ChapterPDF Available

Institutional Forms of Media Ownership and their Modes of Power

  • January 2016
  • In book: The Journalistic Institution Reexamined: Digital Challenges and Professional Reorientations
  • Publisher: Intellect
  • Editors: Martin Eide, Leif Ove Larsen, Helle Sjøvaag
Authors:
Rodney Benson at New York University
Rodney Benson
Download full-text PDFDownload full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation
Benson 2016 Media Ownership chapt
er.pdf
Content uploaded by Rodney Benson
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Rodney Benson on Jan 08, 2017
Content may be subject to copyright.
2015 Benson Modes of Media Owneship Power 5.1 FINAL changes accepte
d.docx
Content uploaded by Rodney Benson
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Rodney Benson on Jun 02, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.

Supplementary resource (1)

Final Published Version
Data
January 2016
Rodney Benson
... Media ownership is an important concept under the theoretical framework of political economy in the media domain. Benson (2016) classified three configurations of ownerships in journalism: public (government), commercial (both privately held and publicly held stock) and civil society (nonprofit or nongovernmental organizations [NGOs]). The two most dominant forms of media ownership worldwide are state ownership and concentrated private ownership. ...
... Ownership might impact the structural dynamic shaping digital journalists' working conditions and, in consequence, newsrooms' innovation strategies and practices (Cohen, 2018;Krumsvik, 2015;Krumsvik et al., 2013). Benson (2016) conceptualized modes of ownership as comprising four broad categories: political instrumentalism, business instrumentalism, public service orientation and commitment and audience/market adjustment. Different forms of ownership may influence whether a news outlet's goals are more market and profit-oriented or more professional and quality-oriented (Demers, 1996;Krumsvik et al., 2013). ...
... Different forms of ownership may influence whether a news outlet's goals are more market and profit-oriented or more professional and quality-oriented (Demers, 1996;Krumsvik et al., 2013). Media with diverse forms of ownership will be able to practice various types of journalism (Benson, 2016). For instance, in privately owned outlets, market forces can strongly impact newsrooms' management structure. ...
Private and public ownership in the drive toward digital innovations in newspaper newsrooms
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2021
This research explores the impact of ownership on innovations in U.S. newspaper newsrooms by constructing a structural equation model (SEM). The study, using an online survey (N = 1,063), found that social media triggers a paradigm shift—newspapers owned by publicly held, for-profit companies excel in social media innovations and create more social media friendly innovations milieus than newspapers owned by privately held, for-profit companies. Journalists from the publicly held newspapers engage with audiences more on social media than privately held newspapers. The more journalists engage on Twitter, the more they tend to have a negative attitude toward social media. However, the more journalists at publicly held newspapers engage on Facebook, the more they tend to hold a positive attitude toward social media, opposite of journalists at privately held newspapers.
View
... Typically, media ownership is highly concentrated with a handful of corporations or wealthy families controlling large parts of the (national) media markets (Pickard, 2016;Benson, 2019;Ferschli et al., 2019). This leads to the disciplining power of wealthy owners on the journalism conducted in their respective media houses either explicitly (e.g. based on editorial policies) or implicitly (e.g. based on hiring practices, in which training, qualification and/or socialcultural backgrounds of the journalists play an important role; see Benson, 2016 andMosco, 2009). A prime example in this regard is the selection of personnel for the editors-in-chief (Herman and Chomsky 1988: Ch xi, pp. ...
Wealth taxation in the Austrian Press from 2005 to 2020: a critical political economy analysis
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2023
This study focuses on the Austrian media coverage of wealth taxes by conducting a content analysis of all commentary pieces published in 2005–2020 by five Austrian daily newspapers. We find (i) that the majority of commentaries take a negative position towards wealth taxation, (ii) that journalists write more negative comments than guest authors do and (iii) 50 argumentative patterns in five main categories. In light of these findings, we discuss several potential drivers of the predominantly negative wealth taxation coverage: the high degree of ownership concentration by wealthy families and institutions in the Austrian newspaper market, the importance of advertising to fund newspapers and the influence of elite institutions as providers of information. Finally, we embed our findings in recent literature and illustrate similarities and differences of the German and Austrian media coverage of wealth taxation.
