an event seen from one point of view gives one impression
seen from another point of view it gives quite a different impression
it's a great clip isn't it and i found that in twenty nine seconds it tells more about the power
and importance of independent media than i could say in an hour so i thought that it will be good to start with
and also start with a little bit of statistics according to relevant researchers eighty three percent of the population of this planet lives in the societies without independent press
think about that number eighty three percent of the population on the whole planet does not really know what is going on in their countries
that is just to understand how big and important this problem is now
of you who are lucky enough to live in those societies that represent seventeen percent i think should
countries can lose stars from their flags but they can also lose press freedom
as i guess americans among us can tell us more about but that's totally another and separate topic so i can go back to my story
b ninety two the only independent for that matter the only electronic media in the country and i guess we were sharing we had that
but what they really do which is very powerful and that is what governments in the late nineties started doing if they don't like independent media companies you know they threaten your advertisers
they threaten your advertisers market forces are actually you know destroyed and the advertisers do not want to come
no matter how much does it makes sense for them do not want to come and advertise and you have a problem making ends meet at that time at beginning of
we had that problem which was you know survival below one side but what was really painful for me was
remember beginning of the nineties yugoslavia is falling apart we were sitting over there with a country in a downfall in a slow motion downfall
and we all had all of that on tapes we had the ability to understand what was going on we were actually recording history
the problem was that we had to retape that history a week later because if we did not we could not afford enough tapes
to keep archives of that history so if i gave you that picture i don't want to go too long on that in that context
i know at that time about media systems i would think media systems were organizations which means they should help
so i prepared two plans for that meeting two strategic plans the small one and the big one the small one was i just wanted him to help us get those damn tapes
so we can keep that archive for next fifty years the big plan was to ask him for a one million dollar loan because i thought
still maintain that serious and independent media companies are great business and i thought that b ninety two will survive
be a great company once milosevic is gone which turned out to be true it's now probably either the biggest or the second biggest media company in the country
and i thought that the only thing that we needed at that time was one million dollar loan to take us through those hard times to make a long story short the gentleman comes into the office great suit and
i gave him what i thought was a brilliantexplanation of the political situation and
how hard and difficult the war will be actually i underestimated the atrocities i have to admit anyway after that whole big long explanation
the only question he had for me and this is not a joke is are we paying royalties after we broadcast music
of michael jackson that was really the only question he had he left and i remember being
in your face and somebody must have thought of it somebody must have started something like that and i thought i'm just dumb and i cannot find it you know in my defense there was no google at that time you could not just google in ninety one
have a meeting with george soros trying for the third time to convince him that he should his foundation should invest in something that should operate like a
media bank and basically what i was saying is very simple you know forget about charity it doesn't work forget about handouts twenty thousand dollars do not help anybody
what you should do is you should treat media companies as a business it's business anywhere media business or any other business it needs to be capitalized and what these guys need actually is access to capital
so third meeting arguments are pretty well exercised at the end of the meeting he says look it is not going to work
you will never see your money back but my foundations will put five hundred thousand dollars so you can test the idea see and see that it will not work he said i'll give you a rope to hang yourself
i knew two things after that meeting first under no circumstances i want to hang myself and second
that i have no idea how to make it work you see at the level of a concept it was a great concept but it's one thing to have a concept it's a totally separate thing to actually make it work
so i had absolutely no idea how that could actually work had the wrong idea i thought that we can be a bank you see banks i don't know if there are any bankers over here i apologize in advance
the best job in the world you know you find somebody who is respectable and has a lot of money you give them more money
repay you that over a time you collect interest and do nothing in between so i thought why don't we get into that business
so here we are having our first clientbrilliant first independent newspaper in slovakia
it's a daily newspaper with a deadline of four p m that means that they have no sports they have no latest news circulation goes
it's a kind of very nice sophisticated way how to economically strangle a daily newspaper they come to us with a request for a loan they want to the only way for them to survive is to get a printing press
