Viesturs Koziols (left) at an event at the University of Latvia last year. Photo by Toms Grīnbergs/University of Latvia

RIGA — The purchase of a majority stake of Latvia’s largest daily newspaper Diena by a Latvian businessman last week is sparking worries the ownership change will compromise the paper’s objectivity.

The purchase of 51 percent of Dienas Medijii by businessman Viesturs Koziols, announced at a press conference on Thursday, with 49 percent remaining with the U.K.-based Rowland family’s Baltic Media Investments Fund. The amount of money paid for the shares is not being disclosed.

Koziols, involved in numerous real estate and retail ventures as well as being president and partial owner of the Dinamo Riga hockey team, promised that the newspaper’s integrity would be maintained and the publication would remain “relevant, influential and professional” under his stewardship.

Unlike when the paper changed hands last fall, Diena has not seen a wave of resignations, although the newspaper’s editor Sergejs Ancupovs and Diena.lv website editor Gunita Ogriņa were fired the same day. However, Dienas Medijii editor-in-chief Guntis Bojārs said the firings were for performance-related problems and had nothing to do with the ownership switch.

“Anyone who has doubts, or thinks that Diena is now a ‘shady environment,’ I emphasize that we are professional journalists,” Guntis Bojārs told the LETA newswire.

Despite the assurances, Koziols’ ties to Latvia’s First Party/Latvia’s Way head and Riga Deputy Mayor Ainārs Šlesers has some concerned that the paper’s coverage may be skewed toward the pro-business For a Good Latvia (Par labu Latviju) union ahead of the fall parliamentary election. Koziols admits that he is a friend and business partner of Šlesers and a Par labu Latviju supporter.

After the purchase was announced, Šlesers told LETA that he hoped under Koziols that Diena would become a “serious newspaper” and “attract new readers.”

“Now the newspaper is not objective, having too much influence of Soros-related organizations,” Šlesers said, referring to Providus Centre for Public Policy and other good governance nonprofits active in Latvia.

Aivars Ozoliņš, one of the Diena journalists that resigned after the fall ownership change, called Diena’s situation “tragic” in a opinion piece published in the Ir magazine on Saturday, although he urged the journalists working there not to “surrender in despair” but to try to continue good journalism regardless of the paper’s ownership situation.

For many Diena had represented a beacon of integrity in country known for unscrupulous journalism. Diena also set itself apart by fighting for things like rights of sexual minorities, a subject most dailies in Latvia wouldn’t dare go near.

While the paper edited by Sarmīte Ēlerte from 1992 to 2008, Diena was a bastion of aggressive, old school journalism that never tired at taking on a corrupt political system. Before her retirement, Ēlerte spearheaded numerous investigations into and criticisms of the so-called oligarchic clique of Šlesers, Aivars Lembergs, and Andris Šķēle.

Ēlerte is now involved with the Unity political movement.

— Baltic Reports reporter James Dahl contributed to this article.

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