According to the Newspaper Society: Its further advice on measuring media plurality and a new plurality framework has been sent to the Secretary of State Maria Miller and copied to the Leveson Inquiry.
Ofcom noted “that the existing regime to deal with the competition issues raised by local media mergers is widely perceived as being too onerous. This is not the place to address that concern, but we do believe it is important that it is not exacerbated by the plurality framework.”
Last October, former Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt asked Ofcom for advice in a follow up to its report on the proposed NewsCorp/BskyB transaction, which had suggested that the existing regulatory framework for measuring media plurality was out dated. Ofcom’s report, Measuring Media Plurality, was sent to the Culture Secretary and the Leveson Inquiry in June. This suggested a new periodic review of plurality every four or five years, looking across the UK wide news media market as a whole, print, broadcast, online including the BBC. The new review would take into account organic growth, mergers, possibly exits and other wider market developments. The periodic review would be in addition to merger reviews triggered by individual transactions, either as part of a new system, or in parallel with the existing merger regime.
Ofcom now suggests that the local or regional media should be excluded from the proposed periodic review of plurality, save so far as they contributed to plurality at UK level or that of the devolved nations. Ofcom’s report draws attention to the regional media’s criticism of the competition aspects of the existing local media merger regime as being too onerous. Ofcom believes that it is important that the local media’s concern should not be exacerbated by the plurality framework it proposes. It therefore recommends that the existing public interest grounds associated with the current mergers regime should be modified and that the Government should consider whether these should also only focus upon those which might affect plurality at the level of the UK or devolved nations, but not local areas.
The NS and its members have most recently raised the need for reform of the local media mergers regime in evidence to select committees, in meetings with Ofcom, the competition authorities and ministers. At the end of last year, around the time that the sale of seven weekly newspapers to KM Group was aborted after its referral to the Competition Commission, the Prime Minister told the Newspaper Conference annual lunch that he understood the industry’s frustration. The then Culture Secretary later gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Investigative Journalism about the DCMS review and consideration of future legislative changes.