and we said there's that's fine let 's meet you'll bring us your business plan which eventually they did we start the meeting i get these two pieces of paper not like this a four format so it's much bigger
a lot of numbers there a lot of numbers but however you put it you know the numbers do not make any sense and that's the best they could do
we were the best that they could do so that is how we understood what our method is it's not a bank we had to actually go into these companies and earn our return by fixing
by establishing management systems by providing all that knowledge how do you run a business on one side while they all know how to run how to create content
just quickly on the results over these ten years
we do it in seventeen countries of the developing world and here is the most stunning number return rate the one that soros was so worried about ninety seven percent
from printing presses to transmitters what is most important is
we do it either in form of loans equities lease whatever is appropriate for you know supporting anybody but what is most important here is who do we finance
we believe that in the last ten years companies that we've financed are actually the best media companies in the developing world that is a who is who list and i could spend hours talking about them
working in eastern and central europe and moved to russia our first loan in russia was in chelyabinsk i'll bet half of you have never heard for that place
in the south of russia there's a guy called boris nikolayevich kirshin who is running an independent newspaper there
city was closed until early nineties because of all things they were producing glass for tupolev planes
anyway he 's running independent newspaper there after two years working with us he becomes the most respected newspaper in that small place
governor comes to him one day actually invites him to come to his office he goes and sees the governor the governor says boris nikolayevich
can you please give me your newspaper for next nine months because i have elections there are elections coming up in nine months i will not run but it's very important for me
who is going to succeed me so give me the paper for nine months i'll give it back to you i have no interest in being in media business how much would that cost
not for sale the governor says we will close you boris nikolayevich says no you cannot do it six months later the newspaper was closed
luckily we had enough time to help boris nikolayevich take all the assets out of that company and bring him into a new one to get all the subscription lists
rehire staff so what the governor got was an empty shell but that
and if you are a banker for independent media so
sounds like a great story somewhere down the road we opened a media management center we started our media lab sounds like a real great story but there is a second angle to that the second angle like in this clip if you take the camera above
not too much is it it's actually just a drop in the sea because when you think about the importance some of the issues that we were talking about last night this last session we had about africa and
government accountability corruption how do you fight corruption giving voice to unheard to poor
it's why independent media is in business and it's why it was invented so from that perspective what we did is just really one drop in the sea of that need that we can
identify now ours is just one story i'm sure that in this room there are like fifteen other wonderful stories
as well as i can what the problem is and it's called fundraising imagine that this third of this room
filled with people who represent different foundations imagine two thirds over here running excellent organizations
doing very important work now imagine that every second person over here is deaf does not hear and switch the lights off
now that is how difficult it is to match people from this side of the room with people of that side of the room
so we thought that some kind of a big idea is needed to reform to totally rethink
invented and we came up with this idea of issuing bonds press freedom bonds if there are investors willing to
finance us government budgetdeficit why wouldn't we find investors willing to finance press freedom deficit
decided to do it this fall we will issue them probably in denominations of one thousand dollars i don't want to advertise them too much that's not the point but the point is if we ever survive to actually issue them find enough investors that this can be
success there's nothing stopping the next organization to start to issue bonds next spring and those can be environmental bonds
and then two weeks later iqbal quadir can issue his electricity in bangladesh bonds and before you know it
any social cause can be actually financed in this way now we do daydreaming in eleven thirty with fifty five seconds left but let 's take the idea further
you do it you start it in the states because it 's you know concepts are very very close to american minds but you can actually bring it to europe too you can bring it to asia
you can once you have all of those different points you can make it easy for investors put all of those bonds at one place and they sit down and click
now take it to the last step once you have all of that put together there's not one reason why you couldn't actually have a market place for all of that
you can dispose of all of those bonds in a pretty quick way and in that way you organize the financing so there are no dark rooms no blind people running around to find each other thank
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