STATE SUPPORT FOR THE DAILY PRESS IN EUROPE - A CRITICAL-APPRAISAL - AUSTRIA, FRANCE, NORWAY AND SWEDEN COMPARED

This article compares the subsidy schemes of the daily press in Austri a, France, Norway and Sweden. In those countries, financial subsidy sc hemes to daily newspapers seek to balance the objective of promoting e conomic competitiveness in the national media grid with the wider obje ctive of securing plurality of titles and diversity of views. This art icle locates financial subsidies within a broader framework of press r egulation, looks into the instruments of public press intervention in the four countries and critically examines the results to safeguard ec onomic competition and press diversity. In contrast to the Anglo-Saxon minimalist approach to press regulation which rejects the interventio nist approach to providing cash injections to newspapers in need, the continental-style authorities in Austria, France, Norway and Sweden ad here to a public policy of granting subsidies to their press, accordin g to which the democratic and political function - namely to guarantee that citizens have access to information, are accurately informed and actively take part in the political process - is promoted. However, p ublic austerity programmes, increased commercial competition, shifting audience tastes of newspaper readers and the inherent weaknesses of t he current instruments have forced all four countries to rethink their subsidy schemes. This article argues that government policies that ai m at engendering economic opportunity and prosperity of daily newspape rs, editorial pluralism and diversity of opinion need to respond adequ ately and effectively to these pressures of changing market conditions , which not only endanger the normal functioning of the press market b ut also a public service culture of newspapers.