Media and Journalism Research Center

29/05/2026

Our State Media Monitor project is currently being updated for 2026, with new indicators, refreshed country profiles, and a redesigned database that makes it easier to compare how state media are owned, governed, funded, and controlled across different countries.

As part of this update, we have published a new analytical overview of state media in Middle Africa, covering seven countries and 20 media outlets that together serve an estimated population of 215 million people.

The findings reveal that none of the seven countries reviewed by the State Media Monitor has statutory safeguards for editorial independence or an autonomous governing-board mechanism in place. Angola is the only country in the region where more than one state-media typology was identified combining state-controlled and captured-public models and it ranks in the lower third of the global press freedom index.

According to the 2026 RSF Index, Chad recorded the region’s biggest improvement, climbing 15 places, while Angola and the Central African Republic saw the sharpest declines, each falling nine places. Gabon and Cameroon also dropped by two places each.

Watch this space for regular insights that will be published up to the release of the 2026 Global State Media Monitor overview scheduled for late September.
https://statemediamonitor.com/2026/05/state-media-in-middle-africa-a-uniform-architecture-diverging-fortunes/

29/05/2026

A new episode in our audio brief series on Spotify continues the exploration of Marius Dragomir’s study, The Architecture of Media Capture: Typologies, Global Patterns, and the Tech Threat, this time examining how the Hungarian model of media capture spread across Europe. While each country’s version operates through its own political logic and mechanisms, they all lead to the same result: journalism turned into a tool of power, and citizens deprived of the independent information essential to democratic life.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4DP36zZ7sbdxJKfewZEQoY?si=1809bcb2b5d84b6f&nd=1&dlsi=e5b98ae3884f48f3

MJRC Audio Briefs · Episode

26/05/2026

https://youtube.com/shorts/GyTyQ3zpbHM?feature=share

A new study, Who Owns the Answer tries to tackle this difficult question.

25/05/2026

State Media Monitor is undergoing its 2026 update, with new indicators, updated country profiles, and a redesigned database that it is making it easier to compare how state media are owned, governed, funded and controlled across countries.

As part of this work, we just issued an analytical summary of state media in Eastern Africa, covering 16 countries and 58 outlets. The findings show a highly concentrated pattern of state control. Of the outlets reviewed, 46, or 79.3%, fall under the State-Controlled category. Eight countries in the dataset have only State-Controlled outlets.

The analysis also shows why detailed, outlet-level data matters. Tanzania has one of the more "diverse" (but still harshly captured) state-media landscapes in the region in typological terms.

Watch this space for regular insights that will be published up to the release of the 2026 Global State Media Monitor overview scheduled for late September.

State media in Eastern Africa: a captive landscape, slowly diverging May 19, 2026May 19, 2026 State Media Monitor 2026: regional analysis covering 16 countries from Burundi to Zimbabwe Key findings Sixteen Eastern African countries profiled in the State Media Monitor 2026 cycle account for 58 state-...

25/05/2026

Our latest digest of newly published media-company accounts reads five FY2025 reports against each other: Berlingske Media (Denmark), Star Media Group (Malaysia), Večer Mediji (Slovenia), Hürriyet Gazetecilik (Turkey) and Tindle Newspapers (UK).

Five very different markets. One recurring theme: ownership is one of the most important facts about what a media company’s journalism can become.

🇩🇰 Berlingske, B.T., Weekendavisen and Euroinvestor have moved into a Nordic foundation-led media alliance.
🇲🇾 The Star, Malaysia’s largest English-language daily, is still controlled by a political party with 48.33% of the voting shares while Star Media Group’s cash plus the disclosed fair value of its investment properties exceeds its reported total assets.
🇸🇮 Večer, Slovenia’s oldest continuously published post-war daily, dismissed four senior journalists and editors in a year when six related companies each held just under 20% of its publisher.
🇹🇷 Hürriyet, one of Turkey’s flagship dailies, has 76% of its publisher’s assets sitting as receivables from related companies in the same group.
🇬🇧 And Tindle’s 30-title local portfolio,including the Cornish & Devon Post, Tenby Observer, Farnham Herald and Isle of Man Examiner, was sold four months after the accounts were signed.

Financial structure shapes editorial possibility.

Full digest 👇https://globalmediaownership.com/media-influence-matrix-financial-signals-9/

18/05/2026

Many organisations, including news media, civil society groups, law firms, hospitals and others have no idea whether their systems will still protect their data in 2030.

