We identified popular privately-owned news media in the Republic of Cyprus by consulting agency ratings and rankings from independent studies, as well as aggregated statistics on unique visitor traffic for online media.
Using the government’s Press and Information Office Media/News Agencies List to identify the companies behind the media outlets, we obtained public records to identify individuals and additional holdings of groups in the media sector.
We noted the backgrounds relevant to public interest, for example shareholders who held political influence or public office, or were directly related to public officials. The latter is consistent with the new law on assets declarations, which includes spouses and dependents of public officials in reporting requirements.
We noticed that public registry records were sometimes outdated or incomplete, which creates transparency issues in a sector critical to public interest.