View
... A lors qu'elle est au centre du débat sur l'indépendance des médias, la question des relations entre l'actionnariat et les politiques éditoriales est longtemps restée une boîte noire dans la sociologie française : « La relation entre les journalistes et les propriétaires n'est ni la mieux identifiée ni la plus connue, en dépit des nombreux articles qui accompagnent notamment les rachats des groupes de presse » (Sonnac, Gabszewicz 2010, p. 74). A contrario, aux États-Unis, plusieurs chercheurs ont tenté d'étudier empiriquement ces relations (Bogart, 1955, Chomsky, 1985, Benson, 2016. Éric Phélippeau et Philippe Ragouet ont remarqué le même décalage concernant le financement des activités politiques entre l'abondante littérature scientifique outre-Atlantique et l'absence de travaux dans l'Hexagone. ...
View
Wer beherrscht die Medien? Zur Einfassung des Journalismus durch Technologiekonzerne
Chapter
Full-text available
  • May 2023
Zusammenfassung Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt am Beispiel journalistischer Medien in Deutschland, wie Technologiekonzerne alle Ebenen der journalistischen Informationsproduktion und -distribution beeinflussen. Dazu wird der Begriff des media capture zum Konzept des media environment capture erweitert, welches den zunehmenden direkten und indirekten Einfluss von Technologiekonzernen auf journalistische Medienunternehmen erfasst und systematisiert. Gezeigt werden kann, wie vielfältig Konzernentscheidungen auf Medientechnologie, -innovation, -politik und -recht einwirken, medienrelevante Wissenschaft, Forschung und Förderung beeinflussen und auch weit in das Innere der ökonomischen Organisation des Journalismus hineinreichen. Längst sind nicht nur einzelne Orte, Prozesse und Akteure in der Öffentlichkeit privaten Interessen unterworfen, vielmehr wird zusätzlich der Kommunikationsraum zwischen allen an der öffentlichen Debatte partizipierenden Akteur:innen und um sie herum kommerzialisiert.
View
Theorizing “Co-operative Advantage” in News-Markets: Rethinking Media-Ownership, Renewing the Sociology of Journalism’s Radical Tradition, and Reframing Democratic Media Reform
Article
  • Jan 2023
The sociology of journalism has traditionally neglected news co-operatives’ potential. This largely reflects the investor-owned news sector’s entrenched growth through most of the twentieth Century. However, investors increasingly fail to sustain quality, independent journalism into the twenty-first Century. This failure creates openings for the co-operative news-sector’s expansion and media democratization, practical projects implicitly intertwined with the theoretical project of renewing the sociology of journalism’s radical tradition. Embedded within Curran’s media reform model, this theoretical essay therefore blends co-operative and journalism studies’ conceptualizations to more rigorously account for news co-operation’s evolving prospects. Drawing from Spear’s general theory of co-operative advantage, I argue news co-ops have six inbuilt advantages over investor-owned media firms. The emerging news sector’s varied governance types, development trajectories, and examples demonstrate how co-operative advantages are relevant to news-markets. This novel conceptual synthesis thus illustrates that a more robust focus on co-operative news innovations can both renew the sociology of journalism’s radical tradition and inform the news industry’s democratic reconstruction.
View
The Markets for News: Enduring Structures in the Age of Business Model Disruptions
Book
  • Oct 2022
In the face of ongoing digitisation, The Markets for News examines how certain established economic features of the news industry have persisted and what makes them such stable frameworks for journalistic organisations. Drawing on an analysis of Scandinavian news industries, this text revises journalism’s economic foundations in the context of the algorithmically driven platform economy. Exploration of features such as journalism’s two-sided market model, the network effect of platforms, and chain ownership, leads to a discussion about how journalism faces disruption from the introduction of artificial intelligence in the production, dissemination, and sale of news. As journalism undergoes transformations due to revenue losses, this book recognises a return to certain enduring features of journalism’s organisational form, in particular the chain ownership form, that enables scale in adapting to platform logics and economics. This text serves as a basis for a theoretical discussion about strategic media management and critical political economy in the age of digital disruption.
