Newspapers, cultural symbols shouldn't be traded like assets

Tokyo

NATIONAL culture is being treated as a tradeable commodity with the sale of Britain's Financial Times newspaper to Japan's Nikkei group and, while cross-border sales of media groups are by no means unprecedented, the implications of this particular transaction are particularly disquieting.

The FT is something of an "Establishment" newspaper in the UK (in the same way that The Times of London used to be until its takeover by Rupert Murdoch turned it into something of lesser stature), while the Nikkei is synonymous with Japan, if not in quite the same Establishment sense.

This "national" aspect of newspapers, which is separate from their news dissemination function, cannot be ignored. It is not that they are controlled by the gov…