Kalian Media Group

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Kalian Media Group
Public
Traded asPSE: KMG
IndustryMass media
FoundedApril 27, 1954; 70 years ago (1954-04-27) (as Kalian Radio Holding Company)
FounderAllan Kalian
HeadquartersFreeport City, Belhavia
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Saul Kalian (President and CEO)
Devorah Kalian (Chairwoman of the Board)
Liam Stryker (General Counsel)
Rivka Kalian (CFO)
Schlomo Kalian (Editor-in-chief of the PT)
Yitzchak Kalian (Editor-in-chief of the IFI)
ProductsBroadcast media
Print media
Film
Entertainment
Cable network programming
Publishing
Direct-broadcast satellite television
RevenueDecrease $31.87 billion (FY 2015)
Increase $5.24 billion (2015)
Increase $4.30 billion (2015)
Total assetsIncrease $58.94 billion (2015)
Total equityDecrease $16.997 billion (2015)
Number of employees
29,456 (2015)

Kalian Media Group is an Belhavian multinational mass media corporation. It is the legal and corporate successor to the 2004 bankruptcy reorganizations of the then-separate Kalian Newspaper Group and Kalian Global Entertainment Corp. KMG, as of 2015, is estimated to own approximately 40% of all media in Belhavia, and has extensive operations worldwide, including in Tippercommon, Emmeria, the former Western States, Rodarion, Arthurista, Tarsas, Temuair, Westonaria, and Anikatia.

It is headquartered in Freeport City, and has a storied history due to its founding family, the Kalians, who own and control the corporation until the present, making them among the wealthiest persons in both Belhavia and the world. KMG is well-known for being the parent company and publisher of Belhavian and global newspapers of record The Provisa Times and The International Financial Insider as well as owner of Mesorah Broadcasting Company, one of Belhavia's largest television networks.

It is one of the top 52 companies in the world according to the Enterprise Diamond 500 list published by Enterprise.

Operations

Corporate Governance

The corporation's leadership is a closely-held family succession whereby family members, in-laws, and longtime family friends and allies control key positions and institutions in KMG and its affiliates and subsidiaries.

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is chaired by Devorah Kalian, who also sits on the Board as an individual director. Saul Kalian, the corporate president and CEO, also sits on the Board as a inside director. Family relatives, friends, and allies control a clear majority of the corporate governing body.

Executive Managers

The chief executive officer and corporate president is held by family patriarch Saul Kalian. His daughter, Rivka Kalian, serves as chief financial officer. Rivka's husband, Liam Stryker, is the current general counsel.

Saul's younger sons, Schlomo and Yitzchak, are the editors-in-chief of The Provisa Times and The International Financial Insider, respectively.

Subsidiaries and Affiliates

List of assets of KMG

Products and Services

Controversies and Public Image

Political Controversies

Public Image

Iron Twins

The so-called "Iron Twins" (Devorah and Rivka Kalian) have tussled repeated with Aisling tabloid magazine Fate since the mid-1990s, suing the tabloid several times, unsuccessfully, after the tabloid has run headline articles and "exposés" painting the sisters - high-powered KMG executives - in an overly negative, unflattering, and detrimental light.

Social Control Through Media

Numerous critics in media and academia have asserted that KMG exercises an outstretched control over social influence due to its plurality-majority dominance over Belhavian media markets as well as extensive overseas media properties and influence touching every continent.

Left-wing social commentator and philosopher Wesley Canvess noted as early as 1991 from his exile from Belhavia in Emmeria that "[KMG] has enormous control over influencing public opinion and politics through slanted media presentations, selective editing of reporting, and magnifying voices its masters want to be heard. Want a president to lose re-election? Just amplify the opposition's messages across its massive portfolio of media platforms and properties. Want to spark a moral panic? Just keep having its news anchors and journalists repeat a fact or event over and over enough until it becomes mantra."

Rodarian professor of media and journalism, Fabio Cavallo, upon visiting Free Pardes wrote in his 2006 essay The Forms of Social Control in the New Millennium: The Rise of Disruptive New Media that "one can see the insidious, unconscious power transnational media corporations like the Kalian Media Group or others of that ilk have over their customers, and by extension, their countries and societies. Simply repeating or emphasizing a point by a news anchor, or continuously presenting a news item as 'important', influences, often subtly, target audiences' views, beliefs, and perceptions. KMG and other global media control our world by controlling public and elite opinions."

Critics noted that President Garret Holleran's unsuccessful 2001-2002 efforts to cease enforcement of the White Terror laws came about after KMG outlets began to report continuous, day-in and day-out the positive efforts of the laws and the dangers of ceasing to enforce them would likely cause by giving significant amount of airtime to conservative commentators and points of views while critics of the laws were only given token time to express support for Holleran's efforts.

Compliance with Rodarian censorship

In late 2013, it was found that KMG's newspaper in Rodarion, The Vistrovio Star and its Rodarian language website for The Provisa Times newspaper, certain running storylines in Rodarion were omitted entirely or changed to reflect a less anti-regime stance. Emails leaked between the Rodarian Ministry of Christian Culture and Guidance, Interior Ministry to the KMG stated clearly that in order for KMG to keep its businesses and services in the Papal Republic, it would have to conform to "media standards", a widely accepted term for censorship. In April 2014, following the arrest of Lucrezia Olivieri, a senior human rights lawyer, the domestic website for The Times denounced the arrest of an innocent "crusader for civil rights", whilst the Rodarian language service completely ignored the story and instead maintained its main article on the government's decision to spend $5.9 billion on several wind farms.

The Olivieri Case worsened in November 2014, following the 2014 General Election, when Olivieri was sentenced to life imprisonment for "attempting to sow disunity" over her efforts to increase transparency in the treatment of prisoners in Rodarian prisons. All major newspapers throughout Free Pardes denounced it as "barbaric and the act of a flawed and truly authoritarian state," yet the Rodarian service actually published articles supporting the sentence; this provoked major criticisms of KMG by Rodarian liberals and reformists, as well as criticism from the liberal circles in Belhavia.