Who Guards the Gatekeepers? Media Pluralism in the Platform Era

By Dr. Konstantina Bania and Ana-Caterina Ciusca

Who Guards the Gatekeepers? Media Pluralism in the Platform Era

Who decides which news reaches you? Increasingly, the answer is not just newspaper owners or broadcasters, but the platforms that host, rank and recommend content to billions of users. That raises an old question in a new form: can competition law account for the democratic stakes of concentrated power over the flow of information, whether that power sits with a media conglomerate or a dominant platform?

The European Commission’s Draft Merger Guidelines take a first step toward an answer. Amid growing threats to media pluralism across the EU, the Guidelines recognise that preventing concentration in media markets can “support diversity and plurality of information sources and choice for EU citizens” (para 7). EU merger control, in other words, can help preserve the balance of power that democratic societies depend on.

But the Guidelines are careful not to go too far. They draw a firm institutional line between the Commission’s merger assessment and the dedicated media-pluralism reviews that national regulatory authorities (NRAs) are responsible for. Media pluralism only enters the Commission’s competitive assessment where a reduction in “media and cultural diversity” amounts to a loss of choice that degrades quality (para 20).

Media pluralism, then, is edging closer to competition law without being absorbed by it. That tension is precisely why the EU introduced a dedicated instrument: the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), adopted in April 2024, creates the first coherent framework for safeguarding media pluralism and editorial independence at EU level. The open question is how this new framework will interact with competition law, at both EU and national level and how far competition law itself can be stretched to protect media pluralism in a world reshaped by platforms.

This post examines that emerging framework along two lines: (1) the respective remits of competition law and sector-specific media regulation; and (2) the growing influence of digital platforms on media markets, both as competitors to traditional media outlets and as gatekeepers of how media content reaches audiences. Throughout, we focus on news and current affairs content, since it plays a more direct role in shaping public opinion than other types of content, such as entertainment.

The legal framework: three layers of regulation

The regulatory landscape is complex because media pluralism is protected by no single legal tool. Protection is instead spread across EU merger control, national merger control, media regulation and, now, the EMFA.

Before the EMFA, EU competition law was the main, albeit indirect, route through which the EU could address media-pluralism concerns arising from market concentration. This reflects the EU’s limited competence in this area: media pluralism has historically been closely tied to the specific needs of each Member State (e.g., linguistic diversity, protection of local news outlets), so Member States have retained the power to regulate their own media markets, including concerns arising from media concentration.

The Draft Merger Guidelines do provide that non-price parameters such as quality and choice, including “media and cultural diversity”, may form part of a merger analysis.

Even so, assessing a merger’s impact on media pluralism remains largely a national matter. Member States can protect media pluralism through sector-specific regulation, such as media ownership restrictions or merger control rules specific to media mergers. As discussed below, this national toolkit increasingly also has to reckon with media concentrations that involve platforms, not just traditional outlets merging with one another. Yet national approaches differ significantly (see pages 214-219 of this EU study): thirteen Member States assess media mergers through competition law alone, without a separate pluralism review, while the remaining fourteen have adopted mechanisms for assessing a merger’s impact on pluralism in addition to the competitive assessment.

This fragmentation matters because media markets are increasingly cross-border and shaped by a handful of large platforms, while pluralism protection still depends heavily on national institutional choices.

The EMFA enters the picture at exactly this point of tension. Adopted on the basis of Article 114 TFEU, it is formally an internal-market instrument that harmonises certain aspects of national media regulation. It does not replace merger control, nor does it create a single EU-level media-pluralism authority. Instead, it creates a common framework within which Member States must organise their own pluralism assessments, including assessments that increasingly need to reckon with the role of platforms, thereby building a bridge between EU merger control and national media regulation.

1. Can competition law do more? Or should we rely on sector-specific regulation?

The framework shows a clear division of labour: competition law addresses media pluralism only where relevant to the competitive assessment (for a criticism over the narrow approach to media pluralism in such assessments, see Konstantina’s monograph here), while the EMFA is better placed to address the democratic implications of a media merger. But how far can competition law reach on its own, especially as digitalisation reshapes media markets?

