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Media

Media content is facing increased scrutiny from stakeholders, leading to rising liability risks and lawsuits. Combining powerful analytics with strategic market insights, we can help media organizations identify and effectively manage these and other risk challenges.
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The media sector includes a diverse range of entities and organizations, from television stations and news organizations to content providers, streaming companies, online entertainment outlets, and websites. The nature of these enterprises can be fraught with risk, whether you are involved as an owner, distributor, producer, partner, or creator of associated content. These risks can range from media liability and cybersecurity to the protection of reporters, staff, and crews covering natural disasters, social unrest, or political events.  

Marsh’s dedicated media risk management team is composed of specialists with longstanding industry experience and hard-earned expertise in helping clients assess, analyze, and manage risk across various media fields. Our approach aids us in working with you collaboratively to develop a risk management program tailored to your needs, including appropriate insurance solutions and comprehensive contingency planning.

FAQs

Media organizations are particularly vulnerable to accusations of libel and slander, intellectual property infringement, and violations of programming regulations. There can be significant costs involved with retaining legal counsel and defending one’s organization (or oneself) against these claims, often well into the tens of millions.

To protect your interests, it is a good idea to consider investing in a broad media liability insurance policy, tailored specifically to the risks and needs of your organization and your contributors such as advertising agencies, producers, authors and publishers, broadcasters, bloggers, and social media influencers.

Media liability insurance is a type of errors and omissions (E&O) policy specially designed for media organizations. Unlike the E&O insurance seen in industries like banking and finance, media liability insurance specifically insures media outlets against claims of defamation, invasion of privacy, copyright infringement, plagiarism, intentional torts, and more.

This coverage is typically purchased by authors and publishers (including online bloggers and social media influencers), broadcasters, advertising agencies, and anyone else who creates or distributes media content. It can be tailored to insure media professionals for liability on a wide range of media platforms, which is especially helpful given the many ways information is disseminated today, from newspapers, television news shows, and podcasts to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

Depending on the business structure of your media organization, there are a number of other types of insurance that might be helpful. These can include property insurance, general liability coverage, umbrella and excess liability coverage, technology E&O, plans covering commuting and transportation risk (if employees are traveling for stories or events), commercial auto coverage, and workers’ compensation (where applicable). Multinational coverages may also be required for risks related to employees traveling out of the country for work.

Because the nature of media content creation can be quite variable and diverse, it is important to work with a trusted advisor such as Marsh to understand your risk exposures and create a plan for managing them.

Having access to experienced risk management advisors can help media firms protect themselves from unintended situations that may prove financially devastating or highly damaging to their reputation. Risk managers in the media sector should have strong, up-to-date industry knowledge as well as an established network of connections to reach out to on behalf of their business leaders, contributors, or clients.

Because media is evolving at a rapid pace, it is beneficial to have the input of advisors, such as Marsh, who are familiar with industry trends and can help identify previously unrecognized exposures as well as opportunities to manage risk more effectively.