The Oligarchs of Information

The

of

Oligarchs

Infor mation These people control a sufficient amount of resources to influence national opinion and politics.

Definition of Oligarchy noun ol·​i·​gar·​chy plural oligarchies A country or industry that is controlled by a small group of powerful people.

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According to Who Owns the UK Media, a report from Media Reform Coalition published in March 2021.

Three companies dominate 90% of the national newspaper market, an increase from 71% in 2015, these three companies are News UK, Daily Mail Group (DMG) and Reach Plc. With online newspaper readers, the same three companies control 80% of the online market.

For UK local newspapers, 83% of local newspapers are owned by six companies, Gannett UK (Newsquest), Reach Plc, JPI Media, Tindle Newspapers, Archant, and Lliffe Media.

In the UK, there has been a decline in the local press and the Coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this trend, reports from Press Gazette and Hold the Front Page reveal that at least 60 local newspapers have closed since January 2019.

Press Gazette conducted research back in august 2020 suggesting that around 295 titles have ceased publication since 2005, approximately 20% of the UK’s local press.

Newsquest, Reach Plc and JPI Media each control a fifth of the local press market, more than the share of the 50 smallest local publishers combined.

News UK publishers of The Sun, The Times and the Sunday equivalents.

DMG Media publishers of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, Metro and i.

Reach Plc publishers of The Mirror, Express and Star titles, and the Sunday People.

Rebekah Brooks News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks became CEO of News UK in September 2015 but has worked for News UK since 1989, formerly known as News International, starting as a feature writer for the News of the World’s Sunday magazine.

She rose through the ranks and in 2003, she became the Editor of The Sun for six years.

This story erupted in July 2011 after The Guardian reported that an investigator who worked for News of the World had hacked into the voicemail of Milly Dowler, a teenager who was abducted and was later found murdered.

Brooks closed the tabloid paper before being arrested, she was acquitted in June 2014

In 2009, she served as Chief Executive of News International, overseeing significant growth in newspaper operating profit, and The Times became the first paid-for digital newspaper subscription service.

In 2015, Brooks returned to News UK as CEO, reshaping The Sun’s online strategy and driving growth in The Sun’s audience. She also oversaw the purchase of Wireless, the owners of national radio stations talkSPORT, talkRADIO and Virgin Radio.

But she resigned in 2011 at the height of the phone-hacking scandal, where News International’s tabloid paper News of the World had been illegally intercepted and reported the private voicemails of British citizens.

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News Uk is part of News Corp, a Corporation that is led by Rupert Murdoch, he is also the Co-Chairman of Fox Corporation. News Corp owns many newspaper and magazine outlets in America, the UK and Australia, along with Harper Collins Publishers and Sky News Australia.

Newspapers From Around the World Under Rupert Murdoch Control

America

UK

Australia

Lord Rothermere Rich Caccappolo DMG Media Chairman DMG Media CEO DMG Media is the consumer media company of Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DMGT), which is owned by Lord Rothermere, Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, a British aristocrat who is one of the most powerful people in British news media.

Chief Executive Officer of its parent group, DMG media, in November 2021. Caccappolo has been at the forefront of the commercial success of MailOnline, which has become one of the world’s largest English-language news sites.

Controlling the Daily Mail, one of the UK’s top-selling daily and Sunday newspapers, the Metro, and the i and New Scientist, according to Press Gazette, in 2021, he owns around 39% of the UK national newspapers sold every week in the UK, up from 29% in 2010.

Caccappolo’s career has included building and improving businesses by designing and implementing technology applications whilst optimising operations. His expertise has spanned content publishing, e-commerce, interactive and community features and digital monetisation.

Lord Jonathan Rothermere is the fourth inheritor of the newspaper and media empire founded by his great-grandfather Harold Sidney Harmsworth, who with his brother Alfred founded the Daily Mail in 1896.

Rich Caccappolo joined MailOnline as Chief Operating Officer in 2013 and was appointed

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Before joining the dmg media family, Caccappolo was the Director of Technology and New Media for the American Democratic Party politician, Bob Kerrey, Chief Technology Officer for eMusic, President of Creative Commerce at LLC, and Chief Technology Officer of iVillage.

Jim Mullen Reach plc CEO Jim Mullen is the Chief Executive Officer for Reach Plc, appointed back in August 2019, before joining Reach, Mullen was the Group CEO of Ladbrokes Coral plc and Ladbrokes plc from 2013 to 2018, he was also the Chief Operating Officer of William Hill Online, and Director of Digital Strategy and Product Management at News International.

Reach was formerly known as Trinity Mirror plc and changed its name to Reach plc in May 2018.

Mullen has gained experience in the advertising and communications industry, having spent over ten years in some of the sectors’ leading marketing and communications groups.

Reach, along with Newsquest and JPI Media, are the top three publishers for local newspapers. According to Who Owns the UK Media, published in March 2021, these three publishers were responsible for the closures of 51 local titles since January 2019. (JPI Media, 27; Tindle, 15 and Reach, 9)

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Reach publishes over 130 national and regional brands, both print and online, including the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express, the Daily Star and the Sunday equivalents.

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Dated between 2019 and 2020, this table shows the annual turnover of the UK’s national newspaper publishers.

This data is sourced from the 2021 report, Who Owns the UK Media, which used figures from the most recently available company reports.