Media markets are unique: the role of non-price competition

Competition in media markets rarely runs on price. In some cases, content is financed by advertising and reaches audiences free of charge, increasingly through the intermediation of platforms, which now capture a large share of that advertising spend (a dynamic we return to below). In other cases, readers pay for a subscription, but even then, price is rarely what drives their choice. Take news publishing: audiences choose a particular editorial voice, range of coverage and/or political orientation, not simply the cheapest option. Audiences are not homogeneous, and it is their differing interests and political leanings, rather than price sensitivity, that determine what they consume and whether they switch. The Commission itself has recognised this in its decisions, observing that a newspaper’s perceived political stance, its heritage, the socio-economic profile of its readership and the type of content it offers weigh more heavily on readers’ choices and loyalty than price does.

The key implication is that a competition analysis in merger control must take these market characteristics seriously. Competition is largely non-price, and the resulting harm is often hard to quantify. An assessment that focuses too narrowly on price competition in advertising markets, as has often been the case in Commission decisions on media concentrations, risks missing the parameters that actually determine substitutability for audiences: quality of content, editorial identity and diversity of opinion. These are exactly the conditions that make for a pluralistic media environment.

EU competition law does, however, seem to be paying closer attention to non-price parameters of competition. The 2024 Relevant Market Notice, for example, recognises that market definition must be adapted in cases like media markets, where ‘multi-sided platforms’ supply a product at a zero monetary price (para 97). Here, non-price parameters become key to assessing substitution: rather than testing for a small but significant non-transitory increase in price (SSNIP), the Commission may instead test for a small but significant non-transitory decrease in quality (SSNDQ) (para 98).

The question, then, is whether media pluralism can stand on its own as a non-price parameter of competition. Under EU merger control, the answer currently seems to be no. The Commission is willing to treat media pluralism as a proxy for diversity of content where diversity forms part of quality or choice within a relevant theory of harm, but it stops short of treating media pluralism as a standalone parameter, in the way it treats innovation, sustainability or resilience (see Guidelines, para 20).

The reason lies in the consumer welfare standard that underpins EU merger control. The Commission accepts that non-price aspects of competition form part of the SIEC test under the EU Merger Regulation. But EU merger control remains anchored in the consumer welfare standard and does not pursue societal objectives unrelated to the competitive process.

Pluralism therefore only counts to the extent it can be translated into a competition harm within a defined relevant market. What is much harder to capture is the accumulation of opinion power, meaning the capacity to shape public discourse, which, as the next section explores, is precisely the kind of power that platforms are able to accumulate at scale.

Beyond merger control – can Article 102 carry any of this?

Looking beyond merger control, could Article 102 TFEU play a bigger role in protecting media pluralism, especially against dominant platforms whose conduct may undermine the conditions needed for quality journalism to survive?

In Meta v Bundeskartellamt, the CJEU held that, when examining a possible abuse of a dominant position, a national competition authority (NCA) may also need to examine whether the undertaking’s conduct complies with rules other than competition law,  “such as the rules on the protection of personal data laid down by the GDPR” (para 48).

Putting this into practice requires NCAs to cooperate systematically with the relevant supervisory authorities. In Meta v Bundeskartellamt, the CJEU gives useful guidance on how to respect each regulator’s remit while avoiding conflicting decisions, setting out three scenarios (see para 54 and following):

• Where a regulator has already adopted a decision, the competition authority cannot depart from it;
• Where no decision exists, the competition authority must reach out to the regulator. If the regulator has an ongoing case, the competition authority must at least seek its input, and may even stay its own proceedings until the regulator decides; and
• Where the regulator raises no objection, or does not reply within a reasonable time, the competition authority may continue its own investigation.

This is a genuine expression of the principle of sincere cooperation (Article 4(3) TEU), one that could be replicated almost exactly in the field of media pluralism, enabling cooperation between NCAs and national media regulators (read more about the importance of regulatory cooperation here).

The EMFA makes this possibility concrete. Article 18 EMFA, for example, addresses the infrastructural power of very large online platforms (VLOPs) by requiring them to give recognised media service providers a statement of reasons, and a right to reply, before restricting the visibility of, or suspending, their content. Where a dominant platform disregards these safeguards, an NCA examining its conduct under Article 102 could treat that non-compliance as a strong indication that the conduct is abusive.

The Commission’s draft Guidelines on the application of Article 102, released in 2024 but not yet adopted, build further on this reasoning. They confirm that Article 102 TFEU “may also apply to conduct which falls within the scope of other regulations, Union or national, that govern the behaviour of undertakings in the market, and which pursue different objectives from that of the competition rules” (para 13). In assessing whether conduct departs from competition on the merits, the Commission can consider whether the dominant undertaking is breaching rules in other areas of law and, in doing so, affecting a relevant parameter of competition “such as price, choice, quality or innovation” (para 55(c)).

