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Media the Times

Campaigners launch crowd-funding site to buy the Times and Sunday Times

By James Doleman |

August 6, 2014 | 3 min read

A campaign group has launched an audacious bid to buy the Times and Sunday Times from Rupert Murdoch’s News UK.

“Let’s own the News” has launched a crowd-funding project seeking to gather £100m to purchase the loss-making broadsheets as part of their demands for more diversity in press ownership in the UK.

Founder of the campaign, Laurie Fitzjohn, said: “Currently five families control 80 per cent of the national newspapers we read, this isn’t a free press and it undermines our democracy. Our politicians are still in fear of the press barons, scared to act. But now we have a unique opportunity to collectively take action to defend our democracy.”

Fitzjohn told the Drum that even after the Leveson inquiry into press ethics, “ownership has not featured in the debate - it is the elephant in the room,” adding that he believed politicians were “too scared to act” due to the power the “press barons” had over British life.

The campaign received backing from one of the country’s most successful crowd-funders, author Peter Jukes, who told the Drum that he thought the project was a “wonderful idea” as the Times/Sunday Times were “national assets” which should be protected.

The initiative is also being backed by charity organisation the Young Foundation, which said: “Our press is owned and directed by a small group of rich white men who are held to account by no one. In this context people are increasing unhappy with their behaviour but feel powerless to stop them.”

"A consumer owned paper might seem a pipedream, but then that’s what the ruling powers said about co-operatives and giving women the vote.”

A spokesperson for News UK said: "The Times and The Sunday Times are

not for sale."

Media the Times

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