Company

Turnover

Market Share

News Corp UK & Ireland Ltd DMG Media Ltd Reach Plc The Financial Times Ltd Telegraph Media Group Ltd Guardian & Media Ltd Total

£750,222,000

26.50%

Cumulative Reporting Share Date 26.50% June 2019

£672,000,000 £591,300,000 £344,967,000

23.74% 20.89% 12.19%

50.24% 71.13% 83.32%

Sept 2019 Dec 2019 Dec 2019

£265,791,000

9.39%

92.71%

Dec 2019

£206,348,000

7.29%

100%

Mar 2020

£2,830,628,000

100.00%

n/a

social media

According to Who Owns the UK Media, Facebook (now called Meta), as of January 2021, remains the dominant global social media provider with 2.74 billion active users on Facebook, with 2 billion users on the messaging app WhatsApp and another 1.2 billion users on Instagram.

Other social media providers include YouTube, which is owned by Google umbrella company Alpha Inc, which has 2.2 billion global active users, while TikTok has 689 million, Snapchat with 498 million and Twitter with 353 million users.

Here in the UK, the same social media providers also have a large number of users with 50.36 million users on Facebook, Instagram with 30.36 million users, 16.4 million Twitter users and 17 million users on TikTok.

Research from Ofcom and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism showed that social media has become one of the main methods of how UK audiences find and consume news content. In 2020 almost half of all UK adults used social media as one of their main news sources, and of those 42% said they get most of their news from social media posts rather than news organisations’ websites or apps.

On these social media platforms, legacy media organisations are the most followed news sources, in the UK, news organisations account for 48% of sources consumed on Facebook, 58% on Twitter, 51% on Instagram and 65% on Snapchat.

The BBC is the most followed news organisation, followed by ITV and Sky News.

Mark Zuckerberg Meta CEO Zuckerberg and his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin founded the social media platform in 2004, the group operated the site out of a dorm room at Harvard University.

In October 2019, Zuckerberg Spoke about the importance of protecting free expression at Georgetown University, he stated that the core of Facebook is to give everyone a voice and empower the powerless to push society to be better over time. Zuckerberg warned of the increasing amount of laws and regulations from around the world that undermine free expression and human rights.

He argued that Facebook continues to give people a voice by writing policy that helps the values of voice and expression triumph around the world and avoid the urge to define speech we don’t like as dangerous.

He went on to say “I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy.” he also went on to say “As a principle, in a democracy, I believe people should decide what is credible, not tech companies.” He even took aim at the Chinese social media app TikTok for censoring protests such as the Hong Kong protests.

But despite this, Facebook has caused some concerns about press freedom and free

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expression, similar to Twitter, Facebook faced criticism when they limited the spread of the Hunter Biben Laptop story from the New York Post during the 2020 US election.

In February 2021, Facebook Ruled it would remove any posts about if COVID 19 was man-made, branding it misinformation. This was reversed in May 2021, when President Biden ordered his intelligence agencies to launch a probe into whether if COVID 19 was man-made.

In January 2021, Facebook and Twitter also suspended the then sitting US President Donald Trump’s social media accounts, while permanently banned on Twitter, Facebook has Suspended Trump for two years.

Leading some to worry about the power of social media to censor any views, Nadine Strossen, a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and New York Law School professor of law emerita called Facebook “the most powerful censor the world has ever known.”

Employees of Zuckerberg have given him the nickname The Eye of Sauron saying “I think they sometimes refer to my attention” Zuckerberg takes the nickname as a term of endearment.

Facebook Jail U.S. President 06 14 46

Elon Musk In coming owner of Twitter Elon Musk is the new incoming owner of Twitter, buying the social media platform for roughly around $43 billion. At a TED Talk conference, Musk gave a reason why he was purchasing Twitter saying, “I think it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech.” before going on to say “Twitter has become kind of a de facto town square, so it’s really important that people both have the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely, within the bounds of the law.”

When asked about free speech rules, Musk responded with, “In my view, Twitter should match the laws of the country...If it’s a grey area, I’d say let the speech exist.”

In the past, Musk has been seen to be a defender of free speech. Due to the conflict in Ukraine, the UK, the EU and many tech platforms such as YouTube removed Russian Today, a Russian state-funded news outlet, some governments even asked Musk to remove Russian news sources from SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, Musk refused saying “Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.” and at the same TED Talk, Musk said “Is someone you don’t like, is allowed to say something you don’t like? If that is the case then we have free speech.”

In a Twitter post, Musk even criticised Twitter’s past “suspending the Twitter account of a major news organisation for publishing a

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truthful story was incredibly inappropriate.” most likely referencing to Twitter censoring The New York Post report on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The NYP revealed that Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop carried proof he sold influence, while his father served as vice president along with other materials.

Twitter locked the NYP’s account for weeks saying that “hacked materials” were used, almost a year later, at a congressional hearing Twitter’s then CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that censoring the story was a “total mistake.”

The current CEO of Twitter as of later April, Parag Agrawal, has raised many concerns over free speech on the platform, in a 2020 interview with MIT Technology Review on misinformation, he stated that “Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation... focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed. “he went on to say “Where our role is particularly emphasised is who can be heard...

And so increasingly our role is moving towards how we recommend content.”

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, criticised the comments, “So this is how he feels about free speech...using what should be an open public square for manipulation and indoctrination.”

I hope you enjoyed reading about some as our information overlords.