"Perhaps more impressive is the progress of cross-national cooperation among publishing houses and broadcasting stations. It is accompanied by a frightening concentration process of the European media industry. Bertelsmann, Pearson and Berlusconi’s Mediaset are creating European TV empires – and the conglomerate which Saban inherited from Kirch will probably soon join the club. Long before any Eastern European country could become a member of the Community, most of them were colonized by media conglomerates from Western Europe; Scandinavian Publishing Houses like Schibstedt exert a strong influence in the Baltic countries, German companies like Bauer, Burda, Springer, the Passauer Neue Presse Group, and the WAZ Group are omnipresent in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Russia, and in the Balkans. The Swiss Ringier Group owns print media in Hungary, Rumania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. For the “big guys” in the media industry, national borders obviously play a less and less significant role. They have been creating Europe for quite a while. [...] But what about journalism? At a first, and at a second glance, journalism
is lagging hopelessly behind. Thus, addressing the “Limits, Opportunities, and Challenges” of a European Journalism means to begin with the Limits." [Information des Anbieters] |