Patrick KrammerEditor
The relationship between media and politics is toxic. Experts speak of a mutual dependence: politicians advertise – not always just to provide information. In tabloids, some media makers use this as a business model and even solicit advertisements. A decade-long silence is gradually breaking, ex-politicians talk about requests for advertisements. At the same time, the judiciary is investigating abuse of power, bribery and corruption. At the ÖVP U-Committee, civil servants and ministers had to explain their ministries’ publicity policy for days. Rarely have these explanations been satisfactory.
At the same time, the media industry is undergoing an upheaval: in the future, the ORF will be financed through a domestic tax and the “Wiener Zeitung” through the federal budget. A downsizing is imminent. The “Kurier” is in the process of cutting more than ten percent of its staff, and the “Kleine Zeitung” has already been reduced. The media is in an economic bind, which they’ve maneuvered into through mistakes in the past. Particularly paradoxical: the Austrian media missed developments because it overcame past crises well.
According to Andy Kaltenbrunner, media researcher and managing director of Medienhaus Wien, the dot-com bust in the early 2000s and the economic crisis of 2008/09 had relatively little impact on the Austrian media. They were therefore not forced to develop new business models beyond print editions and were able to remain in their comfort zone. “There has been a drop in ads, but they can be temporarily intercepted by stable subscription models,” says Kaltenbrunner. It was different in other countries, agrees Thomas Steinmaurer of Paris Lodron University in Salzburg. According to the communication scientist, the crisis was “late”. Only now, with a delay of almost fifteen years, has the digital revolution reached the national media scene. His colleague Stefan Gadringer says the media stuck with print for a long time, even though they knew the print media market was shrinking. It was just a long time anyway.
The number of journalists has been falling for years
Compared to Spain. The economic crisis of 2009 caused newspapers to die there. In their place, many smaller projects were launched, which managed to gain a foothold in the market and even grow. Many are also impressive in terms of quality, says Kaltenbrunner.
Discussions currently underway, according to which the online presence of the public service ORF is partly responsible for the current situation, are rejected by all researchers with whom the “Wiener Zeitung” spoke. “No one stopped the entire industry from co-developing sensible funding models for independent content,” says Kaltenbrunner. Gadringer agrees. Adding online access to the print subscription means that if the print product is no longer available, readers would suddenly have to pay the same price but receive less.
To convince readers to pay for content after years of free access, you need high quality. Here we face the next problem. The number of journalists is falling. In 2008 there were still 7,000 reporters for Reportagem de Jornalismo, in 2019 there were only 5,300. And the number is likely to continue to drop. The reason for this is the drop in private sector advertising revenues, which they wanted to absorb with savings. During the same period, according to Kaltenbrunner, government announcements increased. “What was lost in advertisements was obviously made up for in public announcements.” However, this can only be measured with the introduction of the transparency database in 2011. One note: according to Gadringer, the transparency database is very flawed, working with it is tedious and difficult to manage.
Nor does it offer true transparency, the red-black legislator once assured that data should be deleted every two years. An FH Joanneum project was needed. She saved the data in a timely manner and made it available at her own expense.
Federal government advertisements are hidden subsidies. Gadringer puts the relationship between advertising and funding at a factor of ten. For every euro of funding, ten euros of advertising. During the corona pandemic this increased again, but this was due to a real obligation to provide information. This is evident in statements by former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) after he tried to justify his government’s advertising budget in January 2021. Ads from the federal government would be awarded according to objective criteria, Kurz said at the time and repeated this in view of the Ministry of Finance’s publicity spending, which again caused controversy a few weeks ago in the Dichand case – more on that later. The criteria are reach and circulation, Kurz said at the time. But circulation is nothing more than a production promotion, says Kaltenbrunner. The only thing that counts is how many copies would come off the printer. So you only encourage paper printing. Even Kurz’s defense at the time no longer had anything to do with the concept of legally required information in an advertisement, but with a hidden print promotion.
