COMMENT | Media capture under the cover of Covid

COMMENT | Since the pandemic began 18 months ago, autocratic governments around the world have tightened their grip on the flow of information. These power grabs are all advanced attempts at “media capture,” a term that covers the multiple ways governments, corporations and other powerful entities seek to influence media output to protect vested interests.

Media capture is hardly limited to times of crisis. In much of the world, including in parts of Central Europe and Latin America, media outlets are controlled by government cronies. But a crisis creates opportunities to act even more brazenly, under the guise of combating potentially deadly misinformation and disinformation.

In Turkey, a prolonged, systematic assault on the press – the country has one of the world’s worst records for jailing journalists – has all but eliminated independent media. Predictably, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has used the pandemic as an excuse to squeeze the few remaining outlets.

Several local journalists have been arrested after publishing stories about Covid-19 infections and deaths, charged with “sowing panic and fear” and reporting “unofficial” information. According to Erdoğan, Turkey needs to be cleansed not only of the coronavirus but also of “media and political viruses.”

In Hungary, the media are controlled largely by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government and its allies, thanks partly to a 2018 government-organised merger of more than 400 media outlets. Most of the few remaining independent news organisations published an open letter in March accusing the government of blocking them from covering the Covid-19 outbreak accurately.

Meanwhile, many of these outlets are struggling ...