About GMFM
The Global Media Finances Map is an MJRC research project that maps the ownership, corporate structures and financial performance of companies shaping the information economy — from media groups to technology platforms and AI firms.
Why GMFM exists
Public debate about media power often stops at ownership. GMFM goes further by asking how the companies themselves work economically: how much revenue they generate, whether they are profitable, how they are financed, where control sits, and how corporate structures connect across countries and sectors.
What the project maps
GMFM combines corporate identity, ownership and financial evidence. Depending on the company and jurisdiction, this can include revenues, costs, profit/loss, assets, liabilities, debt, cash, capital, employment, shareholders, subsidiaries, acquisitions, related-party structures and market position.
The objective is not simply to collect accounts. It is to understand what the accounts and corporate structure reveal about the economic foundations of journalism and information distribution.
Who the work is for
GMFM is built for researchers, journalists, regulators, policy specialists, civil-society organisations, investors, industry analysts and others who need reliable corporate evidence about media and information markets.
Public pages provide discovery and selected analysis; deeper structured data can be prepared for specific research questions.
Four principles behind the project
The project is designed around verifiable corporate evidence and comparability, while recognising that company reporting differs dramatically between countries and between listed and private firms.
Map the operator
GMFM maps legal companies and material operating organisations rather than inflating registries by counting every brand, masthead, frequency or app separately.
Follow the money
Financial statements are traced across years wherever evidence permits, allowing changes in viability, scale, debt, profitability and investment to become visible.
Trace control
Ownership is treated as a chain: direct shareholders, ultimate control, subsidiaries, holdings, acquisitions and cross-sector relationships all matter.
Verify before publishing
Company filings, official registers, securities disclosures and regulator records are prioritised over secondary descriptions wherever possible.
More than two decades of company-level work
The research base underpinning GMFM did not begin with the current website. It builds on company, ownership and media-market research led since 2004 across large comparative projects and later developed within MJRC’s own research programmes.
Television Across Europe
Comparative research on broadcasting, regulation, policy and independence across Europe.
Mapping Digital Media
Large-scale comparative work on the transformation of media markets and journalism through digitisation.
Media Influence Matrix
Ownership and funding research became one layer of a broader comparative analysis of information power.
Standalone financial map
The corporate and financial research evolved into a dedicated MJRC project with its own methodology, company registries and analysis.
Research lineage references: Television Across Europe → · Mapping Digital Media → · Media Influence Matrix →
Three connected company universes
GMFM began with news-media companies. Its scope expanded as the economic and technological power shaping information moved increasingly into platforms, infrastructure and AI.
Media Companies
Publishers, broadcasters, digital-native newsrooms, public media, news agencies and selected distribution/infrastructure operators mapped through national company registries.
Explore media markets →Tech Companies
Search, social, messaging, publishing, browser, app/device and cloud/CDN companies with material power over information discovery, distribution or monetisation.
Explore Tech Companies →AI Companies
AI-focused companies supplying foundation models, assistants, newsroom workflow, monitoring, synthetic-media and verification systems relevant to journalism.
Explore AI Companies →Discover publicly. Go deeper when needed.
GMFM does not use a technical paywall. The company universe remains publicly discoverable, while the depth of public financial evidence varies according to what can responsibly be published and what is useful for the wider audience.
Company registries
Country and sector pages show which companies GMFM maps and the principal assets, roles or information gateways associated with them.
Selected full profiles
GMFM publishes selected company histories, financial series, market analysis and Financial Signals openly as examples of the underlying research.
Structured data & analysis
Company-level historical extracts, ownership evidence, local-entity mapping and custom comparative analysis can be prepared for specific needs.
Request GMFM data
The central data-access page can handle country, company and cross-market requests. Users can specify a company, market, time period, data layer or comparative research question.
Open the Request Data page →How GMFM is supported
Corporate financial research is most useful when its evidentiary standards and funding arrangements are clear. GMFM is an MJRC project and is governed by the centre’s research standards.
Independence
MJRC does not accept funding from governments or media companies to conduct GMFM research. The project is supported through MJRC’s own research resources, generated through the centre’s externally financed and commercial project activity.
This separation is designed to protect the project’s ability to examine media and information companies without accepting research funding from the actors being mapped.
Research partnerships
Parts of GMFM research are conducted with academic and research partners, including universities and think tanks. Such partnerships expand local expertise and access to national corporate records while the GMFM methodology provides the common research framework.
MJRC also has an academic cooperation agreement with the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Research, data and financial analysis
GMFM combines country research, corporate-file analysis, financial interpretation, database work and comparative research. The following team and contributors are listed in the project record.
GMFM also draws on a wider network of country researchers, research partners and contributors as markets and company datasets are updated.
Media and Journalism Research Center
General enquiries, research collaborations and data requests can be directed to MJRC. For structured GMFM data, the dedicated Request Data page is the most efficient route.
Contact MJRC
Addresses & academic partnership
Continue exploring GMFM
The pages below explain how the project works, which financial indicators it uses and how GMFM relates to the broader Media Influence Matrix.
About GMFM · reviewed September 2026.