The ownership of media organisations is significant because of the influence they exert on both politicians and the public.
It isn’t always obvious who is wielding power through the media and for what purpose. Media owners can advance their own interests – financial, moral, ideological or social – by promoting a chosen narrative, often without acknowledging that they are self-interested. They can decide who can use a channel and what can be said, yet such editorial control is not always visible or acknowledged – so media content can lack accountability.
Media owners with a political agenda
A Prospect report in May 2024 on The Marshall Plan revealed that: “Hedge fund manager Paul Marshall is on a God-driven mission to transform the religious fabric of the nation”. “In May 2016 he donated £100,000 to the official Brexit campaign, Vote Leave, and was knighted the following month. He has since donated at least half a million pounds to the Tories.” “At the start of 2021, Marshall invested £10m in GB News … Now, Marshall is lining up a bid to take over the Telegraph and the Spectator through his UnHerd Ventures group.”
Government control of media
If news media are predominantly controlled by the government, people cannot be sure that they are being given enough accurate information to hold that government to account and the opposition could legitimately claim to be at a disadvantage. For example, a Guardian article, Stop blaming Italians for Berlusconi, started with this strapline:
“It's not voters' admiration for a Casanova prime minister that keeps Berlusconi in power – it's his control of the media”.
Concentration of media ownership
As discussed later in this chapter (6.8.3.2), free speech is important and it is therefore unwise to limit the freedom of the media, but it is equally unwise to let ownership of media organisations be concentrated in too few hands – especially given their lack of accountability. A report on Who Owns the UK Media in 2023?, revealed that:
“Just 3 companies – DMG Media, News UK and Reach – dominate 90% of the UK’s national newspaper market. These same three companies account for more than 40% of the total audience reach of the UK’s top 50 online newsbrands, giving these publishers an unrivalled position for setting the news agenda.”
“71% of the UK’s 1,189 local newspapers are owned by just six companies. The two largest local publishers – Newsquest and Reach – each control a fifth of the local press market..”
“[Viscount] Rothermere controls 40% of the UK’s national newspaper market through the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, the i and Metro. Despite his inherited peerage and estimated net worth of over £1bn, Rothermere and his businesses avoid paying UK tax through “non dom” status and off-shore company registrations.”
Loss of local reporting
The concentration of ownership is accompanied by a reduction in the number of reporters. Fewer local stories get reported. These are important to democracy, though, with increased devolution of political power – as noted by the Spectator: Read all about it.
Internet social media platforms
The influence of Internet social media was described above (6.4.2.6). It is pressure put by individuals, including politicians, on each other – so it is different in nature from the influence exerted by newspapers and broadcast media. It has been suggested, though, that Internet providers such as Facebook, Twitter and Google can be regarded as media organisations. They undoubtedly wield great power, which can be misused:
· Google, for example, has been accused of anti-conservative censorship and it could make some material more difficult to find by users of its search-engine on the Internet – as alleged in a Conservative News and Views article: Google Destroying Free Speech.
· Elon Musk, as a libertarian, claims to believe in free speech. He and other Major tech titans throw financial, political support to Trump in 2024, aimed at “reducing regulatory burdens”. Musk “pledged $45 million a month for at least the next three months to Trump's election effort”.
He was upset when some major companies exercised their freedom not to use his platform, though: Elon Musk sues Unilever and Mars over X 'boycott'.
The Telegraph reported on The political transformation of Elon Musk: “The billionaire tech mogul was once a ‘moderate’ but, with outbursts on cancel culture, immigration and Starmer, those days seem to be gone.”
He was judged to be The second-worst person in American public life, in an opinion poll of 4,800 people on 8 August 2024. Respondents cited several serious abuses of power, including the following examples:
“Musk has also reposted a faked version of Kamala Harris’s first campaign video with an altered voice track sounding like Harris and saying she doesn’t “know the first thing about running the country” and is the “ultimate diversity hire.” Musk tagged the video “amazing.” It’s got 135 million views, so far. It’s still up.”
“The website of Musk’s America PAC is tricking people into sharing personal data. Although the site promises to help them register to vote, it asks users in battleground states to give their names and phone numbers without directing them to a voter registration site. That personal information is being used to send them anti-Harris and pro-Trump ads.”
The Internet platform providers argue that they are merely distributers of the information provided by their users, but the above evidence suggests otherwise. And a BBC report – Facebook, Twitter and Google grilled by MPs over hate speech – noted that British politicians had argued that “Social media giants should "do a better job" to protect users from online hate speech”.
(This is an archive of a page intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. The latest versions are at book contents).