By Kufara Gwenzi
(August 2006)
Focus on:
- Financial Mail (South Africa)
- FinWeek/Finance Week (South Africa)
- The Economist (Britain)
- Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong)
- Forbes (USA)
- Business Week (USA)
- Business Review Weekly (Australia)
A business weekly magazine in South Africa founded in 1959. It is published by BDFM Media Company, a joint venture company between Pearsons Group subsidiary, Financial Times newspaper of Britain and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Johnnic Communications Ltd (now Avusa Limited).
Originally, Pearson Group subsidiary, Financial Times newspaper of Britain partnered with the South African Associated Newspapers (SAAN) to own Financial Mail, before an Anglo American-owned Johannesburg Consolidated Investments (JCI), took a controlling interest in SAAN through its subsidiary Johnnies Industrial Corporation Limited (Johnnic) in 1984.
Pearson Group is one of the world's leading multinational publishing houses. (For more details, see under Economist magazine, below.) Johannesburg Consolidated Investments (JCI) had been founded by mining tycoon, Barney Barnato, and became an Anglo-American Corporation subsidiary in 1917. SAAN was formed in 1965 by Sir Abe Bailey, a British (of Jewish origin) mining tycoon and whose son James Richard Bailey was the founder of Drum magazine and married to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s daughter.
Abe Bailey bought the Rand Daily Mail in 1904 (after having been launched in 1902by a man with a thousand mining and speculative interests, Harry Freeman Cohen) and the Sunday Times in 1906. In 1937, Bailey added the Sunday Express to his stable, and out of these publications the SAAN was formed. The SAAN was a combination of three newspapers - the Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg-based daily newspaper founded by B.C. Forbes, also the founder of Forbes magazine), the Sunday Express ( Durban Sunday paper), and the Sunday Times (national Sunday newspaper with headquarters in Johannesburg ). Cape Times ( Cape Town newspaper) was later added onto the stable.
The Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Express were closed in 1985 after the mining houses pulled the plug. This was followed by a group restructuring to create TML leading to SAAN to become Times Media Limited (TML) media group. This led to the birth of Weekly Mail (now Mail&Guardian) by a group of journalists who had been retrenched after the closures of the Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Express.
The closure of Rand Daily Mail also led to formation of a South African national business daily, Business Day by Johnnic through a joint venture with Argus Group, a company that had been formed in 1889 by Francis Dormer who had close links to the British (of Jewish origin) mining magnate and imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes. The TML media group merged with a book publishing house, New Holland Publishing in 2001 after New Holland Publishing had been sold to Johnnic, to create Johnnic Communications with effect from October 2000.
Johnnic Communications Limited (Johncom) had been incorporated in June 1889 as the Argus Printing and Publishing Company Limited. The name was changed to Argus Holding Limited in August 1988 and to Omni Media Corporation Limited on 26 September 1994. In May 2000, shareholders approved a further name change to Johnnic Communications Limited (Johncom) to become the operational entity of Johnnic Holdings Limited (Johnnic - formerly known as Johnnies Industrial Corporation Limited). Johnnic Communications’ subsidiaries consist of Johnnic Publishing Ltd, Johnnic e-Ventures Ltd (JeV), I- Net Bridge (which it jointly owns with BDFM Media Company) and Johnnic Entertainment Ltd.
Its associate companies are Caxton and CTP Publishers and Printers (also the publisher of the Citizen newspaper) and M-Net/SuperSport. Johnnic Publishing houses the group's newspapers and magazines (Business Day, Financial Mail, Sowetan, Daily Dispatch, Weekend Post, Soccer Life, Sunday Times, Sunday World, The Herald, Elle, SA Mining, Computing SA), book and map publishing interests. JeV is the digital division, providing online solution, content and applications to business, education and consumers. I-Net Bridge's core business is to the preferred supplier of online content and applications to the southern African financial, corporate and government communities, enabling them to do their business and serve their clients.
Johnnic Entertainment houses the group's music and filmed entertainment interests, boasting of SA's leading brands, i.e. Gallo and Nu-Metro. From 1996, Johnnic became a restructured company into an integrated media, entertainment and telecommunications group consisting of diverse shareholders - National Empowerment Consortium – NEC (35%), Anglo American Corporation of South Africa through its subsidiary Omni Media Corporation Limited (12.7%) and SA Mutual Group (10.8%). National Empowerment Consortium is company consisting of black businesses through New Africa Investments Limited (NAIL) linked to the ruling party ANC, the owners of Sowetan newspaper and trade union investment vehicles (mainly of COSATU), among others.