View
Die Medienberichterstattung zur Vermögens- und Erbschaftsbesteuerung in Deutschland: eine korpuslinguistische Analyse
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2022
Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Berichterstattung zur Vermögens- und Erbschaftsbesteuerung im frühen 21. Jahrhundert (2000 bis 2018) in sieben deutschen Tages- und Wochenzeitungen ( Welt am Sonntag, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung und taz ). Der Artikel ist in der Tradition der Politischen Ökonomie der Medien verortet, die die mediale Verbreitung von Diskursen über gesellschaftliche Prozesse als konstitutiv auch für Präferenzen zu wirtschaftspolitischen Fragen ansieht. Medien geben nicht nur Informationen weiter, sondern tragen zur Konstruktion der sozialen Realität bei, indem die Diskurse in die Bevölkerung diffundieren. Internationale empirische Forschungen zur Medienberichterstattung über ökonomische Ungleichheit und die diesbezüglichen Umverteilungsmaßnahmen bilden die Grundlage der hier vorgestellten Studie. Die Analyse stützt sich auf Methoden der Korpuslinguistik und kommt zu vier zentralen Ergebnissen: erstens zeigt sich im Zeitverlauf, dass die Intensität der Berichterstattung von starken zeitlichen Schwankungen gekennzeichnet ist. Eine systematische Zunahme der Berichterstattung ist dabei aber nicht festzustellen, obwohl die Thematik im Kontext der stark ausgeprägten Vermögensungleichheit steht, deren verstärkte Debatte besteht. Der inhaltliche Fokus liegt zweitens auf der (partei)politischen Ebene, hat eine eindeutig monetäre Dimension, und lässt einen Zusammenhang mit gesellschaftspolitischen und wirtschaftlichen Diskursen, die im Kontext der Vermögens- und Erbschaftsbesteuerung stehen (z. B. ökonomische Ungleichheit, Umverteilungswirkungen usw.), auffällig wenig erkennen. Die Analyse einzelner, ausgewählter Zeiträume verstärkt drittens den Befund, dass die (partei)politische Ebene dabei im Vordergrund steht, da Kontroversen im politischen Raum und Reformdebatten die dominanten Anlässe der Berichterstattung darstellen. Viertens ergibt die Analyse der einzelnen Zeitungen, dass die Ausrichtung der Berichterstattung in allen Zeitungen durchaus ähnlich ausgerichtet ist; einige Differenzen ergeben sich hinsichtlich unternehmensbezogener Aspekte ( Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag und FAZ ), Details zur Ausgestaltung der Steuern ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) sowie dem Zusammenhang zwischen Erbschafts- und Vermögenssteuern mit Krisenentwicklungen und dem Klimawandel ( taz ).
View
News You Can Use to Promote Your Interests: Media Ownership Forms and Economic Instrumentalism
Article
  • Nov 2021
While media ownership has often been studied, too little attention has been accorded to one aspect of news coverage—promotional economic instrumentalism (EI)—evident in a news organization's tendency to mention and praise its ownership interests (owners, investors, and associated economic interests). Such distorted news coverage may constitute an ethical conflict of interest and a failure to provide complete information needed by citizens in a democracy. Drawing on a sample of 19 U.S. news outlets, we compare promotional EI across ownership forms. Stock market-traded media mention their ownership interests most often, while conglomerates with substantial non-news media holdings combine relatively frequent mentions with a higher proportion of positive mentions than other media. Privately held media also engage in significant promotional EI. Thus, both profit maximization and amenity potential motives are at work. Journalistic professionalism appears most associated with neutral mentions rather than critical scrutiny. Case studies of competing news outlets show that ownership interests linked to one outlet may be critically exposed by a competing outlet, lessening the rival’s capacity to engage in non-transparent promotion.
