The Devil in the Detail: Media ownership limits and unaccountable power
One of the great paradoxes of media reform debates is that the biggest cheerleaders for government control over media regulation are none other than the private media themselves. The war over rival charters for press regulation earlier this year was waged on a number of fronts, but it pivoted on the question of whether power to change the charter should reside with ministers, or parliament. The former was preferred by the great swathe of newspaper groups, in spite of their rhetoric of libertarian defiance. In those countries in Europe where press freedom is genuinely under threat – such as Hungary – media regulatory reforms have followed the exact same principle: concentrating power in the hands of the executive at the expense of parliament. …
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