Financial Mail magazine was part of the South African English and Jewish media industry that was intimately linked to the mining industry before and during apartheid. English and Jewish mining and industrial tycoons established or acquired newspapers through Johannesburg Consolidated Investments (JCI) which was a subsidiary of mining giant Anglo American as a struggle to compete with the Afrikaans press.
Financial Mail can be considered to be a premier business magazine in South Africa with a reach in Southern Africa . Although it has a history of being anti-apartheid, its editorial content has continued to exhibit a British/Jewish liberal ethos by remaining close to the capital of the ‘Empire’ (London) through the 73.5% joint ownership by a British media company, Pearsons Group (50%), and the shareholding of Anglo American Corporation and S.A. Mutual in Johnnic. It has not moved from the ideological orientations of its formation.
The capital and loans used by Johnnic to take over the two business publications was provided for by the same people linked to the British and Jewish liberal establishment and remain unchanged. Their editorial thrust or slant is largely a worldview which is an endorsement of the ‘Washington Consensus’. The Washington Consensus constitutes a set of socio-economic policies endorsed by five Washington–based financial institutions: the US Treasury Department (the equivalent of most countries’ Ministry of Finance), the US Federal Reserve Board, United States Agency International Development (USAID) – a foreign policy funding arm of the US State Department, the IMF and World Bank.
Since the IMF and World Bank derive their authority from, are shaped by and reflect Euro-American geopolitical interests, the IMF and World Bank then adopted the Washington Consensus prescriptions wholesomely and made them conditions for countries seeking assistance from them. The Washington Consensus has survived as a shorthand for the economic policies adopted by many governments, in many cases as a result of IMF-World Bank ‘rules of engagement'.
According to the Economist magazine: "The patients span the globe from Vietnam to Venezuela . The doctors face each other across 19th Street in Washington and dispense their medicine together. Their remedies, dubbed the Washington Consensus, include tight fiscal and monetary policies, freer trade and capital flows, and privatization."
The Financial Times newspaper focuses more on the purpose than the mechanism, describing the Washington Consensus as "a shorthand label for the official orthodoxy of the IMF and most of the members of the Group of Seven leading industrial countries, above all the US".
2. FinWeek/Finance Week of South Africa
A business weekly magazine in South Africa founded in 1979 with a current circulation of more than 13,000, according to ABC figures of 2004. It is published by Media24, a subsidiary of Naspers (called Nasionale Pers until 1998) after it was bought in September 1998.
Media24 controls more than 60% of South Africa 's total magazine circulation. In 1998, Finance Week merged with the Afrikaans Finansies & Tegniek, an Afrikaans business magazine introduced in 1985.
In September 2001, a separation of Finance Week and Finansies & Tegniek was implemented following a research suggested product differentiation. Naspers Media is the biggest Afrikaans press group owned by its directors, but with a large shareholding by Servgro, in turn owned by Sanlam.
Its forerunner was De Nationale Pers, which published De Burger (‘The Citizen’ in English), an Afrikaans daily newspaper that was the official mouthpiece of the National Party (NP). Die Nationale Pers had been formed by a group of Afrikaans intellectuals around a lawyer, Willie A. Hofmeyr in December 1914 to publish De Burger.
Hofmeyr was the first among Afrikaner intellectuals to see an opportunity to develop a narrow, ethnically-based and exclusive Afrikaans nationalism into economic empowerment. He is said to have pursued this vision with an iron determination. Hofmeyr was a founding member of the Afrikanerbond (Afrikaner Broederbond), a Freemasonic oriented organization that was formed in 1918 with one main aim: to further Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa by maintaining Afrikaner culture, developing an Afrikaner economy, and to gaining control of the South African government, against a background of black/white and Boer/British conflicts.
During the apartheid years most government ministers and many influential Afrikaner churchmen, academics, professionals and military and policemen were members. The initial capital was provided by a few wealthy Afrikaans wine farmers around Stellenbosch. This was the beginning of a long-standing economic and political alliance. According to the Cape Argus, 15 October 1934; Stellenbosch has always held a certain mystique for Afrikaners, having variously been described as the ‘heart of Afrikanerdom’ and the ‘Mecca of Afrikanerdom.’
