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Harsha Subramaniam

Why does ownership of the media matter? This is what Gillian Doyle in her book Media Ownership attempts to answer. Be it Government's policy on media or mega mergers of media companies or new technology in the media or the rise of `Moguls' such as Murdoch or Berlusconi — the media never misses an opportunity to attract attention to itself. Why, that's job of the media and that's how they earn their money, some can argue.

To offer a simplistic answer: the ability to influence and form public opinion wrests enormous power and responsibility with the media. And, therefore, ownership of media matters a great deal to any society.

In an attempt to explain the significance of ownership, the book first deals with the economics of a running a media company. Here, the author presents an interesting relationship between media ownership and pluralism.

The author argues that concentration of media in the hands of a few threatens `pluralism', which in a larger context shakes the foundation of democracy. Individual media owners can exercise undue influence and propagate a single political viewpoint, when they gain dominating control of supply. `Political pluralism' is affected when different political viewpoints are not represented in the media. It may also be affected when the media chooses to `over supply' a single opinion or when it blanks out an opposing idea. The author also says that `cultural pluralism' may also be a casualty of concentrated media ownership. She points out that social cohesion may be threatened unless the media acknowledges the cultures and values of various communities (those sharing a common language, race or creed)

The book also presents an analysis on `why' media ownership is concentrated? It is a classic vicious cycle — to become big you need resources. And, to have access to those resources you have to be big. Doyle explains that when media ownership is concentrated, quality of delivery suffers. This assumes that competition fosters efficiency. There is a pedestrian description on the type of expansion options for a media company and the concept of monopoly. This chapter neither offers a new idea nor can be matched to the depth of analysis in Ben Bagdikian's Media Monopoly.

But the best part of the book is how policy makers have responded to media concentration and convergence. The scale of mergers (AOL-Time Warner for instance) has created many socio-economic issues that need to be handled by governments. There is a brilliant chapter on `The Development of Regulation and Policy', which discusses the media ownership policy in the United Kingdom. The author also explains at length the factors that brought about the 1996 Broadcasting Act. However, it is also critical of the direction in which Government policy heading that facilitates the interests of media companies at the expense of pluralism.

On the whole, the book offers a broad overview of contemporary media environment with reference to UK and Europe. For those, who seek to understand the relationship between economics of the media and how it shapes public policy, this book makes great reading.

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