CONCENTRATION OF OWNERSHIP due to Google Facebook ad dominance

The newspaper industry has been based on ad revenue since the scrapping of stamp duty (tax) in 1851 led to a sharp increase in professionalism, with production (and distribution) costs exceeding revenue from cover price. As Curran and Seaton argue in great detail in Power Without Responsibility, this led to a mass closure of ‘radical press’ titles and consolidation and concentration of ownership by wealthy individuals who pursued right-wing agendas such as low business taxes and attacking trade unions/workers rights.

The modern-day online migration of ad revenue (one major consequence of disruption from digitisation, the other being the youth market almost disappearing as a paid-for print media market: steep circulation decline) is an important factor in any possible change to press regulation.

The industry is struggling for survival, so tougher regulation, especially that proposed by Impress, linked to the Royal Charter idea that Leveson proposed, which would see newspapers routinely charged for the legal fees of accusers even if their complaints were ultimately rejected, could result in mass closure and a further loss of pluralism.

Guardian: Newsquest targets Archant as newspaper consolidation gathers pace.

“Consolidation is inevitable,” Ashley Highfield, chief executive of Johnston Press, owner of the Scotsman and Yorkshire Post, said last week. “It’s the obvious and necessary road ahead and smaller publishers increasingly cannot survive without being part of bigger groups to bring economies of scale and shared content.”
Last year, Johnston Press, the UK’s second-biggest regional newspaper group, paid Evgeny Lebedev, owner of the Evening Standard and Independent websites, £24m for national newspaper the i to bulk up the publisher’s scale. It also was one of a number of suitors, including Lebedev, to look at buying national freesheet Metro when DMGT, which owns the Daily Mail, tested market appetite for a sale.

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The shift of readers away from printed newspapers, which have traditionally provided the bulk of revenues and profits through sales and advertising, has been profound over the last decade.
Total weekly regional newspaper circulation fell by half from 42m to 22m between 2009 and 2016 , with paid-for copies falling from 26m to 13.8m, according to Enders Analysis. Similarly, the national newspaper market has shrunk from selling 9.3m copies per day in 2009 to 5.2m last year.
On Tuesday, investors in Trinity Mirror, the publisher of the Mirror titles, will vote to approve a £200m takeover of Richard Desmond’s Express and Star titles as the national newspaper industry faces the same issue of the need to build scale to survive in the battle for advertising against the tech giants.
The impact on publishers’ bottom line has been further affected by lower rates for digital advertising, exacerbated by giants such as Facebook and Google hoovering up to 90% of all new ad money being spent online.
Since 2008, almost £800m in ad spend has been stripped from national newspapers, from £1.54bn in 2008 to £757m last year. The impact is even more stark in regional newspapers, which have seen ad revenue fall from £2bn in 2008 to £723m last year, according to figures from Group M.
“In order to survive, consolidation is key to compete with the online players and retain some share of digital advertising,” says Alice Pickthall, media analyst at Enders.
“As the digital market grows, publishers aren’t seeing a proportionate amount of share gain. Facebook has had an especially big impact on the local market. If a local business is offered a lovely shiny [presence] on Facebook who wouldn’t use it? The largest [traditional] players in the market will win, they will continue to pick up smaller publishers to maintain scale in a shrinking market.”

Greenslade sums up why IPSO isn't credible

Greenslade has an interesting position: opposed to statutory intervention but argues that IPSO remains a regulator The Guardian should refuse to sign up to, for reasons he makes very clear...

Why I have opposed the Guardian being regulated by Ipso.

Why I reject press regulation through the royal charter.

Impress is here to stay. Let’s quit the barricades and think anew about press regulation.

Press freedom danger if MPs vote in section 40 by the back door.

MPs and peers question independence of press watchdog.

Mass media doomed, democracy too with churnalism?

Roy Greenslade recently opined that UK newspapers have reached the cliff edge, and could die out en masse very quickly now. The spark was a dreadful set of annual returns showing even the juggernaut of the Daily Mail struggling with print advertising.

Read article here.

