Government interference

I've belatedly found a wonderful survey from May last year on trust in the media. As usual, the relevant cross-tabs are buried behind several links. The juiciest information for my purposes comes with the agree/disagree responses to the statement, "The government interferes too much in the media in our country". The question isn't ideal for gauging the actual level of interference - one may think that there's a high level of government interference, but there should be more; or that there's a low level of interference, but there should be less still - but nonetheless, the results are useful.

(% Agree, government interferes too much):

1. Nigeria: 75%
2. South Korea: 71%
3. Brazil: 64%
4. Indonesia: 59%
5. United Kingdom: 58%
6. India: 56%
7. USA: 52%
8. Egypt: 49%
9. Russia: 49%
10. Germany: 32%

Surprisingly low positions for Russia and Egypt perhaps impaired by the low availability of alternatives. Where alternatives are available, as in South Korea (highest usage of internet as a news source worldwide), resentment at government interference seems to grow - although public broadcaster KBS is still the most trusted media brand, strangely enough.

For the record, 51% of Italians believe the government's influence on public broadcaster Rai to be excessive. Maybe Italians are equally bad judges of the richness of their media ecology as Russians and Egyptians seem to be.

Rai to become a public foundation

Minister for Communications Paolo Gentiloni today unveiled a blueprint for the future of Italian public service broadcaster Rai. Rai is to become a public foundation which shall nominate the executives of the company and decide on the value of the licence fee in conjunction with the government. Public service and commercial broadcasting will be entrusted to distinct divisions; these two, and a third network division, will be overseen by the foundation.
The creation of the foundation is welcome. A number of positive aspects:

• political appointees will now have an oversight role, not an executive one. The Foundation shall appoint the consiglio di amministrazione (managing board), which, if the name means anything, will have executive responsibility. This is a great improvement over the current system, where the consiglio di amministrazione is nominated by the Parliament, but shares executive power (and cedes executive initiative) with the Director-General.
• foundation members' time in office will allow for strategic thinking. Foundation members will be appointed for six year terms; one-third of the membership may be replaced every two years. The six year term should allow for members to plan ahead without being shackled by a biennial appointments circus. Partial renewal should ensure that the Foundation's collective intelligence isn't destroyed after each term.
• division between public- and advertising-financed content will help Rai's image. At the moment, the quality of Rai's programming - of Italian television in general - is low. Consequently, Rai is often hostage to licence-fee strikes, as irate consumers renege on their licence fees in protest at low quality. If the (popular, sometimes entertaining) lowest-denominator crap moves to the advertising financed channel, then it should reduce the grounds for licence fee strikes. There is a risk that public service content will rapidly become a cultural ghetto - but some parts of Rai - i.e., Rai 3 - have become quite good at winning ratings with public service content.

At the same time, there are some unclear aspects:

• the appointment mechanism has yet to be decided. There are two options: the Spanish and the German. In the first model, six members are nominated by the regions, and appointed by the Parliament with a two-thirds majority; the President is nominated by the Presidents of the two Chambers, and appointed by the Parliament with a two-thirds majority. In the German model, the board is larger, and is drawn from civil society groups.
• the financing mechanism is unclear. According to the guidelines, the value of the licence fee will be set every three years by the Government on the basis of a proposal by the Foundation, which will reflect the cost of producing Rai's public service content. It would be nice to see some mention of automatic inflation-uprating there; I don't put it past future right-wing governments to starve Rai of funds by freezing the value of the licence fee in real and nominal terms.

If you ask me for my recommendations, then:

• appointments should not be made by civil society groups. Although it sounds desirable to free such an exquisitely political body from political appointments entirely, that's to ignore the fact that much of Italian civil society is also exquisitely political. Who can imagine a nominee from CGIL (the leftist trade union) acting as anything other than a left-wing activist? This model - the German - failed pretty badly when exported to Hungary; I have no reason to suspect that Italian civil society is markedly more independent from parties than Hungarian civil society.
  
