Democratic delusions: Fix the media to fix democracy

This discusses a 2025-07-17 interview with Natalie Fenton about her new book, Democratic Delusions: How the Media Hollows Out Democracy and What We Can Do About It and related research. A video and 29:00 mm:ss podcast excerpted from the interview will be added when available. The podcast will be released 2025-07-26 to the fortnightly "Media & Democracy" show syndicated for the Pacifica Radio Network of over 200 community radio stations.

This articles invite others to contribute other perspectives, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view while citing credible sources and treating others with respect.

2025-07-17 interview with Natalie Fenton about her new book Democratic Delusions: How the Media Hollows Out Democracy and What We Can Do About It.

29:00 mm:ss podcast from interview conducted 2025-07-17 of Natalie Fenton by Spencer Graves about about her new 2025 book Democratic Delusions: How the Media Hollows Out Democracy and What We Can Do About It.

Natalie Fenton discusses her new 2025 book, Democratic Delusions: How the Media Hollows Out Democracy and What We Can Do About It, and related work. She is interviewed by Spencer Graves.

Fenton is a Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is author or co-author of 10 books and dozens of other academic publications and an editor of numerous other publications. Her research focuses on the relationship between media, democracy and social change. She is also a founder, continuous member, and leading researcher with the Media Reform Coalition in the UK.

Highlights

Immigrants

Graves asked for "a specific example of something really important that the public ought to know and is being suppressed."

Fenton said suggested that the coverage of the current war involving Israel, Palestine, and other countries is not balanced. And few humans have much limited understanding of international concerns.

“

But it's not just what's excluded. It's also how things are narrated in particular ways and across the western world now we're seeing a shift to the far right. We're seeing a rise of authoritarian politics in many instances, and some of the media representations over the last three decades have ... contributed to the place we find ourselves in, particularly ... the ways in which immigration and migrants are framed, and that has led to a kind of monstering and misrepresentation of what immigration is and what it results in to the extent that lots of migrants are now seen as entirely illegal, completely kind of unnecessary to our economies and the need for expulsion of them.

”

Graves said he, "recently interviewing someone about that very issue, talking about reopening a private prison in Leavenworth, Kansas to house the people that Donald Trump wants to deport. Three Wikipedia articles I pulled up fairly quickly, basically said, both the sending country and the receiving country tends to benefit, on average, from migration." And a massive amount of research on immigration on immigrants and immigrant-friendly jurisdictions found that sancturay jurisdictions are either not different from non-sanctuary jurisdictions or have on average less crime and higher median incomes.

Fenton replied that is "not what we hear."

History and evolution of news and its impact on political economy

Graves asked Fenton to "talk about the history and evolution of news and its impact on political economy." Fenton replied,

“

News has, we know, a very real impact on the political economy ... and part of that impact is a result of the fact that these organizations have established hugely powerful positions in society by virtue of their size. ... Across the world, we've had an increasing concentration of ownership of the vast majority of our legacy media, and pretty much ... without exception, all of those countries have failed to prevent the escalation of that concentration of ownership. These forms of concentration obviously have an impact on the plurality of our news environment, but they also have an impact on how our politicians relate to them. They create fear in politicians: If they don't garner favor with these institutions, then they can represent them in a negative light, and therefore their re election chances will be limited. It's a very simple way in which actually, these organizations hold power over these individuals.

What we know that goes viral is are controversial issues, ... so ... the more outrageously spoken a politician is, the more likely they are to get media pickup, because it's those clicks that will generate the advertising revenue.

”

Graves replied, "Last August, I interviewed Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. She said that 'the shortest path to a click is anger or hate.'"

News deserts

Graves asked about news deserts. Fenton replied, "News deserts are a very worrying phenomenon. ... The history of news deserts is that they have really come hot and fast on the heels of digitalization of the news industry. ... Once upon a time, many newspapers would get much of their finance from their classified advertising. As soon as we entered into the digital age, much of that classified advertising went to sites like eBay, and so they lost all of that revenue. ... And so you saw the business model of the news industry bottom out" with many news organizations either merging or closing and creating news deserts."

Graves said, "There's literature that says that when a local newspaper dies, split ticket voting goes away, so people are more likely to vote a party line. ... The cost of local government goes up by 0.13 percent of GDP on average due to increased executive compensation, increased staffing and increased cost of borrowing, because because investors know they cannot trust their money.

Fenton continued, "We also know people vote less."

Postal Service Act of 1792 and implications for the future

Graves note that Richard John has a 1995 book that says that the US led the world in number of independent newspaper publishers per million population because of the US Postal Service Act of 1792. Robert McChesney estimated was like cost the US taxpayers, like 0.21 percent of GDP. And he's been recommending 0.15 percent of GDP distributed to the local news nonprofits, with some kind of firewall to prevent political interference in the content.

Fenton said,

“

I think there are many ways we can deal with it. ... That's one potential way. I think we need to find new mechanisms to reinvigorate local journalism, and that needs to be funded ... sustainably. I don't think you can expect that local journalism to be sustained through advertising. ... You can apply to charitable foundations to support news organizations. ... But I also think that there should be an onus on the tech giants ... who are benefiting both from the news content that is being produced, that they are circulating, and getting a share of those that clicks and the advertising from from those clicks ... . They should be taxed to a level that will put something back into that news economy that could then ... be distributed through a democratic mechanism to nonprofit journalism ... to function in the public interest.

When you're saying, have a some kind of firewall on political interference, absolutely . This has to be independent journalism of integrity that is serving the local community in particular ways and is doing so with a prioritization for the public interest, not for commercial gain. ... If you can create those sorts of mechanisms, then it is entirely possible that you can regenerate local media in critical ways that would have a massive impact on democracy.

