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"She offers to buy a 50% stake in Austria's Kronen-Zeitung newspaper and switch its editorial position to support the Freedom Party." Little attention is usual
by deogeo 7y ago
"She offers to buy a 50% stake in Austria's Kronen-Zeitung newspaper and switch its editorial position to support the Freedom Party."
Little attention is usually paid to media ownership, yet this nicely shows how crucial it is. I've always found it odd how casual countries are on allowing foreign media ownership. A quick search turned up this: https://www.access-info.org/media-ownership-transparency https://www.access-info.org/media-ownership-transparency - apparently, even if one does pay attention, getting the information can be difficult.
- thatoneuser 7y agoThis is an interesting conundrum. The govt can't outright pay media to spin a certain narrative (...obviously this happens but it has to go thru abstraction layers to get around laws) meanwhile a foreign entity doesn't really care and can just buy them out.
- deogeo 7y agoBut the government can make it difficult/impossible to hide the ownership of media. It could even mandate disclaimers, forcing media to declare their owners the same way drug commercials have to state side-effects.