MEDIA OLIGARCHS GO SHOPPING Ferit Sahenk Dogus group Patrick Drahi Yildirim Demirören Jack Ma Groupe Altice Milliyet Alibaba group Jeff Bezos Vincent Bolloré Naguib Sawiris Konstantin Malofeïev Li Yanhong Amazon Groupe Bolloré Orascom Marshall capital Baidu Delian Peevski Anil et Mukesh Ambani Rupert Murdoch Bulgartabak Reliance industries ltd Newscorp FREEDOM OF THE PRESS WORLDWIDE IN 2016 AND MAJOR OLIGARCHS 2 3 Summary 7. Money’s invisible prisons 44. Euronews - saviour from Cairo In July 2015, Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris bought Euronews, a TV 10. The hidden side of the oligarchs news channel that is supposed to be the “Voice of Europe.” Egypt’s third New media empires are emerging in Turkey, China, Russia and India, often richest man, he heads Orascom, which is his country’s biggest telecom. with the blessing of the political authorities. Their owners exercise strict Orascom also has interests in gold mines, hotels and construction. Sawiris control over news and opinion, putting them in the service of their does not hide his support for Field Marshall Sisi’s government and shares governments. Sisi’s goal of crushing the Muslim Brotherhood. “We want to be heard and we want to advise the regime,” he says. 16. Oligarchs who came in from the cold During Russian capitalism’s crazy initial years, a select few were able to 46. Multinationals that control the media take advantage of privatization, including the privatization of news media. The worldwide trend is towards increasingly concentrated media ownership. But only media empires that are completely loyal to the Kremlin have been In the United States, just six companies now control 90% of the media. able to survive since Vladimir Putin took over. Europe is now following suit. It has turned into a media bazaar in which national outlets are changing hands, flagships are being bought for a song 22. Can a politician be a regular media owner? and groups are merging. A mad race is on for control of the production and In public life, how can you be both an actor and an objective observer at dissemination of tomorrow’s mass media. the same time? Obviously you cannot, not without conflicts of interest. Nonetheless, politicians who are also media owners are to be found eve- 52. Getting the better of diploki rywhere, even in leading western democracies such as Canada, Brazil and They are industrialists, shipping line owners, landowners and bankers. In in Europe. And they seem to think that these conflicts of interests are not Greece, a handful of “big families” have reigned over the country’s economy a problem. and politics for decades. And their offspring are often leading sharehol- ders in the privately-owned media. The Greeks have a word for this inces- 28. The royal whim tuous system. They call it diploki (interweaving) and it’s something that In the Arab world and India, royal families and industrial dynasties have Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has declared war on. created or acquired enormous media empires with the sole aim of magnifying their glory and prestige. The first victim of these conflicting interests is 54. “Media baseball bats” usually journalistic independence, which is replaced by systematic Delyan Peevski, a Bulgarian oligarch who is a leading cigarette manufac- self-censorship. turer, has created a shadowy media empire in order to better intimidate his detractors. And it has worked. The Peevskis are king-makers in Sofia 36. The new media emperors despite frequent accusations of corruption and conflicts of interest. They are financiers, telecom tycoons, industrialists or Internet whiz kids who have made high-tech fortunes. What these new oligarchs have in com- 56. The new threats to independence mon is enough wealth to be able to buy some of the world’s leading media outlets. But to what purpose? To earn even more money, some say. To save 58. RSF’s campaign in images these media outlets from bankruptcy, others say. But can we trust them? Examples are to be found in both France and the United States. 4 5 PREFACE Money’s invisible prisons 6 7 PRÉFACE PREFACE dans LES prisons INVISIBLES DE L’ARGENT MONEy’S INVISIBLE prisons o make choices based on reliable the defence of their personal interests. They information, humankind, societies and buy up media not to increase media pluralism Tindividuals need “trusted observers” but to extend the scope of their own influence who are dedicated to the “unrestricted pursuit or the influence of their friends. of objective truth,” as UNESCO’s constitution puts it. Hence the importance of journalists In countries such as Russia, Turkey, India and who are not only free to go anywhere but also Hungary and even in what are supposed to be unconstrained by money’s “invisible prisons.” the most open democracies, billionaires use These prisons may be much more comfortable their fortunes to shop for media outlets. than real ones, and sometimes they are very Occasionally they rescue newspapers or comfortable, but they prevent