Curran and Seaton looked back to the supposed liberalisation and birth of a free press with the 1853 scrapping of tax on newspapers, highlighting the role that advertisers played in deciding which papers survived the shake up. They found that it was mostly radical (left-wing) papers that closed, with advertisers effectively boycotting titles that spread news or views that undermined their parent businesses capitalist prospects (for instance by spreading knowledge of the trade union movement and fostering a working class consciousness).

Chomsky included advertisers as one of the five filters removing counter-hegemonic ideas and information from mainstream media in his propaganda model.

The role that advertisers can play in shaping editorial was shown when Telegraph columnist Peter Oborne revealed the paper had spiked pieces critical of major advertiser HSBC.

Today's very right-wing S*n newspaper grew out of a left-wing Daily Herald that faced secret services harassment but ultimately folded because they couldn't win sufficient advertising, despite offering the largest newspaper circulation in the country (at one stage the world!) at a time.

What do IPSO, the press regulator, have to say on this? Nothing.

Is this time of extreme pressure a good one to toughen up regulation of the press, with Impress if recognised and granted a royal charter threatening to bring huge fines to the table?

The BBFC arguably showed with their refusal to re-rate Postman Pat to PG that they wouldn't create such financial, business issues for film distributors once a film is in cinemas (all the marketing material, and even the trailer and actual film prints, would need replacing!). Perhaps then it is right if similar leniency is shown to a financially struggling industry ... or maybe the basic principles at stake are just too important to dilute?

Either way, without professional journalism, what hope has democracy got? The churnalists of the Daily Mail website are controversial as they largely rewrite other papers work and re-present it as their own. Google and Facebook are likewise feasting off the expensive product created by mass media papers.

Mass media is over, but where does journalism go from here? (Greenslade, 2016)

With advertising being so utterly dominated by just two online giants, how can a press pay for its content in future? The Times and S*n have both shown that newspaper online subscriptions are a very, very hard sell indeed.

IPSO royal stamp while Impress slammed

In Publishers object to Impress's attempt to gain charter recognition you can read about the NMA (News Media Association, representing the UK press) and their 45 page response to the attempt by Impress to get a royal charter. They are not happy that this would mean Leveson proposals coming in for the entire industry (especially fines and legal fees) and point out that Impress only regulates a handful of hyper-local papers and is funded almost exclusively by one private donor, Max Mosley (who sued the Murdoch press for invasion of privacy) ... AND doesn't have a published code of conduct.

Meantime the Queen has formally complained to IPSO for the first time, a high profile seal of approval for the regulator, over the inaccuracy (Editor's Code Clause 1: Accuracy) of The S*n's page 1 lead "Queen backs Brexit".

Seems one is not amused by this.

Palace complains to watchdog over Sun's 'Queen backs Brexit' claims. 

That story has legs - The Sun are confident their story IS accurate; this could turn from being the Establishment seal of approval to a bitter, rather serious (it raises constitutional issues over the neutrality of the monarchy and, potentially, the thorny issue of protecting press sources' privacy and identity) political row. Big stakes.

The Queen versus the Sun - will Ipso back the paper's source?

Here's a third story from today (4 if you look at the trans outing post) highlighting the complexity of press regulation, and why the PCC was recognised as a failure: sportsman going to the courts, not the regulator, to seek justice, and getting a printed apology and a libel payout.

Express Newspapers to pay 'substantial damages' to Jimmy White.

IMPRESS signs up obscure titles but could grab power

IN THIS POST: Peter Preston savages Impress' credentials and strategy; despite only signing up 4 micro-local titles they could bring about statutory powers that include draconian fees for newspapers whether they have signed up to Impress or not. You'll find further Impress resources at the bottom of this post. Read more on press regulation on the Media Guardian here.

Impress boast of their actually humble beginnings. Note the new domain: http://impress.press/

Peter Preston's weekly column is mostly on the Saville case, and is useful for highlighting the consequences of the incessant political pressure on the Beeb.

However, its the fiery, furious final two paragraphs that grabbed my attention, coming to a conclusion that hadn't occurred to me. Greenslade had reported that Impress was to announce its initial sign-ups, but when this proved not to be the IPSO refuseniks like The Guardian I switched off.