That is the uncomfortable starting point of the latest edition of the Secure Internet Observatory Monthly Signal, written by our center's experts.

The Signal is designed as an explainer of explainers: a monthly briefing that translates fast-moving developments in quantum technology into clear, actionable intelligence for journalists, editors, and civil society professionals, without assuming a technical background.

This month's edition focuses on a shift that may have important consequences for the future of communications. In April, some organisations that run large parts of the internet (Cloudflare, Meta), and several European governments, began putting firm dates on their transition to quantum-resistant security.

The May Signal covers:

→ Why the window for protecting long-lived sensitive data is compressing faster than expected.
→ What Meta's publicly released migration framework reveals about the scale of the challenge, and what it means for institutions that haven't started
→ How France, Germany, the EU, and the UK have set transition deadlines for government systems, and why civilian institutions are largely absent from those frameworks
→ Why authentication (not just encryption) is now the priority concern, and what that means for secure source communication, whistleblower tools, and editorial systems
→ Concrete story angles for reporters covering security, policy, law, and media

The Signal is available to members of the Media and Journalism Exchange, MJRC's internal network for journalism and media professionals.



https://journalismresearch.circle.so/c/next-internet-observatory/secure-internet-observatory-signal-4-may-26-0e23e98a-ae90-4522-8b3d-ec7e1e5b684a

12/05/2026

Last year, we launched the Media and Journalism Exchange, a trusted, professional community platform curated by our center. It brings together journalists, researchers, contributors, and anyone interested in engaging with conversations around media and journalism. The platform is designed to support knowledge sharing, collaborative research, and ethical participation in projects within the field.
We’re pleased to share that the Media and Journalism Exchange has now been listed and featured on Discover (Circle), a curated marketplace where you can explore and join online communities, courses, and creator-led memberships.
You can join both the Exchange and Discover by becoming part of our community using the link below!

A global network for researchers and journalists studying media policy.

12/05/2026

Our colleague Robert Nemeth highlights a new study in the latest Journalism Funders Forum newsletter, exploring the complex question of how well local news serves its communities. Published in Journalism and authored by Kristy Hess, Angela Ross, Alison McAdam, Angela (Sotiriadis) Blakston, Susan Forde, Matthew Ricketson, and Hugh Martin, the paper introduces the Local News Proximity Index—a tool designed to measure both access to local news and how closely outlets are connected to, and engaged with, their audiences.
The Journalism Funders Forum newsletter is curated by the Media and Journalism Research Center for Philea - Philanthropy Europe Association.

Understanding when local news meets audience needs is a complex issue. This paper, published in Journalism, presents the Local News Proximity Index, which

10/05/2026

Our new YouTube channel is up and running, here a brief video about what types of media capture our experts have identified.

A new study from our center introduces for the first time a typology of media capture that includes Hungary, United States, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Russia.

06/05/2026

Financial Signals #7: what company filings reveal about the business of journalism.
This week we read five newly-published media-company reports against each other:
🇸🇮 Dnevnik (Slovenia) has spun the journalism into a subsidiary
🇱🇻 Delfi Latvia: 132 newsroom jobs, modestly profitable, but inside an Estonian parent that's increasingly being asked whether the cross-border Baltic publisher model still has scale.
🇨🇳 China-owned Phoenix New Media kept its NYSE listing and its thin profit by becoming, financially, a digital-reading mini-program business. Advertising keeps shrinking.
🇭🇷 Hanza Media, Croatia's leading domestically-owned newspaper publisher, profitable on a 1.1% margin, just closed Globus after 35 years of continuous publication.
🇷🇴 Digi Communications telecommunications giant: Romania's leading pro-Western news channel, Digi24, its highest-traffic news website and four national radio stations all sit inside a €2.22bn telecoms conglomerate that controls 72% of the country's fixed broadband. Digi24 walked off the must-carry list it depended on for 12 years, at a moment when Romanian trust in news is 26%, the 2024 presidential election was annulled, and far-right movements have spent two years attacking mainstream newsrooms.

Two of these five players have legally separated their journalism from their assets in the past 18 months. All five describe owners whose identity, concentration or political exposure is now a first-order question for the journalism inside them.

Read the full digest and the underlying company profiles on the Global Media Finances Map ↓

https://globalmediaownership.com/media-influence-matrix-financial-signals-7/