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

The growing reliance of news organisations on platforms has profoundly affected journalism’s capacity to fulfil its role in democratic society. In response, the EU’s Media Freedom Act (EMFA) introduced a legally-binding media privilege that aims to protect journalistic content from platforms’ arbitrary content moderation mechanisms. While the EMFA represents a significant affirmation of journalism’s democratic 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. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, we identify two structural reasons for this paradox: the EU’s consistent underestimation of platforms’ material interests and its overt reliance on procedural fairness and multistakeholder governance. We conclude that the EMFA’s procedural reliance on platforms prevents it from realising its normative ambitions regarding journalism’s democratic value and, more broadly, that bolder structural – not procedural – measures are required to rein in the hold that platform firms have over journalism.