It was both an intellectual hub and an economic powerhouse of Afrikanerdom. It is the site of a prestigious site of the archetypal Afrikaans university Stellenbosch University and having been at the centre of Afrikaner capitalism in the 1930s and 1940s. The Afrikaans press was established mainly as a reaction to the British and Jewish Establishment in South Africa .
The first newspaper to propagate the interests of Afrikaners and the Dutch, De Zuid-Afrikaan, was started in 1830 by Christoffel Joseph Brand, a lawyer who was unpopular with the British colonial authorities. The De Zuid-Afrikaan folded in 1904 after what is believed to have the loss of its influential backers following its editor’s support for a British, Cecil John Rhodes, in the clash against the Afrikaner leader, Paul Kruger.
Until 2000, Sanlam was the major shareholder and currently its shareholders are Standard Bank Nominees Ltd holds 18%, Nedcor Bank Nominees Ltd have 15.2%, and Sanlam through CMB Nominees Ltd have 16.4%, amongst others. Sanlam was established in 1918 as the first Afrikaans life assurance company. In 1983, The Star newspaper carried a story on the concentration of capital in the South African economy: “The private sector of the South African economy is virtually owned by three huge conglomerates — Sanlam, Old Mutual and Anglo American.” (11th August 1983).
This pattern of control is confirmed in another article, again carried in The Star, during March 1984: ‘Only three mammoth companies now control most of the several hundred companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, according to disclosures on the degree of economic power slipping into fewer and fewer hands.’ (22nd March 1984).
Willie A. Hofmeyr was not only a founder of the De Nationale Pers (now Naspers), he was among those who founded Sanlam and he went on to become its chairman and managing director in 1918. Naspers is a multinational media group with its principal operations in electronic media (pay television – Multichoice/M-Net and internet subscriber platforms – MWeb and related technologies) and print media (50 newspaper titles, 35 magazine titles, printing, book publishing and private education).
The group’s most significant operations are located in South Africa, elsewhere in Africa, in China, Thailand, The Netherlands, Greece and Cyprus. Naspers is listed both on the Johannesburg and NASDAQ Stock Exchanges in the USA .
3. The Economist of Britain
This is a London-based business weekly newsmagazine offering reporting, commentary and analysis on world politics, business, finance, science and technology, books and culture. It belongs to The Economist Group which includes The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the European Voice.
It is a publication of The Economist Newspaper Limited founded in 1843 by James Wilson who was Scottish-Jew and a hat manufacturer. The magazine has remained true to the economic and social principles of its founder – free trade, internationalism (universalism rather than relativism) and disfavouring government intervention in either social or economic activity.
Half of the shares of the Economist are owned by the Pearson plc, which also owns the Financial Times. The remaining 50 percent of the voting shares are held by prominent British family interests, some of which include that of the Rothschilds (5%), Cadbury and Schroders. Most (if not all ) of the families are of Jewish origin who largely moved from Germany to Britain.
Pearson Group plc is an international media and entertainment group that was founded by Weetman Pearson, the grandson of Samuel Pearson who had started the company in 1844. The Pearson business empire started as a construction and engineering business with works in Europe, China and Latin America . His company built railways, ports and steamships and in the 50 years between 1870 and 1920, the firm completed more than 80 worldwide engineering contracts, railway and port installations in the areas colonized by Britain and other European countries.
Weetman Pearson was knighted in 1895 as Lord Cowdray (Baron Cowdray of Midhurst) and later Viscount Cowdray following his appointment as a minister of government by David Lloyd George. He was amongst those who created the psychological and political foundations of British capitalism and shaped the economic, social and imperial landscape of Victorian Britain. His association with the British Liberal Party coincided with the party’s predominance of British politics and this provided him immense business opportunities and assimilation into the ranks of the British imperial establishment.
Due to the prestige and influence he amassed, he was favourably treated and well rewarded allowing him to build an extensive business empire with interests encompassing mining, manufacturing, transportation, urban and rural landholding and oil. Pearson plc gained control of the London-based Financial Times daily newspaper in 1957 as a "sound, conservative investment" and later bought book publishers Longman (1968), Penguin (1971) and Prentice Hall before getting listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1969.
Established in 1913, Prentice Hall is a market leader in and reference publishing and also as an innovator in online learning and support. Pearson also bought some shares in HarperCollins Publishers in 1996. HarperCollins Publishers is one of the world's leading English-language publishers with headquarters in New York.