journalists from broadcast media groups for philanthropic operating in a completely independent manner. reasons, but in most cases they put their media acquisitions in the service of their other In the report Oligarchs go Shopping, Reporters business activities. The resulting conflicts of Without Borders (RSF) describes a worldwide interest deprive journalists of their phenomenon, the takeover of entire media independence and at the same time deprive groups or even entire media landscapes by everyone else of their right to honestly “oligarchs,” extremely wealthy individuals reported news and information. whose interest in journalism is secondary to Disentangling the complex webs of media share ownership, shedding light on family and political ties, drawing attention to sudden changes in editorial policy and exposing unfair use of media power – this is the task that RSF has set itself with regard to the wealthiest media owners, who are of course very skilled at protecting their personal advantages and those of their friends. Defending journalists from every kind of threat, including the threat of money, is RSF’s raison d’être. Christophe Deloire Secretary-General 8 9 Jack Ma, ceo of Alibaba Group at the Wordl Economic Forum in Davos, January 2015 The Fabrice Coffrini / AFP hidden side of the oligarchs It is a worldwide trend. From Turkey and Russia to magine a world in which the mass China and India, new media empires are emerging, media were the exclusive property of a usually with governmental blessing. Their owners Ihandful of people, all business tycoons. comply with capitalist laws of supply and demand and Many people think that world has already the need for technological development. But, at the arrived. Businessmen of every kind have been same time, they take strict control of news coverage or seized by the disturbing desire to buy up large replace journalistic content with entertainment. numbers of major newspapers, TV channels and radio stations around the globe. No country, no continent – neither India, China, the United States nor Europe – seems to escape the appetite of these new oligarchs for media acquisitions. Their latest feats include Jack Ma’s purchase of the South China Morning Post, one of the last champions of the free press in Hong Kong, a newspaper that did not hesitate to criticize the government in Beijing. Ma is the owner of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Where will these new media owners stop? Their ambition often matches their financial resources, which are limitless. In a recent 10 11 THE HIDDEN SIDE OF THE OLIGARCHS voice scepticism and dissent and block “With, or more often without, any direct investigative reporting3,” Yavuz Baydar wrote government intervention, they impose in 2013, while ombudsman of the daily Sabah self-censorship on a daily basis and silence book1, Indian historian Nalin Mehta said his after holding the same position with Milliyet. colleagues who defend basic journalistic ethics.” country, “the world’s biggest democracy,” has Along with dozens of other journalists, he was around 800 TV channels but all those that fired for being too critical of the Erdogan Furious with the way Milliyet “grovelled” provide news coverage are owned by shadowy government, which did not need to intervene before the government after it was taken over, billionaires – including real estate barons, because the media owners anticipated its the newspaper’s star columnist, Hasan Cemal, “In Turkey, with, or more politicians and captains of industry – and that wishes. stormed out in 2013. The same year, thousands often without, any direct some of these channels are used to blackmail, of Turks took to the street in protest against promote personal interests and even launder These new media oligarchs have prospered the government’s growing authoritarianism. government intervention, money. “There is a coup underway in India,” under Prime Minister and now President Dubbed “Occupy Gezi” after the Istanbul park writer and journalist Manu Joseph says. “Some Erdogan, who anointed them and to whom they that became its symbol, the protest movement they impose self-censorship people who are inconvenienced by democracy have remained loyal. “The problem is simple: held the international media spellbound for on a daily basis and silence have taken over nearly all the country’s one need only follow the money,” Baydar says. several weeks until forcibly crushed by the television news channels2.” As in so many other countries, the leading police. While all this was unfolding, Turkey’s colleagues who defend basic media in Turkey have wound up in the pockets leading TV channels contented themselves journalistic ethics” of businessmen active in such strategic sectors with broadcasting animal documentaries or as telecommunications, banking and public debates on completely unrelated subjects. works, a sector described by Baydar as a Their owners must have had other things on “fertile ground for carrot-and-stick policies.” their minds.