Political economy of media: An income-expense analysis of state aids to Iranian newspapers
| Autor | Datis Khajeheian, Abbas Jafari, Habib Abdolhossein, Esmaeil Ghaderifar |
| Cargo | Department of Business Management, University of Tehran, Iran. Email: khajeheian@ut.ac.ir ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9913-3732 - PhD. University of Tehran, Iran. Email: ab.jafari@ut.ac.ir ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6673-7820 - PhD student. Department of Business Management, University of Tehran, Iran. Email: h.abdolhossein@ut.ac... |
| Páginas | 97-120 |
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AD-MINISTER
DATIS KHAJEHEIAN1*
ABBAS JAFARI2
HABIB ABDOLHOSSEIN3
ESMAEIL GHADERIFAR4
JEL: I21, I23, M1
Received: 15/11/2020
Modified: 05/03/2021
Accepted: 16/04/2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17230/
Ad-minister.39.5
AD-minister Nº. 39 july - december 2021 pp. 97 - 120 · ISSN 1692-0279 · eISSN 2256-4322
Political economy of media: An income-expense
analysis of state aids to Iranian newspapers
Economía política de los medios de comunicación: análisis de ingresos y gastos de las ayudas
estatales a los periódicos iraníes
ABSTRACT
Iranian newspapers have traditionally relied on state aids and public budget to survive. The
dependency has still lingered amid a change of policy that has affected the newspapers’ financial
status. This article invokes the available data on governmental support to examine the political
economy of newspapers in Iran during the two decades of 1990s and 2000s. The data were collected
from official releases by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance as well as several non-
confidential internal bulletins of the newspaper organizations. Having applied an income -expense
analysis, the paper explains the government’s role in newspaper economics and discusses the policy
of repurposing the existing subsidies.
KEYWORDS
Media economics, State aid, Media policy, Iranian newspaper, Print media, Political economy,
Communication policy, Business model.
RESUMEN
Los periódicos iraníes han dependido tradicionalmente de las ayudas estatales y del presupuesto
público para sobrevivir. La dependencia aún persiste en medio de un cambio de política que ha afectado
la situación financiera de los periódicos. Este artículo invoca los datos disponibles sobre el apoyo
gubernamental para examinar la economía política de los periódicos en Irán durante las dos décadas de
1990 y 2000. Los datos se obtuvieron de comunicados oficiales del Ministerio de Cultura y Orientación
Islámica de Irán, así como de varios boletines internos no confidenciales de las organizaciones de
periódicos. Habiendo aplicado un análisis de ingresos y gastos, el documento explica el papel del
gobierno en la economía de los periódicos y discute la política de reutilización de los subsidios existentes.
PALABRAS CLAVE
Economía de los medios de comunicación; Ayuda estatal; Política de medios; Periódico iraní; Medios de
comunicación impresos; Economía política; Política de comunicación; Modelo de negocio.
1 Department of Business Management, University of Tehran, Iran. Email: khajeheian@ut.ac.ir ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9913-3732
2 PhD. University of Tehran, Iran. Email: ab.jafari@ut.ac.ir ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6673-
7820
3 PhD student. Department of Business Management, University of Tehran, Iran. Email: h.abdolhossein@
ut.ac.ir ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0213-3558
4 PhD. Vice-presidency for Science and Technology, Iran. Email: ghaderifar@isti.ir ORCID: https://
orcid.org/0000-0003-4409-2085
Datis Khajeheian · Abbas Jafari · Habib Abdolhossein · Esmaeil Ghaderifar
Political economy of media: An incom e-expen se analys is of sta te aids t o Iranian newspape rs
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INTRODUCTION
The print newspaper has been one of the oldest sectors of the contemporary media
landscape (Boczkowski, 2004; Kumar et al., 2015; Vasundara & Ravi, 2016). It was
also the most profitable of all media industries until current century and one of the
most profitable of all manufacturing industries (Picard, 2003, p. 109), despite the fact
that today the industry faces a dramatic fall in profitability and publishers of print
news media witness a decline in their advertising income due to the economic crisis
(Björkroth & Grönlund, 2018) as well as emergence and popularity of digital media
and accordingly a structural shift of a significant share of advertisers to the internet
(Björkroth & Grönlund, 2018; Khajeheian, 2016; Leurdijk et al., 2012; Oliver, 2018; Picard,
2008). Many new sources of news and commentary are available (Khajeheian et al.,
2018) and the Internet has enabled the broader dissemination of news and analysis
for customers, as well as a source of receiving consumption data and analysis of
consumers’ behaviors for the media owners (Sharifi et al., 2019; Nemati & Khajeheian,
2018). Still, recent developments have prompted a number of observers to fear that, if
newspapers are unable to put themselves on stronger financial footing, and continue
to cut back their coverage or shutter their doors, other media outlets will not fill the
journalism gap (Varney, 2011). Outstanding newspapers are a symbol of the media
power for the host society and the native language (Prat, 2018; Walgrave et al., 2008),
thus they are very important part of the media industry and usually governments pay
an especial attention to their needs, requests and activities to help them survive and
influence the domestic society and abroad (Akhtar & Pratt, 2017; Murschetz, 2013).
Newspaper sector has received remarkable academic attention with many
research papers focusing on dierent aspects of this sector, especially the newspaper
economics (Edge, 2019; Murschetz, 2013; Picard, 2008; Sridhar & Sriram, 2015). Iran
as a country with a complicated multicultural society and considerable background
in the cultural heritage, is already reeling from the ineciency in the economics of
media, newspapers in particular. It is considered as an interesting context to do media
research and find out the dierences among the various media spheres, including
culture, economic structure, dierent background, the approach to media and press,
etc. The study of newspaper sector in Iran can contribute to our understanding of
government role in propping up the print media in the country.
This paper intends to shed light on the government aids to newspapers in Iran
and open up an opportunity to compare the newspaper economics in other parts
of the world which are not limited to the West. In the first section of this article, the
authors take a quick look at newspaper history in Iran from an economic perspective,
to provide a brief review of the press history in the country. In the follow-up, the
modern newspaper economics is explained in detail to explore the core of subject.
The main contribution of this paper lies in the income-expenditure approach adopted
by the authors to elaborate on the government support for newspapers. Given the
current economic situation in the country, it’s not dicult to predict a revolutionary
change in government’s supports and subsidiaries for the newspapers. Hence the
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