Democracy's Saboteurs: Press Barons Past and Present
Rich and powerful men have long weaponised the media against democracy. 'The Little Black Book of Press Barons' charts a path towards creating an actually free press
“The British press is extremely centralised,” George Orwell observed in his original preface to Animal Farm, “and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.”
Few writers understood the machinery of propaganda better than Orwell. He saw clearly how dictatorships warped reality through censorship and lies. But he also recognised another danger.
“Technically there is great [press] freedom” in the West, he once wrote in Tribune, “but the fact that most of the press is owned by a few people [means that it] operates in much the same way as state censorship.”
What would Orwell say about the state of the British press all of these decades later?
Three companies control 90% of our national newspaper market. Local journalism, the bedrock of community accountability, is now dominated by just six conglomerates. In broadcast, a politically shackled and funding-starved BBC finds itself losing the public’s trust – even as opinion-dominated (and corporate owned) channels like GB News and TalkTV skirt Ofcom’s light-touch regulations.
Most Britons now get their news online, turning away from Fleet Street and instead towards Silicon Valley’s broligarchs. Digital newsfeeds, which Mark Zuckerberg once referred to as “personalised newspapers”, only add another layer of monopoly power. Ten out of fifteen online platforms used to access news in the UK are owned by either Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Alphabet (Google), or X Corp (formerly Twitter).
And through all of this, the powerful men (and they are entirely men) at the top of these companies have sabotaged every democratic attempt to break their vice-like grip on the news. The Leveson Inquiry’s recommendations collect dust. A Labour Government acquiesced to the press lobby and declined to conduct the inquiry’s second phase. The Online Safety Act prioritised Silicon Valley’s demands over the concerns of British journalists.
The dilemma that Orwell highlighted so many years ago has never been addressed.
Democracy’s Saboteurs
To understand modern media oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch and even Elon Musk, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: these are merely the latest inheritors of a very British tradition.
For over a century, press barons have treated democracy as collateral damage in their quest for power and profit. The Little Black Book of Press Barons traces this lineage of corruption and reveals how media monopolies turn the true democratic mission of journalism – to hold power accountable – on its head.
Whether it’s Lord Rothermere (of The Daily Mail) fawning over blackshirts and conducting softball interviews with Adolf Hitler, or Elon Musk ushering banned Neo-Nazis back on to ‘X’ (previously Twitter), media moguls have sought to warp our national debates towards their own ends.
In this little book, myself and three co-authors (Emma Jones, Jonathan Heawood, and Kyle Taylor) seek to expose not only the damage that Press Barons have inflicted on our democracy, but how they’ve been vested with institutional power – especially in the UK’s House of Lords – to achieve their goals.
This book is not about newspapers. It’s about how they were converted into weapons against democracy.
Reclaiming Our Reality
Much like Orwell, we believe in the democratic vision of a truly free press, one that avoids the pitfalls of both state censorship and monopoly media power.
The second mission of this book is to chart a path forward, revealing what needs to be done to build a press free from coercion. One that’s accountable to the public.
It’s about more than just policy – this book digs deep into what it means to be a media citizen, and how we turn a press dictatorship into a press republic. How we “re-wild” the corporate monoculture of the press. How we bring news back to the people.
At its core, this is a mission to reclaim our reality. To allow the great British public – and people all around the world – to tell their own stories. To break through Silicon Valley’s echo-chambers and thought-bubbles.
The press barons won’t surrender power willingly. But with books like this – and readers like you – we can start to pry it from their hands.
The Little Black Book of Press Barons is heading to printers shortly and is now available for pre-order from Byline Books.