The Financial Times was launched as the London Financial Guide on in January 1888, by James Sheridan and his brother, renaming itself the Financial Times in February of the same year. The newspaper was initially published as a four page journal. It adopted its trademark pink paper in 1893 to distinguish it from its rival the Financial News (founded 1884).
After years of competing with four other financially-oriented newspapers, in 1945 it finally absorbed the Financial News, the last of its rivals. Financial Times had taken over the Economist in 1928. Financial Times has become the world’s leading financial daily. About 70% of its sales are outside Britain.
Pearson had dabbled in ownership of British political journals from the turn of the century, notably through ownership of a leading liberal London newspaper, the Westminster Gazette in 1918 after saving it from bankruptcy in 1908. In 1920 the group acquired a string of undistinguished but profitable provincial newspapers such as the Brighton Evening Argus and The Oxford Mail, organised as the Westminister Press.
Other titles associated include Investors Chronicle, The Banker, Money Management and Financial Adviser. Westminister Press was sold in 1996. The firm also moved into banking and acquired a substantial interest in Lazard Brothers & Company, a London merchant bank and sold the stake in 1998.
It also has shareholding interests in British Overseas Airways, Thames TV, British Satellite Broadcasting and BSkyB while it owns the Journal of Commerce through the Economist. In 2000, Pearson also acquires US National Computer Systems (NCS). NCS is a leading educational testing and data management company.
The Rothschild Dynasty has a 5% interest in the ordinary shares of the Economist through the business empire’s investment vehicle, RIT Capital Partners plc. The Rothschild Dynasty’s business interests effectively controls Europe and its banking and financial industry.
The Rothschilds have been described as the royal family of the Jews, "... the first principle of the House of Rothschild was to amass wealth, [and] the liberation of the [Jewish] race from oppressive restrictions contributed indirectly to this end, since it would facilitate intercourse with the rest of the world, and thereby increase the possibility of financial gain, which in turn would serve to increase its power.” (The Rise of The House of Rothschild by Count Egon Corti).
Mayer Amsel Rothschild is reported to have said, "Give me control of the economics of a country; and I care not who makes her laws.” Rothschild money has backed such empires as the Rockefellers, the Hearsts, the Baruch Holdings, J.P. Morgan, the Drexell family, Henry Ford (of General Motors), Bache & Co., Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Crocker Bank (now controlled by Midland Bank of London) and almost every major banking institution including Chase Manhattan (named after Salmon P. Chase, Abraham Lincoln's Treasury Secretary) and Citibank/Citicorp.
As early as 1818 it was said of the Rothschilds that: “they are the richest people in Europe .” By the middle of the 19th century they were the richest family in the world, unparalleled by any monarchy in history and their international merchant banks granted loans only to those who served their political interests. The Rothschilds have covertly monopolized all the transnational corporations in the world that produce rubber, electricity, oil, gasoline, weapons, raw materials, electronics, machinery and all the major food industries, although their vast holdings rarely bear their name but those of agents like J.P. Morgan or Rockefeller.
The Cadbury family was a prominent member of the Society of Friends or Quakers. The business was opened in 1824 by John Cadbury who came from a very wealth Quaker family in Birmingham , Britain . His father was into drapery and silk business and apart from selling tea and coffee. With funding from his father, he begins experimenting with grinding cocoa beans with mortar and pestle. He founded Cadbury Limited, one of the world's largest producers of chocolate.
Today Cadbury is the clear leader in the UK chocolate confectionery market with over 50 brands and 350 packaging variations to meet every need and occasion.
The Schroder family is one of richest families in Britain and still holds controlling interests in Schroder plc, an international investment banking and asset management group. The Schroder business interests were founded by a German Jew, Johann Heinrich Schroder. He came from a banking family and was from Hamburg , Germany . He moved to Britain in 1804 and founded J. Henry Schroder & Co., Ltd with his brother.
By 1909, J. Henry Schroders & Co. was considered one of London ’s leading issuers of foreign loans and was the City’s second largest merchant bank. It became Schroders plc in 1959 after it was listed on the London stock exchange. Schroders Plc can be considered a global firm. By definition, “…the global enterprises [is] defined as one that views the world as its home, establishes a worldwide presence in one or more businesses, adopts either a worldwide standardization or multilocal strategy within broad or niche lines, and is able to cross targeted external and internal boundaries.”
Schroders Plc effectively satisfies all of these requirements. As a largely an asset management company, Schroders Plc is present in six of the seven continents of the world including South Africa and China .
