As Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on free speech continue seemingly unabated, people are getting to wonder: could that ever happen over here? I’d say that people who are beginning to think that way are somewhat late to the party. While we have a Labour government, the forces of oppression and the enemies of free speech in the form of the political right and their allies in the media have already begun their attempts to muzzle free speech. It’s been going on for years.
Our own media lacks plurality and diversity and its ownership is increasingly in the hands of a handful of super rich corporations. The organisation the Media Reform Coalition (MRC) has published its 2025 report called ‘Who Owns The UK Media?” The answers are chilling. Used without permission (I’ll delete it if MRC want me to) here are its main conclusions:
- 7 of the top 15 online platforms used to access news in the UK are controlled by Meta, Google and X Corp. Google commands 93% of UK search engine use, while Meta and Google together account for three-fifths of all UK advertising spend, giving these two Big Tech companies unrivalled control over how news is found, accessed and funded online.
- Just three companies – DMG Media, News UK and Reach – control 90% of UK national newspaper circulation, a 20% increase in market concentration since 2014. These same three companies account for over 40% of the combined reach of the UK’s top 50 online newsbrands, giving these publishers significant power to set and steer the national news agenda.
- The UK’s local newspapers are dominated by a tiny handful of corporate chain publishers, with just 2 companies – Newsquest and National World – controlling 51% of the UK’s 882 local newspapers and online local news websites. More than 8 out of 10 Local Democracy Reporters, funded by the TV licence fee to restore local journalism, are contracted to Newsquest, Reach and National World – and these same companies control local newspaper monopolies in areas covering 11.6 million people.
- In commercial radio, just two companies – Bauer and Global – own two-thirds of the UK’s national DAB radio stations, and more than 60% of local analogue stations. Bauer, Global and News Broadcasting (owned by publishers News UK) together control more than three-quarters of the UK’s national DAB radio market.
- Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ account for 75% of all UK video-on-demand subscriptions. Almost half of the value of TV commissions by the UK’s major broadcasters went to just 12 companies, despite these largest producers making up only 4% of the entire UK independent production sector.
Yes, chilling is definitely the word. Frightening is another. We are constantly told by newspapers, which despite the fact hardly anyone except pensioners buys them still carry enormous heft in political discourse, that it is vital that we maintain a free press. How then can you claim to have a free press when three companies control 90% of national newspaper circulation? You and I have no access nor input into what they say. At least we have the choice not to read what they say, which is some kind of freedom for sure, but who else is providing information to us?
The BBC, perhaps? Hardly, given that so many of the people who run the corporation are high ranking Conservatives. No honest neutral could possibly suggest that the Beeb’s editorial stance is right of centre these days, heavily critical of anyone in the centre or left of politics and providing extensive and always uncritical coverage of the Fagash Fuhrer Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Ltd company. The previous prime minister Rishi Sunak made numerous Tory appointments to the BBC hierarchy to clear and obvious effect.
Surely it cannot be help in a democracy to have media power in the hands of elite, and often foreign based, billionaires? The likes of Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail Group (DMG), along with Reach, are accountable to no one. Their editorial stances are dictated by the same people. How is this any different to, say, a state controlled media, controlled by politicians? It isn’t, is it? So, what can be done?
The MRC suggests this:
At a time of intensifying political instability and widening economic inequalities, we urgently need a programme of genuinely progressive reform aimed at creating a freer, fairer and more accountable media. And if we want to lay the foundations for a media system that serves and represents the full diversity of the UK population, its opinions, its communities, its constituent nations and indeed its divisions, then we need to take action now to curb media power.
Big Tech corporations and global media moguls are a direct threat to a healthy and free democracy, and all signs show that these forces are mobilising against the basic foundations and major institutions that seek to guard against excessive concentrations of power.
This government may not get another chance – are they brave enough to put genuine democratic media reform at the heart of their mission to change Britain?
You can read more details here.
The elite media moguls will doubtless claim, as they always seem to do, that such measures would be hugely damaging to a free press and a free media. The state, they will argue, has no business in deciding what newspapers, for example, can publish. But that’s patently untrue. The whole point of reform is to establish a “freer, fairer and more accountable media”.
For many of us, there are precious few media outlets we can go to with confidence, in order to find news presented as news and not just as opinion. Few of the national newspapers report on actual news without taking account of the editorial policies laid down by the owners and proprietors. The lines between actual news and opinion are, in most newspapers, so blurred it is hard to tell one from another. Perhaps that is because they are not reporting on news at all?
Yes, a “freer, fairer and more accountable media” is what we need. And we also need a media which enables the Great British Public to participate and not just have news inflicted on them.
The far right – the fascist right, basically – prattles on about free speech as part of an extensive gaslighting campaign, as if they are the victims. Hilarious. The so-called liberal elite apparently control a media they palpably, demonstrably do not own nor control. It is a confidence trick. The silenced voices are not those of the illiberal elite, like the gutter press moguls and senior right wing politicians who literally are the establishment they pretend to rail against: they are the rest of us. If we fall for this, as vast swathes of the USA population has already done, then it really can happen over here and it definitely would happen over here if we elected Nigel Farage to govern our country.
Donald Trump, as we feared, is bringing fascism to the USA, under the guise of protecting free speech. Shutting down opposition, bringing the National Guard into Democrat run states and undermining what remains of a free media.
We need more freedom, not less, but the truth is freedom of speech in the eyes of the far right means freedom just for them. I saw an idiot being interviewed in a news bulletin this week where she accused British prime minister of taking away her free speech. Unusually for the British media, the reporter pressed her on what exactly Keir Starmer was doing to take away her free speech. Embarrassingly for her, she had no clue, beyond, “Well, he is, isn’t he.” The leaders of the illiberal elite love and need people like her.
Free speech is A Good Thing and we need to cherish and look after it, even fight for it. In the USA, it appears there is no desire to defend free speech and defend the constitution. I am not convinced everyone in the UK would, either, and we don’t even have a written constitution.
I leave you with the words of Michael Rosen, written over a decade ago, but even more relevant today:
I sometimes fear that
