Offending, Shocking, Disturbing - A Free Press Right? The Annual Press Freedom Round Table Proceedings

There is a tremendous amount of media freedom problems in the world, and there is also a certain time travel backwards in many parts of the world. It is not only true in the new democracies, where we see a stubborn monopoly especially of television, which is not getting dissolved and it is even being cemented. We see the spreading pattern of administrative discrimination against the fragile independent print press, as it already exists in most of these new democracies which nevertheless favour the still existing state-owned press.There are brand new challenges to media freedom. One of them is the post-cartoon controversy in Europe. Is that pressure dissolving or is it enhancing under our watch, and what can be done about it?media freedom., press freedom, cartoon controversy, European media, democracies, democratic practices, Media Studies

Framing the Newspaper Crisis:How debates on the state of the press are shaped in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom and United States

This article argues that discourses of a newspaper “crisis” should not be regarded simply as descriptions of the actual state of the press but also as a means by which strategic actors frame the situation. The emerging frames can have substantial consequences for media policy making. The study identifies four key frames used to portray the newspaper “crisis” and discusses their relevance for public debates in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Similarities and differences are examined through 59 in-depth interviews with policymakers and industry executives as well as a qualitative analysis of policy documents and relevant media coverage. The study demonstrates that debates on the newspaper “crisis” are only partly influenced by (1) economic realities and (2) media policy traditions in the six countries but also reflect (3) the strategic motives of powerful actors and (4) the diffusion of frames across borders, particularly those coming from the United States. A transnationally uniform paradigm emerges according to which the state is expected to play the role of a benevolent but mostly passive bystander, while media companies are expected to tackle the problem mainly by developing innovative content and business strategies. This liberal market paradigm displays one blind spot however: it does not seriously consider a scenario where the market is failing to provide sustainable journalistic quality