South Africa

Four major newspaper groups - Independent Newspapers, Johnnic Communications, Naspers and CTP/Caxton, dominate the South African print media market. I guarantee that if you pick up a magazine or newspaper it will have been printed by one of these four media giants. The amount of market share and power these groups have is truly staggering. Let's take a closer look (extract from SouthAfrica.info) :  

Independent Media, owned by Irish tycoon Tony O'Reilly, first acquired a stake in local newspapers in 1995 when it took control of Argus Newspapers in the 1990s and renamed it Independent Newspapers. Independent Newspapers is a wholly owned subsidiary of Independent News and Media (South Africa) Limited. It publishes 14 daily and weekly newspapers in the country's three major metropolitan areas.

 

The Star is the group's flagship daily newspaper. Other dailies are the Cape Argus, the premier isiZulu newspaper Isolezwe, Daily News, Cape Times, the Mercury, Pretoria News, the Diamond Fields Advertiser, Business Report and Daily Voice. Independent's Sunday newspapers are the Sunday Tribune, Independent on Sunday and Sunday Independent, with the Post published on Wednesdays and Fridays.

 

The group enjoys aggregate weekly sales of 2.8-million copies, reaches about 63% of English newspaper readers, and receives about 48% of total advertising spend in the paid newspaper market.

 

Johnnic Communications is owned by a coalition of black business groups and trade unions, the National Empowerment Consortium. The consortium bought TML from Anglo American's Omni Media Corporation in 1996. Johnnic also publishes the Sunday Times, South Africa's biggest Sunday newspaper, as well as the Sowetan, Business Day, Sunday World, Daily Dispatch, the Herald, Weekend Post, Algoa Sun, Ilizwi and Our Times.

 

The group also owns music publishing company Gallo Music, movie distributor Nu Metro, the Exclusive Books chain of bookshops, and Struik, New Holland and Map Studio publishers.

 

Nasionale Media, commonly referred to as Naspers, is a multinational media group with its principal operations in print media - newspapers, magazines, printing, book publishing and private education - and electronic media such as pay television and internet service provision. 

 

Print media comprises two segments: Media24, and book publishing and private education. Media24 is the largest publisher of magazines, one of the largest publishers of newspapers and the largest printer and distributor of magazines and related products in Africa.

 

Media24's newspaper division publishes five national dailies: Daily Sun, Die Burger, Beeld, Volksblad and the Natal Witness. Daily Sun is the largest daily newspaper in South Africa. On Sundays, the company publishes Rapport, City Press and Sunday Sun, printed in four cities and distributed nationally. It also has two weekly publications, Soccer-Laduma and Son, and English and Afrikaans community newspapers in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Free State, Northern Cape, Vaal Triangle and North West.

 

Media24 Magazines controls more than 60% of the country's magazine circulation, with 40 titles.

 

Caxton and CTP Publishers and Printers is 38% owned by Johnnic Communications. The group publishes the Citizen daily, which has a circulation of about 91 000. The newspaper division stables 88 free and sold Caxton owned or co-owned titles, as well as 30 regional and community newspapers. The magazine division publishes 15 titles, including Farmer's Weekly, the oldest magazine in South Africa.

 

That is a lot of power concentrated in relatively few hands. I was always under the impression that there were media laws limiting the number of newspapers and magazines a single corporation could control. Clearly this is not the case. The current system seems to rely very strongly on editorial independence as a means of preventing conflicts of interests in the news. International journalist and Stellenbosch University Professor Extraordinaire Govin Reddy made the following point in a recent conference :

“In the past, publishers had certain values--they knew that newspapers were important and that they could help determine what happens at election time,” Reddy said. “The goal today for these giant media corporations worldwide seems to be getting the highest ratings and the biggest piece of the advertising cake. Instead of serving their citizens, these organizations now spend most of their time watching their company’s bottom line.”

 

Food for thought?