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President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with business leaders at the US Ambassador’s Residence on October 28, 2025, in Tokyo, Japan. (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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Jimmy Lai arrives at the Court of Final Appeal ahead of a bail hearing on February 9, 2021, in Hong Kong, China. (Getty Images)
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(Screenshot via YouTube)
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Teresa Lai and Lai Shun-yan, the respective wife and son of Jimmy Lai, and Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong, arrive at the West Kowloon Law Courts building in Hong Kong on December 15, 2025. (Getty Images)
