MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA
second one is run by a banker Tsvetan Vasilev and a politician and
entrepreneur Delyan Peevskim. Apparently, due to this fact it regularly
appears on the last place among European countries in the world list of
the press freedom.
In 2010 Slovak market experienced similar changes. The British owner
of the daily Pravda, the Daily Mail and General Trust, sold it to a Czech
company Florena. Four years later an investment group Penta bought
a share in a signiicant and independent broadsheet the daily SME.
The accession of the investment group Penta into the publishing house
Petit Press aroused rigorous reactions. The editor-in-chief of the daily
SME, among whose main investigative targets the group Penta had
deinitely belonged, Matúš Kostolný gave immediate notice. Four of his
subordinates followed him and ifty employees from the editorial staff
declared their leaving until the end of the year.
From the viewpoint of the topical situation on the Slovak media scene
nothing unusual really happened. Namely, majority of media inluencing
public opinion are at present directly or indirectly controlled by investment
group Penta (besides a share in Petit Press it also owns publishing houses
Trend Holding and 7 Plus), the group of the entrepreneur Ivan Kmotrík
(television TA3 and distribution net Mediaprint Kapa) and a group J&T
(TV JOJ, radio stations Jemné and Anténa).
In the Czech Republic the situation is very similar, as a prevailing part
of newscasting mass media are owned by four domestic magnates and
businessmen: Andrej Babiš - the second richest Czech citizen and since
January 2014 Minister of Finance in the Czech Republic - owns the
dailies MF DNES and Lidové noviny, Radio Impuls and a free-of-charge
weekly 5+2. Daniel Křetínský controls tabloid dailies Blesk and Aha,
the daily Sport and a weekly Relex. Zdeňek Bakal has the newspaper
Hospodářské noviny, a weekly Respekt and a web portal Aktuálně.cz
and Jaromír Soukup owns a weekly Týden, Impuls and TV Barrandov. 6
6 ŠTĚŤKA, V.: Oligarchovia v médiách nie sú problém len Česka a Slovenska.
[online]. [2015-04-02]. Available at: .
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