Institutionalising platform dependence: The paradox of the European Media Freedom Act

Summary

The growing reliance of journalism on platforms has profoundly affected the political economy of journalism. In response to growing concerns over platforms’ discretionary power over journalism, the EU introduced a legally-binding media privilege’ with its European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), seeking to protect journalistic content from platforms’ unjust content moderation mechanisms. While the EMFA represents a significant affirmation of journalism’s normative value and the need for elevated legal protections, this article identifies a fundamental paradox at the core of the regulation: by entrusting critical procedural obligations to platform companies, the EMFA risks entrenching rather than mitigating platforms’ discretionary power over journalism. Using a doctrinal legal analysis of the EMFA, supplemented by a critical evaluation of its platform-press implications and the broader sociopolitical context, we foreground how the EMFA’s procedural reliance on platforms stop it short from realising its normative ambitions regarding journalism’s democratic value. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, we identify two structural reasons for this paradox: the EU’s consistent underestimation of platform firms’ material interests and its misguided faith in procedural fairness and multistakeholder governance models. Ultimately, we contend that structural and not procedural changes are required to effectively protect journalism’s democratic value.