The Media-Industrial Complex

We’ve all heard about the military-industrial complex. In his 1961 farewell address, President Eisenhower warned about the ‘potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power’ arising from the continued entanglement of the arms industry and government. It was, in his words, a union whose strength had the potential to ‘endanger our liberties [and] democratic processes’.

Whether such a complex exists in actuality, or whether it is merely a product of minds inclined to ‘conspiracy theories’, is best considered in the light the incessant beating of the drums that war that followed for decades afterwards.

Yet this is not the focus of our consideration today. Instead, what about the media-industrial complex? The collusion between media and government is now so extensive that the two are difficult to tell apart. As the tentacles of government spread unabated – with state spending now accounting for roughly half of British GDP – its powers grow daily. Modern media behemoths, largely staffed by people sympathetic to the worldview and aims of the state, are the perfect ally for those in the halls of government.

Most media outlets profess to hold power to account. Such commitment to journalistic enquiry is, however, increasingly the exception rather than the rule, with the links between those sitting on the editorial boards of newspapers and those carving out careers in the halls of Westminster tighter than ever. It is, instead, the job of media to advance the beliefs of the modern state, which manifest themselves in various now well-known mental dead-ends including but not limited to DIE (diversity, inclusion, equality) and climate catastrophism.

Increasingly the lines between government and media are blurred. Take, for example, Coutts’ recent debacle regarding Nigel Farage. Until 2022 NatWest Group – Coutts’ parent – was majority owned by the taxpayer, needing to be subsidised by the rest of society due to its serious business failings. Today it is still 38.6% owned by the government. It was nobody less than the CEO of NatWest Group who passed inaccurate information to a BBC journalist (another state-owned institution) to smear the reputation of one of the most successful politicians of recent British history.

Cooperation of this kind is not new. Where the media has been in parts slow to condemn the overtly political decision against Farage – incredible given its potential implications for any of us who dissent from majority opinion on any issue – it was similarly happy to endorse effective house arrest for millions without the slightest apprehension. During that sorry era journalists competed among themselves to see who could be the most fervent in advancing the establishment narrative, whose central tenets included that Covid was an existential risk, that vaccinations were unreservedly beneficial, and that the sole problem with lockdowns was their lack of stringency.

Even after the tide of panic has receded, the media remain resolutely uninterested in asking the vital questions thrown up by the episode, not limited to vaccine injury and ongoing excess deaths. To do so would in part reveal their own culpability in the tragedy. Perhaps more crucially, they have new axes to grind.

One cannot ride the wave of any one crisis permanently as fatigue inevitably sets in among the populace. Necessarily the artillery of hysteria must be directed elsewhere in order to advance the cause of the uniparty. Take, for example, the obsessing with a submersible in the North Atlantic while the US President’s son was having his day in court amid a story with deep implications for Joe ‘the Big Guy’ Biden himself.

Which story, was of greater significance for the future of the Western world? Hint: not the one that got 1,000x the media coverage.

Most recently, one would deduce from media reports that the entirety of the Mediterranean was ablaze, with islands such as Rhodes and Crete soon to be little more than giant lumps of charcoal sitting amid the sea. The relish with which media has promoted the story – ‘Holiday wildfire hell’ one outlet notably went with – is part of the sensationalising mission of media (such companies operate on the same basis as the teenage TikTok addict: the quality of the content is irrelevant, so long as it gets enough hits). It feeds into a narrative of imminent climate catastrophe, despite the abundance of evidence [1] that refutes this feverous assertion.

Yet by the time cooler heads have provided more rational explanations than the knee-jerk response of ‘imminent Armageddon’, the hysteria has hit home. Decent people – no doubt considering themselves rational and informed – state suddenly that ‘something must be done – I have seen photos of Rhodes on fire!’ In their haste to act upon noble instinct, they unknowingly advance the cause of the cadre of globalist misanthropes who see humanity as a plague on an idealised Mother Nature.

Such coverage has the same effect as the rolling death counters of Covid: while a phenomenon occurs unremarked upon, regarded a fact of life (people die, forests sometimes burn – particularly when arson is involved), once the glaring lights of media obsession are trained on them relentlessly, people are panicked. Suddenly, cries for something to stop the calamity (something, anything!) arise from every corner. Somewhat conveniently, the demands fit neatly into government’s already formulated plans.

It's almost like the media and the state act in unison. To suggest such a thing would be to invite accusations of being a conspiracy theorist amid loud guffaws from the self-appointed ‘experts’ in our midst. Yet, given the tendency for today’s ‘conspiracy theory’ to be tomorrow’s proven fact, it’s a chance ever more of us are willing to make.