Schroders Plc was able to effectively do this as they were considered one of the top ten companies in the world for overall fund management of investment banks. (Hoovers Online, 2000).
Part of Schroders Plc structure is the fact that at any given time throughout their history, there has been at least one member of the Schroders family as a top executive, or part owner of the company. This is an astounding fact in itself, as Schroders Plc has been in business for nearly two hundred years, but it is more material in light of Schroders Plc’s focus on having a familial structure.
This familial structure has been good for Schroders Plc in the past, but investors are now wondering if a change is due. Currently, the Schroders family owns 47.6 percent of all outstanding stock in the company. This gives them enormous power in voting decisions. This is enough power, in fact, that they can effectively veto any decision.
4. Far Eastern Economic Review of Hong Kong
This is a monthly English newsmagazine founded and developed entirely in Asia . It is based in Hong Kong . Because of poor finances, the magazine switched to a monthly format, beginning in December 2004. it is owned by the US-based business publisher Dow Jones & Company, which also owns The Wall Street Journal, an American daily newspaper covering business and financial news and issues. Dow Jones & Company is a publishing and financial information firm.
It was founded in 1882 by three reporters: Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. Far Eastern Economic Review covers a variety of topics including politics, business, economics, technology and social and cultural issues throughout Asia, focusing on Southeast Asia and Greater China.
It has a reputation for emphasizing local perspectives.
5. Fortune of the USA
A business fortnightly magazine in the USA founded in 1930 by Henry Robinson Luce, who became its founding editor-in-chief. He was the same founder of Time and Life magazines in 1923 and 1936, respectively.
Time magazine was created in 1923 as a mouthpiece for the American Synarchists, grouped around the banking interests of J.P. Morgan. He was a Freemason and member of an all male Skulls and Bones organization following his ‘tapping’ in 1920. Luce biographer Robert Herzstein wrote: "Early on, young Harry [Henry Luce] learned that a powerful circle of contacts and friends could move the world."
According to the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) of June 25, 2004, Henry Luce was just out of Yale University , where he was a member of the secret society Skull and Bones (class of 1920). JP Morgan gave Luce start-up cash, and Luce tapped numbers of his friends from his secret brotherhood to create and run what would become a propaganda empire.
In 1930, for example, Luce chose Russell Davenport, an intimate Bonesman, to become Fortune magazine's first editor-in-chief. Initial members of the board of directors of Time included Henry P. Davison, Jr., a fellow classmate and Bonesman, whose father was a senior partner at J.P. Morgan. Davison brought in Dwight Morrow, another Morgan partner.
Morgan interests were further strengthened, when in 1927, John Wesley Hanes was placed on the board. More start-up funding also came from William Hale Harkness, a board member, who was related to Rockefeller partner Edward S. Harkness. Luce's personal lawyer, who would come to represent his entire media empire, was his brother-in-law Tex Moore, of Cravath, de Gersdorff, Swaine and Wood, the same firm which deployed both Allen and John Foster Dulles to facilitate bringing Hitler to power in the early 1930s.
Luce was an intimate of Britain's Lord Beaverbrook and the Prince of Wales, who were notoriously pro-Hitler and members of the Cliveden set (the Rhodes group then known as the Cliveden Set, was renamed the Round Table Group). He also formed an extremely close relationship with Winston Churchill, himself a promoter of Hitler in the early 1930s.
Americans were introduced to Benito Mussolini and Fascism in one of Time's first issues when the Synarchists decided to celebrate Il Duce's 40th birthday, and have Americans join them, by placing his portrait on the cover of the Aug. 6, 1923 issue of Time. This would be the first of five cover appearances.
Luce was America 's fascist "Elmer Gantry." He toured the country selling fascism to America's business elite and upper class on the one hand, and using his mass propaganda outlets to "sell it to the mickeys" on the other.
Luce unabashedly promoted Synarchy. Appearing before business groups, he promulgated the idea that America 's corporate and banking elites were more powerful and important than the U.S. government, stating, "It is not a seat in Congress but on the directorate of the greatest corporations which our countrymen regard as the greater post of honor and responsibility."
Likening America 's financial tycoons to Europe 's aristocracy, he was featured in the pages of Fortune magazine. In an article in 1928, Luce declared the U.S. Constitution obsolete and called for "a new form of government." What was this new form of government? In March of the same year, in a speech to businessmen in Rochester , N.Y. , he stated "America needs at this moment a moral leader, a national moral leader. The outstanding national moral leader of the world today is Mussolini."
