Media Foundation

• Educational Media Foundation (EMF), the parent organization of leading Christian radio networks K-LOVE and Air1, has appointed three to its Executive Leadership Team.
• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231130506057/en/
  David Pierce has been named Chief Media Officer at Educational Media Foundation.
• “We are excited to expand our executive leadership team with this group of outstanding professionals,” said Todd Woods, EMF Chief Executive Officer.
• Educational Media Foundation (EMF) is a nonprofit, multi-platform media company on a mission to draw people closer to Christ.

• Authoritarian leaders might be good at damaging democracy, but unless they are pure dictators they often still need to worry about winning elections.
• In the last few years, Europe has seen the rise of a number of authoritarian populists who rely on winning mass support among ordinary people – as opposed to just rigging the vote.
• It’s similar in many countries presided over by authoritarian populists.

Why media ownership matters

• Yet a closer look reveals an interesting structural feature of media ownership networks in authoritarian populist countries.
• For instance, in Hungary, the Central European Press and Media Foundation (Kesma) is a huge right-wing media conglomerate that controls more than 500 national and local media outlets.
• Kesma was established in 2018, when most pro-government private media owners transferred their ownership rights to the foundation, which is headed by a board of trustees full of Orbán loyalists closely associated to the ruling party.

Love your enemies

• You might expect authoritarian populist governments to be more like the old totalitarian regimes which pulled out all the stops to silence any dissenting voices.
• This was the strategy of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin.
• It’s also convenient for an authoritarian regime to set up an “us versus them” situation, where “they” can be vilified and ridiculed by regime-friendly media.
• In Hungary, for instance – in a wider strategy to discredit independent media news – pro-government media outlets have launched smear campaigns against independent media outlets funded by international grants.
• This allows them to set up internal enemies as a target for their supporters.

• PHILADELPHIA, May 23, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Braimah Sulemana, Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, today was named recipient of the 2023 James and Carol Hovey Eisenhower Fellowships Impact Award for his groundbreaking investigative journalism of accountability in Ghana.
• Sulemana, an Eisenhower Fellow from Ghana in 2019, was selected for EF's new Annual Impact Award to recognize an Eisenhower Fellow or group of Fellows for outstanding project achievement in generating positive impact.
• His winning project was the establishment of a regional independent nonprofit journalism organization, The Fourth Estate.
• "In the two short years since its founding, The Fourth Estate's incisive reporting has led to impressive results."

• This year's honorees — Dr. Anthony Fauci, Senator Rob Portman, and journalist Judy Woodruff — will each receive the award for their achievements in fostering closer ties, cooperation, and mutual understanding between Europe and the United States, in a ceremony at the House of Sweden.
• In so doing, they have fostered deeper public understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing Europe and the United States in an increasingly turbulent world.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci became a household name in Europe and the U.S. for his rigorous, rational response, and his spirit of service.
• Throughout her long and distinguished career, Judy Woodruff has embodied the best of American journalism.