Preston flags up that despite the absurdity of Impress' starting slate, four micro-local titles, this could see the severe powers to fine newspapers, whether signed up or not, heavy amounts. In his own words:

LEVESON IPSO PR war as Hacked Off fail to Impress industry

A good summary by Greenslade of the binary opposite views of Hacked Off and (most of) the press on the Leveson Report: a righteous attack on and firm legal proposals to improve the press vs an anti-democratic attack on a free press.

Hacked Off support Impress, a rival to IPSO that is seeking to win a royal charter - which would effectively put the entire press under a new legal regime, even though Impress has only signed up a farcically small number of hyper-local titles.

Without any possibility of a truce, let alone a settlement, the two sides spend a lot of time hurling verbal missiles at each other. 

The latest volley is the release of an “independent report” called Leveson’s Illiberal Legacy, produced by a press freedom group known as 89Up, published by the Free Speech Network and sponsored by three publishers: DMG Media, News UK and the Telegraph Media group. 

According to an article in the Daily Mail, the report makes “a devastating attack” on the Leveson inquiry, which “became a tool for a determined group of lobbyists [Hacked Off] to use regulation to erode press freedom.”  

The report states that laws rushed through in the wake of Leveson “pose the most substantial threat to British press freedom in the modern era”. It also poses an “imminent danger” to local newspapers. 

It calls on the government to annul the royal charter and to repeal sections of the crime and courts act.

Publishers and opponents treat the Leveson report like holy scripture.

Press Recognition Panel tour reminder of statutory power as Leveson outcome

See http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk

This has been generally overlooked, but there was a partial statutory element to the Leveson settlement agreed in parliament. Publishers who do not sign up to a regulator passed as meeting the requirements for royal charter (28 criteria to fulfil) are open to 'exemplary damages' in court judgements.

From PRP homepage.

Those who do are at risk of much smaller penalties.

OfCom's power to levy multimillion fines and remove licenses (and the BBFC effectively has a 'licensing' power for distribution and exhibition) has been a sharp contrast to the toothless press regulators. This hitherto obscure legislation could change that - and could see the likes of the Guardian consider signing up to a Royal Chartered regulator.

Impress is seeking this recognition; IPSO has repeated that it is not.

YOU can attend public meetings on a UK 'tour' by the PRP; see Greenslade's article for details.

Press Recognition Panel launches its consultation process.

Press regulation’s tortured history since the Leveson report has reached a new phase with the launch of a consultation process by the Press Recognition Panel (PRP). 

Readers who have forgotten that the royal charter remains in force, despite the formation of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), may need a reminder here: the PRP, which came into being in November 2014, is the body that will decide whether press regulators meet the recognition criteria recommended in the Leveson report. 

Ipso, which was set up by some of Britain’s leading newspaper and magazine publishers, has let it be known that it will not seek recognition. But the PRP is forging ahead, as required by the charter. There are major groups that have not signed up to Ipso - including the Guardian, Financial Times and the Independent titles - plus a plethora of smaller publishers. 

And it emerged at the first of several public consultation sessions, staged at the London School of Economics on Tuesday evening, that a nascent alternative press regulator, Impress, is likely to sign up several of those small publishers. 

It appears that under the terms of the crime and courts act many hyperlocal outfits would be deemed as “relevant publishers”. So the PRP’s chair, David Wolfe QC, believes they would benefit from joining a recognised regulator in order to protect them from the imposition by courts of exemplary damages and legal costs. 

To gain charter recognition, a regulator will need to fulfil all 28 criteria and Wolfe explained that his body is currently engaged in trying to define some of those criteria that “lack clarity”.

Nov2014: Impress to rival IPSO, Guardian/Indie/FT in neither

Greenslade: unconvinced by 'new' regulator IPSO

A quick catch-up on the on-going post-Leveson mess that is press regulation (or perhaps more accurately Media Guardian articles:
the on-going absence of press regulation), with reference to three recent

1. "Press regulation déjà vu: 'new' Ipso and the old PCC resemble each other" (Roy Greenslade);
2. "Walter Merricks appointed chair of new independent monitor for the press" (Joshua Rozenberg, law expert);
3. "Commission refuses to register press regulation funder as a charity" (Greenslade2).

Lets start with this from Greenslade2:
An attempt to create a charity to fund the independent press regulator Impress has been rejected. The Charity Commission refused to register an organisation called the Independent Press Regulation Trust (IPRT).
...