On November 28, 1930, he stated to a Chicago audience that Mussolini's Italy was a success story: "A state reborn by virtue of Fascist symbols, Fascist rank and hence Fascist enterprise." Luce further declared, on April 19, 1934 in a speech to the Scranton , Pa. Chamber of Commerce, "The moral force of Fascism, appearing in totally different forms in different nations, may be the inspiration for the next general march of mankind."
While Luce organized the upper crust through Fortune, he fed the general population a carefully crafted diet of stories about Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco through the writings of his foreign news editor, Laird Goldsborough, a publicly avowed fascist, anti-Semite, and pro-Nazi who in 1933 interviewed both Hitler and Mussolini.
Luce had a visceral hatred of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. He attacked them both on his speaking tours and in print. Intimates reported that he became apoplectic with violent rage at the mere mention of Franklin D. Roosevelt's name.
Luce's role in the Morgan-organized "Smedley Butler" coup plot against Roosevelt was significant. Luce prepared the entire July 1934 issue of Fortune as a detailed study of the political, cultural, and economic experiments of Italian fascism. The issue was timed to appear as the coup went into its final month, and it was undoubtedly intended to rally upper-class support for the coup and the transition to an American form of fascism.
Although Luce later promoted the turn away from fascism, when it was necessary to defeat Hitler, he heralded the postwar policy of the Anglo-American Synarchists with his famous 1941 Life magazine editorial, "The American Century," which announced the Synarchist goal of Anglo-American world domination at the close of the war.
Luce wrote: "We must accept whole-heartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." The editorial was mass-produced and circulated widely; it appeared in full in the Washington Post and Reader's Digest.
Although he did not include the point in this editorial, Luce would soon argue, also in the pages of Life, for preventive nuclear war against the Soviet Union . The outlook of people around US Vice President Dick Cheney, is a continuation of the policies represented by Luce and the fascists of the 1930s and 1940s.
Cheney's inner core of neo-cons are all signers of the founding principles of William Kristol's Project for a New American Century, explicitly modelled on Luce's theme. Luce's brothers at Skull and Bones gave him the secret name of "Baal." The Congress for Cultural Freedom was created to implement Luce's "American Century."
Luce helped finance its operations, and his trusted vice president at Time-Life, C.D. Jackson, oversaw much of its policy as special advisor to the President for psychological warfare.
"Synarchism" is a name adopted during the 20th century for a Freemasonic grouping, known as the Martinists, based on worship of the tradition of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Synarchism is an international combination of financial institutions, raw materials cartels, and intelligence operatives such as John Foster Dulles, used their financial and political resources to install fascist regimes throughout Europe (and tried to do so in Mexico) in an attempt to maintain order and prevent any repudiation of international debts during the chaotic period of the 1930s.
They assert that such efforts have continued to the present day. The Synarchists originated in fact among the immediate circles of Napoleon Bonaparte; veteran officers of Napoleon's campaigns spread the cult's practice around the world. G.W.F. Hegel, a passionate admirer of Bonaparte's image as Emperor, was the first to supply a fascist historical doctrine of the state.
Nietzsche's writings supplied Hegel's theory the added doctrine of the Dionysiac terror of 20th century fascist movements and regimes. The most notable fascist ideologues of post-World War II academia are Chicago University 's Leo Strauss, who was the inspiration of today's U.S. neo-conservative ideologues, and Strauss's Paris co-thinker Alexandre Kojève.
Skulls and Bones has been considered the ‘American Secret Establishment’ ruling over the financial, military and industrial complex. Luce became one of the most powerful figures in the history of American journalism.
Formed in 1856, Skulls and Bones is one of America 's most exclusive clubs, which counts both President George Bush, his father and grandfather among its members. The club at Yale University has long been held up as an example of the powerful cabals that run America from behind the scenes. Fifteen new members in their final year at Yale are initiated annually and remain in the club for life.
Fortune is now part of the media conglomerate Time Warner, which is the world's largest diversified media company with major internet, publishing, film producer like Warner Bros, telecommunications and television divisions like CNN. The company is officially headquartered in New York , United States.
6. Forbes of the USA
This is a fortnightly magazine is an American business and financial magazine founded in 1917 by Bertie Charles Forbes. Forbes was a financial journalist and author who was born Scottish and he moved in 1901 moved to Johannesburg , South Africa where he started up the Rand Daily Mail.
