The Guardian

11/14/2025

The fundamental problem is this: that most of the means of communication are owned or influenced by the very rich. If democracy is the problem capital is always trying to solve, propaganda is part of the solution. Like the kings and empire-builders of the past, they use their platforms to project the claims that suit them and suppress the claims that don’t. This means boosting right and far-right movements, which defend wealth and power against those who wish to redistribute them.

In the US, we witness a rapid and extreme hardening of this position, as Trump’s allies, old and new, sweep up legacy media platforms – it seems obvious that the result will be ever more unhinged attacks on anyone who challenges capital.

The ultra-rich have also pumped money into new media, such as the online shows that now outrank traditional television news. For example, two fracking billionaires have poured $8m (£6m) into PragerU and $4.7m into the Daily Wire, to extend the reach of these platforms.

Of the world’s 10 most popular online shows, a Yale study shows eight have spread climate science denial. Joe Rogan, who hosts one of the world’s most popular shows, has repeatedly claimed that the Earth is cooling, drawing on research that says the opposite.

A new investigation of Elon Musk’s X by Sky News found that every account set up by reporters, “no matter their political orientation, was fed a glut of rightwing content”, much of which was extreme. The experts it consulted believe this pattern could have resulted only from an algorithm engineered for this purpose, and that “an algorithmic bias must be decided by senior people at the channel”. (X, for its part, told Sky News it was “dedicated to fostering an open, unbiased public conversation”.) A separate study found the spread of misinformation on X is most associated with politicians on the radical right: mainstream or leftist representatives are far less likely to spread falsehoods. The radical right leans heavily into climate science denial and obstruction of environmental measures: this is why it is sponsored by fossil fuel companies.

Capital has willing workers even in the media that aren’t owned by billionaires. A devastating new article by Peter Coviello, professor of American literature at the University of Illinois, records how he and his former college became collateral damage in the campaign waged by the New York Times against Zohran Mamdani, now mayor-elect of New York City. Coviello explains a process grimly familiar to climate scientists: equating expert opinion with commentary from paid lobbyists. No attempt is made to examine “the relation between those two ‘sides,’ or their histories, or their sponsors, or their relative evidentiary authority”. If, he argues, you have the money to fund a junktank, it will produce whatever opinion you request, then papers such as the New York Times will balance that opinion against decades of academic study, as if the two things are of equal weight.

In this media climate, it’s not surprising that governments are retreating from climate action. In June, a review by the International Panel on the Information Environment found that “inaccurate or misleading narratives” in the media about climate breakdown create “a feedback loop between scientific denialism and political inaction”. The results can be seen at the current Cop30 climate talks, whose president, André Corrêa do Lago, remarks on a “reduction in enthusiasm” among rich nations.