British Newspapers: Who Owns What?

A UK government proposal to ban foreign states from owning British newspapers looks set to scupper plans for an Abu Dhabi-led bid to take over the Telegraph Media Group (TMG).

But even if the Telegraph plan by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, goes nowhere, rival groups are looking to tighten their grip on UK media.

According to The Telegraph, Rupert Murdoch’s giant News Corp and the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) have held talks about a potential joint takeover of the Telegraph titles.

Three companies — DMG Media (part of DMGT), News UK (the British arm of News Corp) and Reach — dominate 90 percent of the UK national newspaper market, according to a 2023 report by the Media Reform Coalition.

The three groups also account for more than 40 percent of the total audience reach of the UK’s 50 largest online news brands.

DMG Media titles Metro and The Daily Mail and News UK’s The Sun are the dominant brands in the newspaper market.

Jonathan Harmsworth is the great-grandson of the founder of The Daily Mail and the chairman and sole owner of DMGT.

It controls 40 percent of the UK’s national newspaper market through The Daily Mail, its weekly sister paper The Mail on Sunday, the “i” and the Metro freesheet.

If DMG Media buys the Telegraph titles, it would mean that a single publisher would be close to controlling half of all national UK newspaper circulation.

US-Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, which publishes The Sun, The Times and their Sunday titles, controls one-third of the UK’s newspaper market, according to the Media Reform Coalition study.

Murdoch’s son Lachlan has since taken over as chairman of parent company News Corp, but his father is still believed to be closely involved in operating the family’s global media empire.

Reach’s brands include national titles The Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Star and Daily Record in Scotland, as well as major local titles The Manchester Evening News, The Liverpool Echo and WalesOnline.

As Trinity Mirror, it bought up a number of local, regional and national titles before rebranding.

The Russian-born son of a former KGB agent and oligarch, Evgeny Lebedev owns London’s Evening Standard newspaper and the largest share of ownership in The Independent online newspaper.

In 2020, he was nominated to the House of Lords by former prime minister Boris Johnson, becoming Baron Lebedev of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation.

Brothers David and Frederick Barclay bought the Telegraph titles in 2004 after building a business empire of real estate, retailing and hotels, including The Ritz in London.

In 2009 The Telegraph was lauded after it launched an investigation into MPs’ expenses claims based on millions of leaked documents.

But the titles, which traditionally supported the Conservative party, built up debts and last year Lloyds bank sent in receivers to take control of the Telegraph titles and the Spectator magazine, known as the “Tory bible” and formerly edited by Boris Johnson.

The Guardian newspaper, owned by Guardian Media Group, has only one shareholder — the Scott Trust, which receives more than half of its revenue from readers.

According to the Media Reform Coalition report, The Guardian & Observer websites and apps had 7.3 million users in 2022, roughly 10.9 percent of the UK population.

Global tech giants own huge swathes of the spaces and technologies that are used to fund, find and access media content online, the report said.

Meta and Google command around four-fifths of all online advertising spending in the UK, giving these two tech giants unparalleled power over how online news is found and funded, the report said.

According to Ipsos, the BBC, with an audience of 38 million, was the most popular news website in the UK in January 2024.

It was followed by The Sun (24.3 million), The Mail Online (22.8 million), The Mirror (22.6 million) and The Guardian (21.2 million).

The Independent had an audience of 20 million, The Telegraph was at 15.1 million, Metro at 13.9 million, The Daily Express at 13 million and The Times and Sunday Times at 11.5 million.