For this assignment, I chose to focus on France and its media landscape. According to the sources I found, there is very little transparency in France’s current media landscape, with much more corruption than freedom of press. The French government has little control, however, of the press, and from an article on France’s current media owners, by Reporters Without Borders, the author writes, “The French state and its offshoots constitute only 1% of print and online media owners, but public ownership in the broadcast media is much higher - 43%.” (RWB) Also, in 1944, a council called the National Resistance Council created a law that required newspaper owners to cite the names of their owners, but apparently was not enforced enough for it to make a difference. That changed, though, a few years back in 2016 when a similar act was formed, making it more strict on newspaper companies to publish their back-end information.
(Image Courtesy: Study EU)
While a large portion of the state of France’s media is more or less in the hands of a few individual people and companies, the data shows that these newspaper owners are going out of fashion anyway. From the Media Landscape source, there is information about the change in how France’s population consumes media, “The consumption of non-print media is gradually rising in France (around 66 million of inhabitants). In 2014, 86.6 percent of French individuals watched TV programs daily (compared to 85.7 percent in 2004 and 89.3 percent in 2009) through all different devices (TV set, computer, tablet, mobile phones) during 3 hours and 41 minutes.” (Media Landscape)
In contrast, I read an article from The Local France on the French newspaper “Canard Enchaine” and how it is a long-standing staple not defeated by modern media, “But Le Canard Enchainé refuses to post its reports on its website. It accepts no advertising. Its journalists are its only shareholders, and its finances are among the healthiest in the French media landscape.” (The Local France)
(Image Courtesy: The Local France)
And when it comes to freedom of the press and how the public is treated when interacting with media in France, according to the Digital Divide Freedom House Report from Chapter 15, France is considered in the “free” zone, where content is less censored and less restrictive. However, I found an article entitled, “A French Lesson for the American Media” which discussed the email scandals of mid-2017, and how they were handled in the U.S. press. The author writes, “French media laws are stricter than American laws, and government officials argued against publication of the hacked information. But only the campaigns themselves were legally barred from making statements during the final weekend. Publications could have reported on the substance of the emails.” (New York Times) It is interesting to hear how the laws of the French media impacted this particular issue.
I also came across this video explaining more about the ownership of media globally, and how that could relate to French media in a current day. According to the video, “Comcast is the single largest cable provider on earth…” and it goes on to discuss all the major media companies. I found it interesting that all of the largest media companies are USA-founded and operated, but impact the entire globe.
(Video: NowThis)
With hybridization in our current media landscape, there is a greater sense of convergence in how information is processed and spread across the world. It is interesting to see this play out in both the U.S. and in France, and how both of these countries have similar issues with it. An article from The Center for Media, Data, and Society highlights the comparison, “The U.S. and France have distinct media systems – the U.S. news model is advertising-dependent and based on objectivity whereas the French news model is government subsidized and opinion-based – yet they face similar challenges.” (CEU Public Policy) These similar challenges involve a change in how the public typically views media and accesses it on a daily basis. It has become more and more difficult for media conglomerates to keep up with this understanding of how media transmitted.
(Image: The Telegraph)
Additionally, there is a discrepancy between the revenue generated by American newspapers in contrast to French, as an example, “In terms of market exposure, Seattle news outlets were much more exposed than French outlets. The Seattle Times, for example, earned 90% of its revenue from advertising in 2009 while advertising revenues for La Dépêche in Toulouse in the same year were only 36.5%.” (CEU Public Policy) Plus, the U.S. does not have the same type of employment laws as France does regarding how costly it is to fire an employee. So from the standpoint of a news or media outlet, laying off a journalist in France is much more costly to the company than it would be in the U.S. This causes an increase in journalist loyalty and how established contributors are in France versus the U.S.
Ultimately, there are a variety of stark differences between how the United States media front operates versus the operations of the French media landscape, from the laws to the way journalists are treated. There are also a decent amount of similarities, such as how free citizens are to consume media without much restriction. This was a fascinating look at how global the media industry is and how much the United States has an impact on the rest of the world, specifically in France.
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