ORCID
Valeria Caforio – 0009-0005-0778-9213
Keywords
competition law, regulation, freedom of expression, media pluralism
Abstract
In economic sectors where constitutional principles come to the fore, legislators must reconcile individual rights and freedoms with market principles, such as the arm’s length principle, and economic freedoms, particularly the freedom to conduct business. This balance is particularly significant in the media sector, where the principle of media pluralism is paramount. Media pluralism, as acknowledged by the Italian Constitutional Court in 1988, encompasses two dimensions: internal pluralism, which secures citizens’ access to diverse, objective, and impartial information (individual freedoms); and external pluralism, which prevents the concentration of resources among a limited group of economic actors (economic freedoms). Against this backdrop, this paper explores the following research questions: What regulatory measures best ensure media pluralism? Should the focus be on internal pluralism, external pluralism, or a combination of both? To address these questions, the paper critiques Italy’s regulatory framework for fostering media pluralism, which has historically emphasized external pluralism. This approach, grounded in antitrust law, leads to considerable ambiguities and jurisdictional conflicts among national regulatory authorities. More broadly, the paper examines the effectiveness of an “anti-concentration” regulatory regime in promoting media pluralism, an issue that extends beyond simple economic considerations.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the two anonymous referees for their insightful comments.
Funding
This article received no funding The cost of editing selected articles published in the Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies in the 2022–2024 is covered by funding under the program “Development of scientific journals” of the Ministry of Education and Science under agreement No. RCN/SN/0324/2021/1.
Task title: “Verification and correction of scientific articles and their abstracts”. Funding value: 36 298,00 PLN; The task consists of professional editing of articles published in English.
Declaration of Conflict of Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article.
Declaration about the scope of AI utilisation
The author did not use AI tools in the preparation of this article.
Recommended Citation
Caforio, V. (2024). Media Pluralism and Competition in the Media Sector: The Italian Experience. Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies, 17(30), 75-100. https://doi.org/10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2024.17.30.3
First Page
75
Last Page
100
Page Count
26
Received Date
27.02.2024
Accepted Date
18.11.2024
DOI
10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2024.17.30.3
JEL Code
K21, K23
Publisher
University of Warsaw