• the licence fee settlement should be made for six years, and uprated in line with inflation: if the contract between the Ministry and Rai for public service programming is to last six years, why shouldn't the licence fee? This would aid planning, and put the issue beyond the range of any single legislature.

Countries that need to fix their media systems

I've been doing some research for a term paper on comparing democracies. Using Coppedge and Reinicke's Polyarchy and Contestation data-set, I've identified those countries which would be perfect polyarchies were it not for their media systems, where government information is privileged. They are:

• Albania
• Botswana
• Cape Verde
• Croatia
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• Guyana
• Honduras
• Israel and the occupied territories
• Kiribati
• Mauritius
• Mexico
• Namibia
• Panama
• Ukraine

These countries are doing something right. That's to say, they score a one on fair elections, freedom of political organisation, and freedom of expression. But they're falling behind in their media systems. As the coding schema for the Coppedge and Reinicke data-set puts it:

Alternative sources of information are widely available but government versions are presented in preferential fashion. This may be the result of partiality in and greater availability of government-controlled media; selective closure, punishment, harassment, or censorship of dissident reporters, publishers, or broadcasters; or mild self-censorship resulting from any of these.

(The countries in the data-set are scored using the US State Department's Human Rights Report).

Invented story leads to real investigation

About two weeks ago, Enrico Deaglio alleged that the centre-right had attempted to steal the 2006 election by counting blank and invalid ballots as votes for the centre-right. Deaglio's argument didn't add up: the centre-right only had control over the projections at the Ministry of the Interior; the real votes were summed from the sub-totals of the several regional electoral commissions. Indeed, Deaglio was prosecuted for, in effect, a breach of the peace.

Yet as a consequence of Deaglio's arguments - which seem unconvincing and have been found to be so by the judicial system - the Italian Senate Committee for Elections has moved to recount the blank, wasted, and spoilt votes in seven regions.

It's not clear why these particular regions were chosen. They include regions won by the left and by the right, by narrow margins and by huge margins:

• Campania - 0.5% gap in favour of the left
• Calabria - 14.2% gap in favour of the left
• Lazio - 1.1% gap in favour of the right
• Lombardia - 14.3% gap in favour of the right
• Puglia - 4% in favour of the right
• Sicilia - 17.3% in favour of the right
• Toscana - 22.6% gap in favour of the left

Would be interesting to get a breakdown of the number of blank and spoiled ballots by region, and see whether the number of contested ballots in Campania and Lazio could result in a re-allocation of seats. Unfortunately, the Interior Ministry doesn't seem to have this data.

Newspapers didn't disappear; television might

Online video 'eroding TV viewing'

Rehearsals for departures

One departure, one arrival, and one return from the brink:

1. Michael Grade left the BBC. The decision was broken, as I understand it, in the Telegraph, and confirmed this morning. No news yet on salary, but it may top £2m. No news yet on how how he will be replaced. A former surgeon, acting Chair Chitra Bharucha looks unlikely to step up to the top seat. I suggest the BBC will go from someone outside of the media who is happy with a regulatory rule. A former financial regulator, for example, would be a wonderful touch in the run up to the licence fee settlement.
2. Luis Férnandez was designated President of RTVE. In a boost for the broadcaster, Fernandez was nominated with the agreement of both the main parties. The remaining nominations to the council will be made on Monday. The rapid turnaround - one month of inter-regnum - augurs well for RTVE's future governability; though the demand of the United Left and nationalist parties to be represented on the 12 member party may still mean that nominees are closely identified with particular parties.
3. Silvio Berlusconi collapsed at a campaign rally before recovering. Rai quickly apologised for a comedy sketch mocking Berlusconi. Having not seen the sketch, I can't comment on whether it was in bad taste or not. I suspect it was (it would be hard for it to be otherwise), but Rai has certainly done well to applaud fulsomely and quickly.
   

News from Flanders

Variety has the most ridiculously over-blown style. Here it describes the sacking of VRT CEO Tony Mary after the Flemish government got pissed off with Mary's sale of a popular TV show to a pay-per-view competitor. Piet Van Roe replaces Mary.