The Media Are a Mouthpiece for the Ruling Elite – And Always Have Been

How controlling the flow of information has always benefitted the Ruling Elite.

The recent atrocities committed by Israel – ranging from the starvation of children in Gaza to military aggression toward Iran – have sparked widespread protests across London. Yet, what’s most telling is not the protests themselves, but the deafening silence from the mainstream media, particularly the BBC.

This isn’t new. The BBC’s reluctance to report meaningfully on such demonstrations is rooted in fear – fear of the backlash that comes with challenging power. But this isn't just about avoiding criticism for covering Israel’s actions. It’s also about suppressing the truth: the scale, passion, and sheer number of people who are actively resisting these injustices. We've seen this same media minimisation before – most notably during the COVID-19 lockdown protests.

Those protests were about far more than lockdowns. They exposed deep public dissatisfaction with a broader system: the rise of financial oligarchy, the erosion of civil liberties, vaccine controversies, and longstanding media cover-ups, including the BBC’s own scandal-ridden history. At their core, these demonstrations were aimed at the establishment – corrupt politicians, complicit media institutions, and the financiers behind both.

I recall my father sending me a BBC article that, after months of silence, finally – grudgingly – acknowledged the protests. Initially, the BBC described the turnout as “hundreds.” Only later were these articles edited to reflect what was obvious to anyone who had actually been there: thousands had taken to the streets. I was among them. I saw the sea of people – diverse in race, religion, and background – united in dissent against the hegemonic oligarchs and elitist media moguls.

More recently, the BBC has begun to cover the pro-Palestine protests in London, but with a careful, curated tone. When it suits the establishment agenda, media coverage becomes a tool – not of information, but of control. Take the case of artist Bob Vylan at Glastonbury recently, leading chants of “Death to the IDF.” The backlash was swift. Outrage media, right-wing politicians, Zionist think tanks – each jumped at the chance to weaponise the moment. Their goal wasn’t discourse; it was suppression. It was to redirect public attention, demonise dissent, and shield a corrupt status quo – both at home and abroad. While the main reason for Bob Vylan’s chant was to raise awareness around the atrocities of the IDF upon the Palestinian people - those outraged turned the argument into one focusing on him and his call for violence.

While violence is rarely the answer, history reminds us that it is often the desperate’s last resort when all other avenues are shut by those in power. When democratic channels fail, when voices are silenced, when media lies to our faces – what is left?

This pattern of censorship and narrative control isn’t accidental. It is structural. It’s the inevitable result of a media landscape beholden to powerful investors and donors. Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent captured this reality decades ago: media conglomerates are no longer independent institutions but extensions of financial and industrial empires. Consider Capital Cities, a banking group, owning ABC. Or General Electric, a defense contractor, owning NBC. Ask yourself: when companies tied to war, banking, and power control the flow of news – what kind of truth can we expect?

Look deeper, and you’ll find that many of these parent companies are, in turn, owned by the same financial giants: BlackRock and Vanguard. These two conglomerates hold major stakes across virtually every sector – media, defence, healthcare, tech, energy, and more. It's a legal monopoly masquerading as a free market, a consolidation of influence so vast it has quietly reshaped our world.

This is not new, either. Power has always understood the importance of controlling knowledge. In ancient Sumer – modern-day Iraq – the scribes and scholars did not serve the public. They served the elites. Their writings on politics, religion, law, and mathematics weren’t tools for public education but blueprints for maintaining dominance. They preserved power by restricting access to the very knowledge that could liberate the masses.

This dynamic has echoed through history. In the Middle Ages, the Vatican hoarded texts – mathematical treatises, philosophical works, histories of ‘heathen’ cultures – locking them away in archives and limiting access to only a chosen few, and rehashing their works to suit the Christian narrative of the time (I’m looking at you St. Thomas Aquinas). Even now, access to these archives remains tightly controlled. You are permitted to know only what suits their image.

In the 20th century, we witnessed even more overt forms of information control: book burnings in Nazi Germany, Stalinist purges, and Mao’s Red Guard campaigns. Each regime weaponised media, censored dissent, and erased inconvenient truths. These weren’t simply governments – they became hive minds, enforcing a rigid orthodoxy where deviation was criminal and truth was state-sanctioned.

We are not exempt from this cycle. Today’s censorship is dressed in PR and algorithms instead of jackboots and bonfires – but its intent is the same. To shape public perception. To limit dissent. To serve power.

Information is the currency of freedom. Without it, democracy becomes theatre. And if we allow the ruling elite to monopolise that currency – to dictate what is true and what is not – then we are not citizens. We are subjects to an ever increasing totalitarian global state.