He emigrated to New York City in the United States in 1904 where he was employed as a writer and financial editor at the Journal of Commerce before joining the Hearst chain of newspapers as a syndicated columnist in 1911. He left Hearst after two years to become the business and financial editor at the New York American where he remained until 1916.
He then founded Forbes magazine in 1917 and remained Editor-in-Chief until his death in New York City in 1954.
Forbes magazine is a corporate member of the USA ’s Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “a branch of an international group of a secret group of elite Anglo-Americans that has shaped world events for over 100 years. It operates on the basis that people's actions are strongly influenced by their knowledge base. People act on their beliefs. You can manipulate a person's actions by corrupting their knowledge base, warping historical truth, or ignoring it completely.”
7. BusinessWeek of the USA
This is America 's leading and the only weekly business newsmagazine. It is published by McGraw-Hill Companies Inc with a current readership of 8 million.
It was first published in 1929. McGraw-Hill is a company dealing with education, financial services, information services, and media services. McGraw-Hill are also leaders in providing information to aviation and aerospace (Aviation Week Group), energy (Platts), construction (McGraw-Hill Construction) and healthcare (Healthcare Information) industries.
McGraw-Hill purchased the A.W. Shaw Company, owner of the Magazine of Business in 1928 and relaunched it as BusinessWeek the following year. Each issue of BusinessWeek features in-depth perspectives on the financial markets, industries, trends, technology and people guiding the economy.
BusinessWeek and the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. were found by James H. McGraw, who was a teacher in New York . He began working in publishing in 1884, and purchased the American Journal of Railway Appliances in 1888. At the same time, co-founder John A. Hill was working as an editor at Locomotive Engineer.
Over the next fifteen years, the two men pursued their separate careers specializing in technical and trade publications. In 1899, McGraw incorporated his publications under the heading of ‘The McGraw Publishing Company’; in 1902, John Hill followed with ‘The Hill Publishing Company’.
The book departments of the two publishing companies merged to form the McGraw-Hill Book Company. John Hill took the office of President; James McGraw became the company's Vice-President. The son of James H. McGraw Sr., was James H. McGraw Jr. (1860-1948) later became not only the chairman of McGraw Hill Publishing Company, but also a member of the advisory board to the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service and a member of the Army Ordinance Association Committee on Endowment. He was also a member of Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). See Forbes magazine (above) for detailed information about CFR.
He was a member of a network around Brown Brothers Harriman, one of the most powerful political forces in the United States during much of the twentieth century, and for many years the largest private bank in the world. And the oldest in America Averell Harriman negotiated during World War II in the name of the United States with Churchill and Stalin, while Brown Brothers Harriman partner Robert Lovett guided John F. Kennedy's choice of his cabinet.
Senator Prescott Bush's (the grandfather of G.W. Bush) was a managing partner of this bank. Brown Brothers Harriman networks pervade government and the mass media. Its former partner, John B. Madden, Jr., was the only trustee of Russell Trust Association, the business name of Skulls and Bones (see under Fortune magazine, above).
The Russell family was the master of incalculable wealth derived from the largest U.S. criminal organization of the nineteenth century through a syndicate involving opium.
8. Business Review Weekly (BRW) of Australia
Business Review Weekly is Australia ’s leading business magazine and one of the highest circulating business magazines, per capita, in the world, was launched as a stand alone magazine in April 1981. It was a joint venture between The Age and the financial columnist for the Australian Financial Review, Robert Gottliebsen after he became aware of a huge gap in the Australian business magazine market.
It was previously an insert in The National Times newspaper that had been launched in 1971. After Gottliebsen founded Business Review Weekly magazine, he helped build the weekly business magazine readership to the highest in the world on a per capita basis. In 1983 he started the top selling Personal Investor magazine and in 1998 Shares magazine. Gottliebsen appears regularly on television and radio and has been a significant contributor to the Internet.
Business Review Weekly is owned by John Fairfax Publications which was founded by John Fairfax, who had migrated from Britain in 1828. The Fairfax family control of the company ended in December 1990. The Age is a broadsheet daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia that was founded in October 1854, and is published by The Age Company Ltd, a subsidiary of John Fairfax Holdings Limited, the group which also owns The Sydney Morning Herald, The Canberra Times, The Dominion Post, and The Australian Financial Review.
Its only local rival is the Murdoch tabloid, Herald Sun. The Australian Financial Review is Australia ’s pre-eminent business, finance and technology newspaper and is published daily during weekdays by the media company, Fairfax Media.
