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Taiwanese troops hold a flag amid military readiness drills on January 11, 2023, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. (Getty Images)
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(Swell Media/Getty Images)
Is It Time to Rein in Kleptocrats Who Seek to Dominate the World's Information?
It’s an increasingly prevalent phenomenon across the globe: media companies are being taken over by business tycoons and kleptocrats less concerned with honest journalism than with their own political and financial self-interest. Their wealth itself isn’t necessarily a problem. There are genuine philanthropists now sustaining serious news publications and opinion outlets, and serious investors seeking new revenue streams to pay for high-quality news. But the overall trend is disturbing.
What to do? Are there safeguards that governments can put in place? Does that even make sense in a digital age? How might governmental responses be squared with Western faith in free economic competition? Does that still offer a path forward, or is the global erosion of media freedom best described as a market failure?
On Thursday, December 1, Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative hosted the first in a series of debates on kleptocracy and democracy. Featuring Hudson Visiting Fellow Martha Bayles of Boston College and Megan McArdle of Bloomberg View, this event was held at the 5th & K Busboys and Poets.
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Hong Kong media tycoon and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai is escorted by the police to the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club Shelter Cove Clubhouse for evidence collection as part of the ongoing investigations on August 11, 2020, in Hong Kong, China. (Anthony Kwan via Getty Images)
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UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres makes a speech as he attends the three-day International Palestine Conference, led by France and Saudi Arabia and attended by Turkiye at the United Nations Trusteeship Council in New York on July 28, 2025. (Selcuk Acar via Getty Images)
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A makeshift Roma camp that was believed to have housed more than 300 people is seen abandoned by its occupants ahead of a planned evacuation operation at a waste disposal site in Achères, France, on November 29, 2024. (Kiran Ridley via Getty Images)
