Analysis for the week Jan. 10
Transcription
Analysis for the week Jan. 10
the fleet sheetʼs final word the fleet sheetʼs final word the fleet sheetʼs final word the fleet sheetʼs final word the fleet sheetʼs final word the fleet No. 122 friday edition Uncensored insight and analysis from Prague. Only for subscribers to the Fleet Sheet. Jan. 17, 2014 U.S. journalist accuses Putin of staging terrorism ... and gets banned from Russia Imagine if a prominent Russian journalist working for a statefunded media outlet claimed in a book that the Bush administration carried out the 9/11 attacks to justify invading Afghanistan and Iraq and to ensure Bush's reelection. Imagine if the journalist then wrote that Obama and his Wall Street friends preside over a system that is so corrupt that without the monthly injections from quantitative easing, Wall Street would face imminent collapse. Would the journalist get a U.S. work visa? David Satter, a U.S. journalist who was banned in recent days from visiting Russia for five years, did the equivalent of this in print with regard to Russia. In Darkness at Dawn in 2003, he accused the FSB of using the bombing of apartment buildings in 1999, killing 300 people, as justification for start- ing a second Chechen war and as a way to get Putin elected as president. A new Russian-language version published last year was entitled How Putin Became President and was a bestseller. Satter also wrote that Putin and his cronies preside over a political and economic system that is so corrupt that it would collapse if not for high oil and gas prices. Every country has a right to set its visa policy, and it's possible that Russia is merely getting tired of being preached to by the U.S. and other Western countries. It's not so well known, but the U.S. denied a visa in 2010 to a Colombian journalist under the "terrorist activities" section of the Patriot Act. In the Wall Street Journal this week, Satter hinted at what might be the real reason for his visa problems. As the Olympics approach, more unexplained terrorist attacks are taking place in Russia. As I understood it, Satter thinks Putin might have something planned for the Sochi Games, and he doesn't want someone like Satter sticking his nose into it. best@fleet.cz Analysis for the week Jan. 10-17, 2014 The CR doesn't have to ban foreign journalists, because they're leaving on their own. Or at least the foreign owners who employ some of them are. Everyone knows by now that the biggest event in the Czech media last year was the departure of three or four major foreign owners. Of daily publishers, the only foreigners still left are at the regional Deník newspapers (unless the Fleet Sheet also falls into the category of daily press). Andrej Babi‰ bought Mafra from the German owner, and that purchase has already cleared the regulatory process. Daniel Kfietínsk˘ and Patrik Tkáã of J&T bought Ringier Axel Springer CZ, for the announced price of Kã 4.7bn. The deal has not yet cleared the regulatory hurdles, but this didn't stop Forbes CZ from ranking Kfietínsk˘ and Tkáã as the No. 3 and No. 4 most-influential people in the Czech media. No. 1 was Babi‰, followed by CEO Petr Dvofiák of Czech TV at No. 2, Jaromír Soukup of Médea/Empresa at No. 5, and Zdenûk Bakala of Economia at No. 6. It's only one ranking, but it gives an idea of how domestic media owners are viewed. They influence content, according to the common perception. The first truly foreign owner (or owner's representative) on the list is Christoph Mainusch of CME/Nova, at No. 11, and he is there mainly because of Nova's advertising power, not his editorial influence. Kfietínsk˘ and Tkáã announced the price they paid, but Babi‰ did not. According to our sources, he paid �40m for Mafra's headquarters and eight times ebitda for the publishing company. This puts the value at about the same Kã 4.7bn paid by Kfietínsk˘ and Tkáã. These are very high prices - almost as much as Jeff Bezos paid for the Washington Post - and have set a bar that will be hard to maintain in later deals. Vladimír Îelezn˘, who took over as CEO of TV Barrandov last year, told Forbes CZ that the 7-8 multiple paid by Babi‰ is typical for the U.S. but far above the average of 4-5 in Europe. He predicted that Babi‰ will also nevertheless buy TV Nova at a multiple of 7-8. Babi‰ responded to this angrily, saying that he's not buying anything, because he's finished at Agrofert and almost isn't even an employee there anymore. In another context, though, he said that he had to reject 2014 budgets brought to him by Agrofert employees. The message from this is that Babi‰ is still very much in control of Agrofert, regardless of what he says. The purchase in 2014 by him of Nova, or to a lesser extent TV Prima, would give him tremendous influence over the media environment. The question is what Babi‰ and the other oligarchs want to do with their media outlets. It's too early to judge from MFD and LN. MFD has fallen in quality since Babi‰ took over, while LN has improved. In both cases, Babi‰ hired editorsin-chief with whom he had a personal relationship. István Léko of LN took tens of millions of crowns from Babi‰ to keep âeská pozice afloat, while Sabina Slonková of MFD is indebted to Babi‰ for providing information to her that helped make her the the best-known Czech investigative journalist. Babi‰ would likely put someone similar in charge at Nova. Jaroslav Plesl of T˘den wrote on Facebook that PPF's main motivation for installing Petr Dvofiák at Czech TV was so that no one else could have his own man there. Since Dvofiák took over, Czech TV has concentrated its anti-corruption reports on the regional godfathers and has left the big players alone. Dvofiák is also in the process of using a reorganization to eliminate dissent and to justify relying more and more on a small group of dependable journalists and experts who will not cause trouble. This is also the strategy of the state-owned Russian media. The main media there serve the purpose of making sure that the criminal activity of the major players are not given a wide audience. If something like Novaya Gazeta or Radio Echo takes a critical line, it doesn't matter much, because their penetration and influence is minimal. The Czech media took a big step toward this in 2013. The oligarchs will use their media purchases to make sure that minimal coverage is given to the bribery, extortion and legal tricks they use to take over businesses that they then receive a stamp of approval from the EU to run. After acquiring the businesses, they will run them better than some of the previous foreign owners. This is how the oligarchs will use the media to go legit. 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