Cayla suggests that the influence of business on the news may not be as great as many might think because competition and the free flow of digital information serve as counterbalances.

Question: Do business interests affect media content?

We don’t … so much. In fact the first effect we sense of … business in the news … in the news business is there are more players than before. There is every year creation of new news channels, because business leaders have some interest in having their own news channel. Even Murdoch, you know, in Europe he has two. He has Sky News in the U.K., and he has the same news – Sky News Italia – in Italy. And so he’s already there. But there are other players in the U.K. and Germany, in France, in Spain. So for the time being, we still have the public broadcasters … their own channels. We have channels like Euro News, which is a combination of public broadcasters. We have private channels, but we don’t feel the pressure of business news. We can’t say that, no. It was diversity … of the viewer. They have more things to watch. Maybe these private channels are more focused to entertainment news as you have here in the U.S. Maybe it will create a bias in this direction. But for the time being it’s not very sensible. It’s not very perceptible.

Recorded on: 7/2/07