Political communication and the decline of independent media
It’s an interesting week to be starting an MSc in Political Communication. We’ve seen the President of the United States make a false claim about the link between a commonly taken pain killer and autism. But we’ve also seen something far more sinister: attacks on free speech, and an organised campaign to skew information services to suit a political agenda.
State media is nothing new, of course. In many countries, the media is controlled by the government. In fact, the proportion of independent journalism around the world has decreased from 20% in 2021 to 16% in 2024.
But in America freedom of speech is a First Amendment right. And here we find ourselves in a paradox. On the one hand, Disney was threatened with having its licence revoked when Republicans flew into a rage about Jimmy Kimmel (who didn’t actually say anything about Charlie Kirk) which led to Kimmel’s show being taken off the air. On the other hand, freedom of speech means President Trump can make baseless claims about medicines.
What is more sinister is that people are under the illusion of a free press, where increasingly it doesn’t exist.
People think what they are seeing on their phones is unbiased, but it’s not.
And that’s going to get worse. TikTok in the US is to be transferred from China to American ownership. Investors in the new organisation overseeing TikTok could include Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, of Fox News fame, and Larry Ellison, a cofounder of Oracle, which has partnerships with OpenAi and Microsoft.
So Americans could find themselves in a situation where their TV news, print media, social media, and AI are all telling them the world looks a particular way when it doesn’t. What is ‘true’ could become even more difficult to figure out. If AI is told that paracetamol causes autism then it doesn’t matter what the truth is because when people ask about the issue, they will be told that’s the case.
It’s going to be very hard to tell what is real.
Zoe Scaman wrote an excellent post about this on LinkedIn a couple of days ago if you’d like to read more about it.
So as I go through prep work for my course, I have to agree with everyone who tells me it’s an interesting time to be doing this degree.
Political communication has never been more relevant in my lifetime.
