I'm just back from the shops for a pint of milk.

A striking contrast between today's newspaper front pages in response to the mini-budget 'that will benefit the richest 1% at the expense of struggling households.'

The Guardian's headline is

'A budget for the rich.'

 

Whilst the front page of the Daily Mail exclaims 

'At last! A true Tory budget!'

(they've underlined the word 'true.')

 

I thought I'd google who owns The Daily Mail.

Apparently it's one Jonathan Harmsworth

(Harmsworth. There's a name.)

'If there is one media group to watch this year it is Daily Mail and General Trust, which becomes a private company next week when it is de-listed from the London Stock Exchange.

Lord Rothermere, Jonathan Harmsworth, 54, is paying £1.6bn for the 63% of the company he does not already own.

As he takes full control of DMGT he will also quietly become arguably the most powerful person in British news media.

He will control the UK’s top-selling daily and Sunday newspapers, its biggest circulation free daily (Metro), and the i and New Scientist to boot.

By Press Gazette’s reckoning he owns around 39% of the UK national newspapers sold every week in the UK, up from 29% in 2010. This compares with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp on 27.5%, down from around 30% a decade earlier.

DMGT distributes more than 2m daily print newspapers a day and nearly 800,000 on a Sunday.' (via Press Gazette)

 

'Harmsworth turned a notable page in the family history book in 2009 selling The Evening Standard to Russian Alexander Lebedev. The Viscount Rothermere took over DMGT at just 30 years old, inheriting it from his late father. His great-grandfather Harold founded the media company with his brother Alfred a century earlier.' (via Forbes )

 

I think it's important that news and investigative journalism is independent - and so (judging by so many of the comments by signers of this petition) do you.

Independent news is at the heart of a well functioning democracy.

Investigative journalism should hold power to account.

Journalism is not independent if it is controlled by money and power.

 

We have a new Prime Minister who has been elected by less than 0.2% of voters.

 

Channel 4 is independent and we need to protect it. 

Please continue to sign + share.