Capital in the Media Market: Is It Good or Bad That Banks Are Buying the Press?

Abstract

At the threshold of the twenty-first century the Russian press is undergoing the same process of concentration and monopolization of the media and the publishing industry that European newspapers and journals underwent in the late fifties and the early sixties. This course of events is the logical culmination of the period of domination by the Ideological Department of the CPSU Central Committee and the subsequent decade of unrestrained freedom of speech. The press is moving from ideological control to economic control and for the time being is not under the control of the public—the highest stage of development of freedom of the press in the countries of Western democracy.