Media researcher Steinmaurer generally misses the idea of innovation in the federal government’s media policy, it lacks a look to the future. “Needs a promotion to the quality competition.” The media is currently focused on maintaining the status quo. “Media is a democratic good on the one hand and an economic good on the other,” Steinmaurer said. This requires a targeted promotion of quality in order to guarantee the political-democratic task of the media. Instead, there is currently only the watering can principle, “from which one would have to say goodbye.” This is also shown by the Dichand case. The editor of “Heute” Eva Dichand allegedly complained to the then Minister of Finance Gernot Blümel (ÖVP) about the number of advertisements in the competing newspaper “Österreich”. One is “shocked that Fellner is sending her so much money,” Dichand said in a chat message. She then put the stick through the window of the secretary general of the Ministry of Finance, Thomas Schmid. “We too can be different,” she is said to have written to Schmid. The judiciary is investigating.
focused donations
or watering can
Austria doesn’t have a lot of media. Compared to countries like Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands, there are relatively few media products in this country. Norway has 5.4 million inhabitants and around 50 daily newspapers. Also in Spain, many media offers, some of which are regionally oriented, have been created since 2019. The big difference for Austria: people are used to paying for their medium, even if they consume it “only” on the Internet. During the pandemic and price increases, a Spanish medium gave its subscribers the option to pay the price earlier and cheaper after a price increase. About 90% would have willingly paid the higher price because they were sold on the product, says Kaltenbrunner.
“Austria is definitely not a model country here,” agrees Gadringer of the University of Salzburg. There is still room for more offers. Only in terms of democratic politics, the widest possible variety of media is needed. The problem is the opposite: “The market is saturated with few providers”, says the media scientist. The products of the Austrian media market are in the hands of a few companies, and this media concentration is not healthy.
Steinmaurer also sees “targeted start-ups in the digital world” as necessary. According to Kaltenbrunner, it wouldn’t take a lot of money to promote new products that were different from the start. He is referring to the media finance of the city of Vienna, which he has helped to develop on an international model and which also promotes the employment of journalists.
Originally planned to run through the end of 2022, it has been extended for another three years, says Evelyn Hemmer, project manager at the Vienna Business Agency, which handles media funding. “It was never a question of whether it should be extended, just how,” she says when asked if the program can be considered a success. 156 new media projects have been funded since 2019. About a third of them were start-ups, such as the media “anderseits”, which on Thursday received the Concordia Prize in the human rights category. Of course, the established media also applied to fund this project, the news magazine “Profil” presented its factual format “Faktiv”, the investigative platform “Dossier” had its first print product financed and “Falter” its daily newsletter of Vienna. According to Hemmer, the funding scheme is now considered a model of good practice across Europe. You received so many inquiries from Germany that you had to create your own information page. The financing program will have a total cost of 16.5 million euros. To date, 6.2 million euros have been committed.
Media funding is an alternative to federal funding and local transformation funding that aims to bring about a reorientation towards the digital market. A newsletter is also sponsored there, but “Austria” receives 300,622 euros for it.
Transformation funding from the federal government would be “a powerful instrument”, believes Gadringer. Just not in the way that happens in practice. “The financing tradition continues”, says the communicator. We are trying to maintain the status quo.
simple solutions
there is none
Nobody really knows how to get out of the situation. The relationships between politicians and media creators are “very intertwined”, says Gadringer. Steinmaurer also speaks of a “democratically very problematic” situation. Kaltenbrunner also has no solution. Otherwise I would be rich already, he says in a joking tone. One thing is certain: without the public sector there would be hardly any newspapers on the market, either through advertisements or subsidies. Kaltenbrunner estimates public aid at hundreds of millions of euros. If they disappeared, many newspapers would follow suit.
It is doubtful whether policy makers are aware of the difficult situation. Is the turquoise-green government media policy capable of solving the problems? “It’s not the current one,” says communication scientist Steinmaurer.