France - Media Pluralism Monitor 2014

MPM 2014 divides the risks for media pluralism into three categories, encompassing respectively legal, economic and socio-political aspects. The implementation of the MPM 2014 for France reveals to what extent media pluralism is at risk in the country. The report shows an overall low to medium risk for media pluralism. Existing laws and regulations comply with major safeguards that are measured by the legal indicators: freedom of expression, right to information, recognition of media pluralism, and independence of regulatory agencies, concentration limitation. France’s government is developing policies for media literacy, net neutrality, and open data.

Yet there is a trend that can be noticed regarding the balance between privacy protection and freedom of expression. France is shifting from a very strong legislation to protect individual privacy into taking the right of people to be informed on important matters – when judging defamation cases and breaches into privacy - into account more than they used to. This shift is not captured by MPM´s indicators since it is a change over time.

Overall, according to MPM’s indicators the French media system exhibits a moderate to high level of concentration. Unlike the UK, Germany or Italy, where the major media companies are almost exclusively focused on media-related activities, the French media ventures are not purely media players but are often part of larger commercial conglomerates. The MPM’s indicators show low to moderate socio-political risks to media pluralism. French people enjoy an excellent, nation-wide access to French media outlets.

Indicators 30 'Political control over media and distribution networks ownership' and 31 'Political control over media funding by advertising' show that there is no excessive politicisation of the French media system. No major daily newspaper and no broadcaster is either owned by, or has close links with, a political party or another political organisation. For a detailed evaluation of the MPM 2014 of France follow the attached link below.