The future of Europe’s independent media relies on informed, light-touch law-making in Europe underpinned by sound industry self-regulation to ensure that we have:

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1. Freedom to report

2. Freedom to earn advertising revenue

3. Freedom to manage our intellectual property

4. Freedom to flourish along gatekeeping platforms

5. Freedom to compete with public service media

6. Freedom to regulate ourselves

 

All of these freedoms have been or continue to be under threat.

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Freedom to report

Our media perform a vital role in society in informing citizens about issues of importance and matters that they care about – everything from education and health to the economy and politics, wars and other world changing events, the environment and climate change, as well as life-style interests, travel, music and sport.

 

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Freedom to earn advertising revenue

Independent reporting costs money and our ability to earn advertising revenue has a direct impact on the number of pages in your newspaper, magazine, range of website content or on your choice of television or radio programmes.

Advertising revenues in huge part are not going to the media, but to gatekeeping platforms. New bans or legal restrictions on advertising have an immediate detrimental economic impact on the economic viability of the media.

 

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Freedom to manage our intellectual property

Copyright is not always respected online which means Europe’s cultural diversity and media pluralism are at stake. We distribute our content as widely as possible and our audience has never been greater thanks to website and mobile distribution of our content.

Audience is not our problem, but paid for our content monetised by online platforms remains challenging, requiring in some cases the intervention of competition authorities to bring dominant gatekeeping platforms to the negotiating table as the enforcement of the new press publisher’s right becomes a reality.

 

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Freedom to compete alongside gatekeeping platforms

It is essential to ensure that fair and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for publishers apply to all gatekeepers and their core platform services including online search engines, online social networking services, video-sharing platforms, marketplaces, web browsers, app stores, ad intermediation services, voice assistant technologies, and operating systems.

 

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Freedom to compete with public service media

It is essential for media pluralism and the maintenance of democracy that there should be fair play conditions to allow a free, independently funded European media to flourish alongside publicly funded media.

 

But public media now compete head on with publishers online, via mobile apps as well as with private broadcasters for audience share and in some cases advertising revenue. In order to prevent a crowding out effect there should be much clearer limits set by Member States on the ability of publicly funded state broadcasters to expand beyond their core public service remits through rigorous and independent scrutiny of their ever-expanding activities.

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Freedom to regulate ourselves

The EPC is naturally opposed to any attempts to curtail editorial freedom and would regard any legislative interference with editorial policy as censorship.

 

The freedom to advertise is an integral element of the freedom of expression which is why the EPC, together with colleagues from throughout the media and advertising industry in the European Advertising Standards Alliance, is committed to high standards of advertising practice. We continue to update and develop best practice in line with market and technological changes.

Further information available from www.easa-alliance.org