadcast network is a classical network with all source messages collocated at a single source node. For broadcast networks, the standard cut-set bounds, which are known to be loose in general, are closely related to union as a specific set operation to combine the basic cuts of the network. This paper provides a new set of network coding bounds for general broadcast networks. These bounds combine the basic cuts of the network via a variety of set operations (not just the union) and are established via only the submodularity of Shannon entropy. The tightness of these bounds are demonstrated via applications to combination networks.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the IEEE Transaction on Information Theor

The BBC Persian Service and the Islamic Revolution of 1979

This paper is the second part of a work in progress that examines the impact of seventy years of BBC Persian broadcasts to Iran. The Persian Service, established in December 1940, was originally set up by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) as one of thirty-eight language services broadcasting to strategically important areas of the world during World War Two. The first piece of research looked at three historic moments when the influence of BBC Persian broadcasts was hotly debated: the toppling of the pro-German Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, in 1941; the late 1940s, when Iran's nationalist leader, Mohammad Mossadeq, championed oil nationalization and challenged the rights hitherto enjoyed by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; and the US-led coup of 1953 that returned the young Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the throne. The present research focuses on a period that many Iranians consider the most influential in terms of all BBC broadcasts to Iran. The BBC Persian Service (BBCPS) became a household name during 1978, the year leading up to the revolution of 11 February 1979. Many Iranians at home and abroad tuned in to hear the latest news and developments, even as the Shah of Iran accused the BBC of fomenting revolution, an argument echoed thirty years later in the responses of the Islamic Republic to the launch of the new Persian television channel in January 2009. The research shows clearly how difficult it had become for the FCO to uphold the independence of the BBC and support their closest friend in the region when he believed that the British government must be in charge. There was indeed heated debate and discussion inside the Foreign Office as to whether Britain was sacrificing its long-term interests by allowing the BBC to continue its broadcasts when even the British ambassador in Tehran was suggesting the service should be closed down

Scheduling science on television: A comparative analysis of the representations of science in 11 European countries

While science-in-the-media is a useful vehicle for understanding the media, few scholars have used it that way: instead, they look at science-in-the-media as a way of understanding science-in-the-media and often end up attributing characteristics to science-in-the-media that are simply characteristics of the media, rather than of the science they see there. This point of view was argued by Jane Gregory and Steve Miller in 1998 in Science in Public. Science, they concluded, is not a special case in the mass media, understanding science-in-the-media is mostly about understanding the media (Gregory and Miller, 1998: 105). More than a decade later, research that looks for patterns or even determinants of science-in-the-media, be it in press or electronic media, is still very rare. There is interest in explaining the media’s selection of science content from a media perspective. Instead, the search for, and analysis of, several kinds of distortions in media representations of science have been leading topics of science-in-the-media research since its beginning in the USA at the end of the 1960s and remain influential today (see Lewenstein, 1994; Weigold, 2001; Kohring, 2005 for summaries). Only a relatively small amount of research has been conducted seeking to identify factors relevant to understanding how science is treated by the mass media in general and by television in particular. The current study addresses the lack of research in this area. Our research seeks to explore which constraints national media systems place on the volume and structure of science programming in television. In simpler terms, the main question this study is trying to address is why science-in-TV in Europe appears as it does. We seek to link research focussing on the detailed analysis of science representations on television (Silverstone, 1984; Collins, 1987; Hornig, 1990; Leon, 2008), and media research focussing on the historical genesis and current political regulation of national media systems (see for instance Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Napoli, 2004; Open Society Institute, 2005, 2008). The former studies provide deeper insights into the selection and reconstruction of scientific subject matters, which reflect and – at the same time – reinforce popular images of science. But their studies do not give much attention to production constraints or other relevant factors which could provide an insight into why media treat science as they do. The latter scholars inter alia shed light on distinct media policies in Europe which significantly influence national channel patterns. However, they do not refer to clearly defined content categories but to fairly rough distinctions such as information versus entertainment or fictional versus factual. Accordingly, we know more about historical roots and current practices of media regulation across Europe than we do about the effects of these different regimes on the provision of specific content in European societies