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Irish publisher Independent News & Media (INM) has a storied history, much of it in recent times tumultuous. The company’s main title - the Irish Independent - has been published for 114 years. The Belfast Telegraph has been published since 1870. In the last decade INM has gone through a contentious ownership change as well as editorial and staff changes.
Media houses, broadly, continue to go through vast restructuring. Digital transformation provided - and still provides - many of those thrills. Operators and stakeholders agree: they need more money, more time or both. Upheaval is now standard operating practice. Former Sunday Independent editor Anne Harris referred to INM as “traumatized” in an opinion piece for the Irish Times (April 30) as current employees prepare for new owners.
Principal owners Denis O’Brien and Dermot Desmond are exiting the publishing company in favor of Belgian-Dutch publisher Mediahuis. Other shareholders quickly fell in line, some grousing about the price, and by the end of Tuesday, reported the Irish Independent (May 1). Mediahuis had acquired a controlling stake in INM for about €146 million. The company previously exited holdings in the UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India. (See more about media mergers and acquisitions here)
INM currently publishes the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent The Herald, the Sunday World, the Belfast Telegraph and several regional titles. Mediahuis owns newspapers in Belgium and the Netherlands, including De Standaard (Belgium) and NRC Handelsblad (Netherlands) and De Telegraaf (Netherlands). The company is also invested in Dutch commercial broadcasting. In Belgium it recently partnered with French broadcaster NRJ group to operate the NRJ and Nostalgie franchises. It is considered one of Europe’s fastest growing media groups.
"We are in it for the long haul,” said Mediahuis chairman Thomas Leysen to INM journalists. At the end of March the company announced cost restructuring with staff reductions at Belgian newspapers on profit warnings.
Armin Wolf regularly anchors the nightly news program ZiB2 on Austrian public broadcaster ORF. He interviews people, politicians included. Herr Wolf has excoriated, with increasing regularity since the right-wing tilt in the Austrian government, some of the most virulent xenophobic politicians.
Recently Herr Wolf interviewed Harald Vilimsky (April 23), member of the European Parliament (MEP) and general secretary of the far-right populist Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs - FPÖ). During the course of the interview Herr Vilimsky was asked to explain the obvious similarities between an FPÖ youth league poster depicting migrants as threatening to similar illustrations in the notorious Third Reich publication Der Stürmer. The poster’s slogan was “tradition beats migration.” Herr Vilimsky exploded, saying there would be “consequences.” (See more about elections and media here)
Due to the coalition nature of the current Austrian government - FPÖ a minority member of the government led by the conservative Austrian People’s Party (Österreichische Volkspartei - ÖVP) - the potential for political interference with the public broadcaster has been a source of anxiety, not the least within the journalistic community. After all, Austria sits in proximity to Hungary and Italy. Current ORF Foundation Board chairman Norbert Steger, an FPÖ appointee, suggested Herr Wolf take a “sabbatical.”
Being an ardent observer, Herr Wolf suggested the on-camera response by Herr Vilimsky was planned. “How spontaneous Vilimsky's indignation was in the studio is, incidentally, an interesting question," he said to Die Presse (April 29). “Conflict with the ORF is obviously part of the (FPÖ) campaign concept.” And, yes, the FPÖ almost immediately released a campaign ad deriding a TV journalist named “Armina Wolf.” FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache "promises" to fight "like a lion for abolishing ORF fees.” The backstory, suggested German daily Die Welt (April 30), is ÖVP members support removing the FPÖ from the coalition.
“Of course you can criticize us,” reiterated ORF Director General Alexander Wrabetz to oe24.at (April 29), “but we will not accept personal threats and pressure. I sincerely hope that we will be allowed to do our work on the (European Parliament) election campaign and not make ourselves a campaign topic.” (See more about media in Austria here)
Herr Wolf was named Austrian journalist of the year in February. On accepting, he noted “there is a new quality when a general secretary or the media spokesman of a governing party publicly demand the removal of moderators because interview questions don't suit them," quoted by Weiner Zeitung (February 22). "I believe that there is a fundamental problem in the understanding of freedom of the press and the constitutionally guaranteed independence of the ORF."
Media regulators in a fair number of jurisdictions approach political advertising differently from other commercial ads. Generally allowed is the rhetorical hyperbole, shall we say, that would be restricted for soap, automobile and fast food ads. Political campaigns are given sole responsibility for the content of their messaging whereas broadcasters can be held responsible for commercial advertising. The legal theory, where applied, is that any restriction on political speech is censorship. (See more about elections and media here)
German public broadcaster ZDF refused to broadcast political ads in the run-up to European Parliament elections from the small, far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands - NPD), citing “attacks on human dignity and likely disrupting public peace.” The message, as expected, was profoundly xenophobic. Public television network ARD and public national radio network Deutschlandradio also declined to run the ads, which were set to air between April 29th and May 15th. (See more about hate speech here)
The NPD cried foul and took ZDF to court. That battle effectively ended on Saturday (April 27) when the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) backed the opinion of two lower courts that the ads were truly offensive, reported media news portal meedia.de (April 29). There are "no grounds to think that the courts failed to uphold the plaintiff's freedom of speech,” said the ruling.
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