It was launched as a weekly newspaper in August 1951. Ten years later, in October 1961, the Australian Financial Review became a twice-weekly publication. Recognizing the growing demand for up-to-the minute information by a rapidly maturing business market, the paper became a daily in 1963.
9. Conclusion
From the above finer details of business magazines, it can be shown that no business publication (newspaper, magazine or journal) can exist or survive without a backing from business interests other than media-related!
The success of the business interests in the media industry is entirely based on and a reflection of the ownership and financing and allocative structures of the wider economic players and the performance of an economy.
It can also be noticed that generating readership is not the lifeline of a news publication, more so a business magazine. This is entirely dependant on the moral and financial support such a publication receives from the shareholders’ business network through advertising and other forms of funding. It has also been shown that most business magazines in the world are linked to financial newspapers owned by the same or overlapping network:
- Financial Mail of South Africa is linked to Business Day of South Africa and to the Financial Times of Britain;
- Finance Week of South Africa is linked to 50 newspaper titles, also in South Africa;
- the Economist is linked to Financial Times both of Britain;
- Business Review Weekly is linked to Australian Financial Review; and
- Far Eastern Economic Review is linked to The Wall Street Journal.
Ndaba Dlamini, a South African student in a media studies thesis quoted McChesney, W.R. (1997) in The Global Media. Even though global commercial media today is driven by profit maximization, specialized media provides a serious journalism that is aimed at the elite and the upper middle class. The best journalism today, McChesney (ibid) goes on to say, is that directed at the business class by the Wall Street Journal, “quality journalism aimed at the affluent and directed at their needs”.
The audience for business news, though small, is a very dedicated audience. This news is their work and their existence in the commercial world. Research has shown that business publications are regularly read by 87% of decision-makers (Periodical Publishers Association of Britain, 2003). The same trends in South African media have been traced where there is a high readership of business publications among the elite and the upper middle class (SAARF 2002).
The prime function of a business magazine is to service economic players. It is not a player itself. The prime focus of such a magazine is to attract readers. Such readers are “entrepreneurs running their own businesses, corporate executives and government leaders” who will depend on the magazine to keep them informed.
An impression has been given and created that there is a remotest suggestion of editorial control or manipulation by shareholders, directors and advertisers. In some instances, a board of trustees has been formed or an Editorial Charter has been created to deal with matters editorial to enhance such independence. But the truth of the matter is that the editorial thrust of a publication cannot be removed from the worldview of its shareholders. Such connectivity is done through the appointments. The publications’ approach to appointment have an ideological orientation that is taken without having to ‘physically’ control the editorial function later.
For one to occupy a senior editorial position, he/she has to be a professional rooted in a particular worldview. Through socialization, such editorial staffers continue to be ‘guided’ so that they remain within the confines of the editorial thrust and slant. They are either members or they are inducted to be members of the fraternal organizations of proprietors.
Next time one reads sprawling ‘Afro-pessimistic’ views in many of these business magazines, look no further than the ownership of the publication. Afro-pessimism is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a belief that everything is bad in Africa and there is little hope for successful economic development. It is unending tales of sorrowful, doom and gloom that find uncontested space in the media. “Too often, Africa is viewed with a "paternalistic attitude" without recognition of its economic potential” – Andrew Young, a civil rights leader, politician, international businessman and the first African American to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
"Afro-pessimism" is a term used to express the view that …"our continent has produced little of value for humanity, or even for its own people. Yet what Africa and its peoples have contributed to humanity is evident in virtually every part of the world.
“Not surprisingly, much of what humanity has accomplished is built on the achievements of many civilizations from all six of the world's continents. During the last four centuries, some continents may appear to have contributed more than others and have consequently come to be seen as the principal purveyors of human accomplishments, sometimes to the neglect of others.
“Our African heritage is comparable to that of other continents, yet African achievements, ancient, medieval and modern, remain unacknowledged, regrettably, in Africa itself. It is the as yet untapped potential of our diverse African humanity that has to be harnessed for the renewal of our continent” - Dr. Pallo Jordan, South African Minister of Arts and Culture.
For as long as Africans do not create their own national bourgeois to own, narrate and influence communicative imperatives, the corporate media in Africa and on Africa will remain lucratively in the hands established international capital and Afro-pessimistic.
Resources: http://www.wikipedia.com/ and the official websites of the companies and magazines under review.
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