The Russian invasion of Ukraine is an outrage that has horrified most of the world but, appalling though it is, some significant events have emerged that are positive.
One heroic action that just may bring badly needed change around the globe came when Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One television, strode onto the set of its top evening news broadcast shouting: “Stop the war. No to war.”
She held a sign saying: “Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” It was signed in English: “Russians against the war.” She was fined and resigned but her ultimate fate is yet to be determined.
A free press is a pillar of democracy and Russia under Putin is without doubt a dicatorship. Russian oligarchs using wealth provided by Putin have for decades been infiltrating corporations and the media across the world. It is time to examine just what is happening – or has happened – in terms of freedom of the press.
According to Wikipedia Alexander Lebedev was listed as part owner of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and owner of two UK newspapers with his son Evgeny Lebedev: the Evening Standard and The Independent. This is an extract of what Wikepedia says about his background: “He transferred to the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence) of the KGB. According to The Sunday Times, as a KGB spy, he was based at the Soviet embassy in London from 1988. He worked for the KGB’s successor, the Foreign Intelligence Service, until 1992.”
Billionaires and others have long used libel actions to stifle free comment and so I must make it clear that as owner or part owner of two British newspapers there should be no criticism based on Mr Lebedev’s career history. People can change and there were and are no appropriate media laws to interfere with how they invest their money.
More to the point a Media Reform Coalition report on ownership of the British Press published in March 2021, showed that just three companies (News UK, Daily Mail Group and Reach) dominate 90% of the national newspaper market (up from 71% in 2015).
The report stated: “When online readers are included, these three companies (News UK, Daily Mail Group, Reach) dominate 80% of the market. In the area of local news, just six companies (Gannett, JPI Media, Reach, Tindle, Archant and Iliffe) account for nearly 84% of all titles. Two companies, Bauer and Global, now control nearly 70% of all local commercial analogue radio stations and 60% of national commercial digital stations.
“The digital landscape is hardly less concentrated. Facebook controls three of the top five social media services used to access online news in the UK while traditional news organisations account for 48% of Facebook users’ news sources, expanding the online market reach of a few already-dominant publishing companies. New, digital-only news sites have emerged as a significant force since our last report but these are overshadowed by the continuing grip of legacy news and, especially, national newspaper titles.”
In the current situation it is worth asking who owns the media in the U.S.? About 15 billionaires and six corporations own most of the U.S. media outlets. The biggest media conglomerates in America are AT&T, Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, National Amusements (which includes Viacom Inc).
The situation is remarkably similar throughout the so called free world. Oligarchs, it seems, have close business associations with some of those corporate media giants and that raises sinister implications.
The reality for working journalists is in stark contrast. Just this week I learned that a Brussels-based colleague had been stopped at the Calais ‘frontier post’ and quizzed for six hours. His offence, so far as we can tell, is to have written about Russia before the Ukraine invasion and to have published stories about it. He is not the first. Before the Ukraine invasion another British journalist based in Brussels was stopped at the Channel frontier and had his computer seized. Some years ago a journalist was arrested in Brussels and had his flat searched. He brought a legal action and eventually won. The point is that persecution of the free press has been going on for many years. Being a journalist now is to be in the sights of the security services across the free world.
Courageous journalists have lost their lives in Ukraine while others are losing their liberty and right of free expression in so-called democracies. We should not forget the assassination of a journalist in Malta after she wrote about political corruption.
That concentration of ownership and corporate interest is a restriction on a free press is without doubt. Billionaires may declare that they will not interfere with editorial policy but who can oppose them? Marina Ovsyannikova would, whatever the cost.
In the UK there was once a trade union that would have shut down production of a newspaper or news organisation over attempts to control what journalists wrote. Today corporate and political interference appears to be the norm.
It is time for journalists globally to pay tribute to Marina Ovsyannikova and the many of her colleaguies who resigned by standing up for a free press.
If ‘democratic governments’ were to follow suite with appropriate legislative measures the press could be free again, and democracy might survive.
————— Dateline: The Corner Cafe, Deal, Kent. —————
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