View
Profit Versus Partisan Causes in Diverse Ownership Models: A Case Study of Mainstream Newspapers in East Indian City of Kolkata
Article
  • Oct 2021
The extant scholarship of media ownership, largely drawn from Anglo-Saxon studies, focuses on how corporate excesses translate to abuses of the public interest goal of journalism, paying less attention to ‘political instrumentalism’. This research aims to study how the complex interplay of business and political instrumentalism influences editorial policies in diversely owned, regional and national news media through a case study of commercially run newspapers’ coverage of anti-industrialization protests in the East Indian city of Kolkata. Through political–economic critiques and thematic analysis of newspaper articles and qualitative interviews, this research asserts the importance of the role of the ‘proprietor-editor’ and the binaries of regional/ national newspaper markets in the interplay of business and political instrumentalism in diversely owned news media.
View
Unionizing digital newsrooms
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Dec 2020
View
Brueggemann, M., Esser, F., & Humprecht, E. (2012). The Strategic Repertoire of Publishers in the Media Crisis. Journalism Studies, 13, 742-752.
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 2012
Germany could be considered a deviant case in the comparative study of the current transformations in media markets as publishers continue to be profitable despite painting a gloomy picture of the possibility of there being a “media crisis.” What is specific about the German case is the strong economic position and political lobbying of the publisher associations. Combining different sources of primary and secondary data, this article investigates five strategies of crisis management (“the five Cs”): media companies may react to the current changes by cutting down costs and creating new products. They may further try to influence the general framework conditions by complaining about their plight in public (discursive strategy), taking competitors to court (legal strategy) and wooing politicians through lobbying and campaigning (political strategy). The article concludes that the sustainable provision of journalistic value benefits the most from creative, productive strategies.
View
When innovation meets legacy
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 2012
Journalism's transition from an industrial age to an information age and the unstable economics of profit-driven newsmaking have allowed for an unprecedented level of citizen input and involvement in the making of news. Here, new relationships between legacy and innovative newsmaking are forged and new models of newsmaking emerge. In this article, we discuss the case of The New Orleans Eye, an attempt at innovative newsmaking rooted in an individual citizen who started blogging in the wake of hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Eye is a largely foundation-funded, non-profit online news organization composed of bloggers and former ink reporters, and has a unique relationship with the local Fox television station. We treat The New Orleans Eye as an example of a mixed-media system and discuss the tensions that emerge over innovative newsmaking within a context of a profit-driven legacy news industry and a neoliberal state.
View
Capital and Control: Consequences of Different Forms of Newspaper Ownership
Article
  • Feb 2008
Debates over the effects and efficacy of different forms of newspaper ownership are rising. This article elucidates the debates by exploring private, public, not-for-profit, and employee ownership using economic and managerial theory about ownership and control of enterprises. It shows the managerial and economic conditions that emerge under the different forms of ownership, their implications, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. The article concludes that there is no perfect form of newspaper ownership.
View
View
Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company
Article
  • Jul 2001
"Taking Stock" explores the place of newspaper journalism in the publicly traded newspaper companies. It does so through an analysis at the level of the firm and the organization of the publicly held business entity and its subsidiaries, analyzing financial operations, organization and control arrangements; influences of various investor groups and market forces on management of the holding companies and the operating newspaper companies; the dynamics of financial and operating control; and incentives placed throughout the firm to orient employees, including newsroom personnel, to corporate objectives. The technological and surrounding economic environments in which the newspaper firms operate are also analyzed in detail. The objective of the analysis is to draw conclusions about the consequences to journalism of the commerce in newspaper company stock, much of it by large institutional investors; and the influence of investment markets on the operation and incentives within the public firms. James Risser describes the book as "a pathbreaking work...which will produce intense discussion and soul-searching in the newspaper industry, as it should."
View
What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers
Article
We construct a new index of media slant that measures the similarity of a news outlet's language to that of a congressional Republican or Democrat. We estimate a model of newspaper demand that incorporates slant explicitly, estimate the slant that would be chosen if newspapers independently maximized their own profits, and compare these profit-maximizing points with firms' actual choices. We find that readers have an economically significant preference for like-minded news. Firms respond strongly to consumer preferences, which account for roughly 20 percent of the variation in measured slant in our sample. By contrast, the identity of a newspaper's owner explains far less of the variation in slant. Copyright 2010 The Econometric Society.
View