Abstract
‘There’s really, I think, a profound shift in news. When you really think about information, I sort of approach this as like the collective consciousness, where if you can think of humanity as a superorganism and all the humans are basically the eyes and ears of the collective mind of humanity, you want to have all those eyes and ears feeding information into the collective mind. Not going through the slow and often distorted lens of media but actually just directly.’
– Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), in a conversation with staff
‘We have every reason to be optimistic about the coming years – I certainly am, and plan to be here to participate in them. But the battle for the freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought, has never been more intense… Self-serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose. Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.’
– Rupert Murdoch in a letter to staff on his retirement
‘Many who’ve switched to GB News probably agree that it’s the London establishment and the liberal metropolitan elite who have let people down… I do, however, think we need to be wary of what we have seen happen in the United States – a polarisation of the media which exacerbates and inflames already deep political divisions.’
– BBC presenter Nick Robinson, writing in The Daily Telegraph
‘There’s absolutely no way that we are trying to equalise what’s going on between Hamas and Israel in any way, shape, or form. We’ve used very strong language: atrocity, mass murder, abduction and kidnapping.’
– Jonathan Munro, deputy CEO of BBC news