New Paper by Marius Dragomir on Media Capture Published by SAGE

Marius Dragomir's article "Control the money, control the media: How government uses funding to keep media in line" has been published by SAGE Journalism. As Dragomir writes in the abstract of the paper, "the media industry has been ravaged by the economic crises. Some media, mainly those covering tabloid fare and digitally savvier than others or those backed by deep-pocketed investors, are surviving or even thriving. But independent journalism outfits, particularly outside the Western world, have been grappling with serious financial problems." Looking at case studies and phenomena ranging from Malaysia through Mexico to Hungary, Dragomir analyses how government uses funding, directly and indirectly, to capture the media, and he describes trends in how governments use funding to control media by not financing independent journalism, but choosing to fund instead media outlets that advance the government agenda and the interests of its allies and supporters, either political groups or businesses.