The article, written by our Research Associate Konrad Bleyer-Simon for The Heinrich Böll Foundation, provides a critical overview of media capture in Central European member states based on the results of the Media Pluralism Monitor.

“While anti-democratic governments had, in the past, frequently reverted to open censorship, physical threats, and even imprisonment as a means of silencing independent media, a shift in strategy has been observed in the first two decades of the 21st century towards less primitive and less overt methods.

Today, the preferred approach is to capture or even conquer the media, hence the term media capture: A model within which critical media exist, but at the same time, the government is able to act unscrupulously.”

Read the full piece here.