Efficient Servants of Pluralism or Marginalized Media Policy Tools?: The Case of Swedish Press Subsidies

摘要

For more than 30 years, Sweden's media policy has relied on positive incentives to promote diversity. That is, competition law has rarely been used to prevent dominant newspapers from acquiring smaller ones, but rather press subsidies have been used to increase survival rates and promote independence among the latter. Internationally, the broad trend toward concentration in newspaper markets has been of concern to policy makers, and the Swedish model has attracted considerable interest as a possible path to a more heterogeneous media landscape. However, over the last decade, ownership distribution on the newspaper market has started to change at an accelerating pace, and Swedish media policy stands at a crossroad-to increase reliance on subsidies or to make way for something new. The arising questions regarding how to reshape media policy have several parallels to the ongoing international debate. This case study explores the performance of subsidies from the perspective of pluralism and discusses alternative political responses and future policy directions.