This logic translates naturally to media pluralism, especially online, where dominant platforms do more than host media content: they shape the conditions in which it is consumed and distributed. This is fundamentally a question of algorithmic power. Through recommendation systems and engagement-based methods of amplification, platforms decide, in practice, which stories reach which audiences, and their algorithms are typically optimised for engagement, not for accuracy or diversity of viewpoint. As a result, sensationalist, low-quality or outright misleading content often spreads more easily than measured, public-interest journalism, which competes for the same attention on unequal terms. This dynamic does two things at once: it weakens the economic viability of quality journalism, by diverting attention and advertising revenue away from it, and it distorts the wider information environment – the mix of sources, viewpoints and reliable facts – on which media pluralism ultimately depends. Where a dominant platform’s own design choices contribute to that outcome, its conduct starts to look less like a neutral hosting function and more like an exercise of editorial-style power over the news environment. For this reason, competition law may no longer be able to treat media pluralism as entirely external to its own concerns.

2. Concentration as a survival strategy? Digital players vs traditional media

The discussion so far shows that the impact of digitalisation on media markets cannot be ignored when assessing the potential of this legal framework.

The rise of large digital intermediaries has reshaped media markets completely. Platforms, search engines, social media services and, increasingly, AI-driven interfaces now sit between media undertakings and their audiences. They organise access to news, structure its visibility, control key forms of audience measurement, and capture a large share of online advertising revenue. In other words, they do not merely compete with media undertakings, they provide the infrastructure through which news is distributed, discovered and monetised.

This creates a threat to media pluralism in the classic sense. If traditional media outlets lose advertising revenue, audience reach and direct relationships with readers, their economic viability weakens. Some may exit the market, cut back on journalistic investment, or become more vulnerable to acquisition. The result can be fewer independent editorial voices, and a weaker environment for quality journalism overall. From this angle, digitalisation intensifies concentration pressures and makes media pluralism more fragile.

At the same time, traditional media undertakings increasingly present consolidation as a survival strategy: greater scale, usually across borders, is seen as necessary to compete in the online news environment, where platforms set many of the terms of engagement.

The EMFA appears to recognise these dynamics. It acknowledges that global online platforms function as gateways to media content, disintermediate access to media services, amplify polarising content and disinformation, and divert advertising revenue away from the media sector. It also recognises that media services need scale to remain competitive and financially sustainable in the internal market (Recital 4).

The EMFA goes further still in its media-concentration regime. Article 2(15) defines media market concentrations broadly, to include any concentration involving at least one media service provider or an online platform providing access to media content. Article 22 then requires the assessment to take account of the online environment, and of the parties’ interests in, links to, or activities in, other media or non-media businesses. This matters because media power can arise not only from owning editorial outlets, but also from controlling the digital conditions through which media content reaches the public. Once again, though, it is up to Member States to implement this regime meaningfully in the online environment, and to strike the balance between the benefits of, and the threats posed by, media concentrations.

These safeguards remain partial, because platform power does not only surface in the context of concentrations. A platform can shape media pluralism through ranking systems, recommendation algorithms and the spread of misinformation, without ever acquiring a media undertaking. These effects may fall partly under competition law, partly under platform regulation, and partly under media law, but they do not sit neatly within any single framework.

What’s next?

The emerging framework shows that media pluralism can no longer be treated as wholly external to competition law, but nor is it fully absorbed by it. The EMFA is crucial here, because it creates a vehicle for cooperation between the EU and national level, but its effectiveness will depend on enforcement. The Commission’s monitoring of Member States’ compliance, its forthcoming guidance on Article 22 (EMFA Art 22(3)), and the active involvement of the European Board for Media Services will all be essential to making this new framework work in practice.

The debate on media concentrations also calls for a more nuanced approach to remedies. If consolidation is increasingly framed as a survival strategy for traditional media actors, including in the face of platform competition, the answer cannot simply be to block or approve transactions. Authorities should think carefully about commitments that preserve the economic viability of media undertakings while still safeguarding media pluralism.

The next challenge for the EU and its Member States is to make this emerging legal framework work across institutions, across borders, and across both traditional and digital media markets, including the platforms that increasingly shape how news reaches the public. The way forward is sustained cooperation, and a genuine willingness to treat media pluralism as a core condition for democracy.

The image was AI generated.