”

Watchdogs protect the people who feed them

Graves noted that he had recently intereviewed Nick Usher, who has a research report with a with a co author about "How loud does the watchdog bark: a reconsideration of local news, local journalism, news nonprofits and political corruption.", They found that US Federal jurisdictions with members of the Institute for nonprofit news had on average, 1.4 more federal prosecutions for political corruption per year than jurisdictions without such local news nonprofits not beholding to advertising.

Fenton replied,

“

I think that makes a very important point, that if you haven't got a local news organization that is not kind of dependent on local business advertising, so it's not corrupted by those commercial pressures, and it doesn't have political interference. If you don't have that, who else is going to hold these organizations to account? ...

It's very, very difficult to then see how anybody is going to be investigated, how any local communities can really bring issues that are crucial to them and their community survival to bear. ... One of the reasons local newspapers work in that way is because local organizations are fearful of being outed and found guilty of corruption.

So then it's not just that people are reading them. It's the very threat that they exist. ...

But the moment they become too commercialized and the moment they become too powerful, then the balance of power starts to shift, and they either start to completely just chase profit, ... or they start to actually exert their own power over politicians in what can be quite a negative way.

One of my main points in my latest book is we have to take out the commercial incentive.

”

Graves added, "The major media create the stage upon which politicians read their lines."

The BBC and its impact on political economy

Graves asked, "Talk about the history of the BBC and its impact on the political economy."

Fenton replied,

“

The wonderful BBC here, here is a publicly funded broadcasting system that ... makes a really valuable contribution to the news ecology in the UK. It remains one of the most trusted news sources in the UK and globally ... . It has a wide reach, and it's pretty unique in the way that it functions.

However, it's not without problems. The BBC is in need, I think, of some quite fundamental reform to ensure that it keeps its relevance to the general public in a digital age ... . The BBC is funded by a license fee. Everybody who possesses a television has to pay the license fee. And increasingly people are refusing to do that, because they're saying, 'We don't watch the BBC. ... We're not going to pay the license fee.' So they're struggling with that.

At the same time, the government has made huge funding cuts over the years to what it does, so the quality and standards of what it's doing are now mimicking far more commercial outlets because they're chasing viewers. ... The government of the day and all previous governments also try and interfere endlessly in what the BBC does. ... And we haven't yet found an adequate mechanism for preventing that political interference. So it is losing its sense of independence from government, which is a devastating thing to claim. ... It is deeply problematic that the government hold the purse strings over the BBC, because it will threaten it endlessly with funding cuts if it doesn't play ball.

We need to radically reform the BBC. ... If it's going to be called a public service broadcasting, it's got to have much more connection to the public. It's got to show how its universalism is not only practiced in terms of its content, but also in terms of its structures of governance and its personnel.

However, I would never want to see it disappear. It's always been, to some extent, struggled with this relationship with the state ... And of course, you can see that more when you're coming into situations of increased issues around security and potential war. That's you're also getting much more direct interference from government. I think we all need to have an organization that is an independent of commercial pressures and of political interference, in order to get adequate news for democracies to function.

”

Local multi-media centers

Graves asked aboutt local multi-media centers managed by boards selected at random like jury duty, as recommended by Victor Picard.

Fenton said,

“

I've got a lot of sympathy with that sort of view, but I would go further in some ways.

We have newspapers that are managed in similar ways in the UK. An example is The Bristol Cable in the UK, which is a ... newspaper cooperative. ... Local community members pay on a very minimal sliding scale to be members of the news organization. As a result, they can then have an input on their editorial decisions, their advertising policy, what sorts of investigations they think these newspapers should be doing. And these are packed meetings of hundreds of people from the local community ... because they see the importance of this newspaper. It's had phenomenal success in holding the council to account, local businesses to account, and investigating concerns that the local community has brought to them. So the community itself is setting that news agenda, rather than a handful of journalists and an editor. ...

I would like to see those sorts of citizen juries and assemblies being very much part of the BBC. I would like to see in all regions all around the UK, a BBC citizen assembly that reports back on the sorts of things that the BBC is doing, how it's going down, ... but also directs some of the crucial issues that are happening, and also monitors controversy.

So where controversial things do come into play, which they constantly do in the in terms of the BBC, where they've recently broadcast a documentary on Gaza, and they've come under great criticism, you know, should that, and there was a big internal report that was just released this week, by all means, have An internal investigation, but that should also have gone to citizen assemblies of BBC viewers to say, what do you think? What do you think is the outcome of this, rather than it laying on, you know, one or two elites within the organization itself. Victor's right. We need more citizen involvement in setting news agendas and responding to concerns over our news environment, not less. ...

All communities should have a news hub, something like a local library, which is a newsroom that is occupied by all manner of news organizations. It can be community radio stations like yourself. It can be newspapers, it can be, local community TV. But it's a space where the local community can come with issues they think need to be covered and investigated. They could then also be trained in how to write those stories, how to investigate it, how to do the journalism themselves.

In Glasgow right now we have an organization and Govanhill magazine, which has done precisely that. It has taken over a disused shop, and it's opened it up as a news hub to the local community and said, Come in. Tell us what needs to be done. Work with us to investigate these issues. .... It's training journalists in the process, and it's ... holding power to account for that local community.

”

Brexit

Graves asked Fenton to describe Brexit.

Fenton replied,

“

Brexit was the moment at which we had a referendum, largely triggered by internal fights within the Conservative Party over a very small group of MPs who thought that the UK should leave the European Union. ... To quell that infighting, ... the then-Prime Minister David Cameron decided to hold a referendum to put this issue to bed once and for all. He ... said he very clearly thought that the referendum would vote, "No", we don't want to leave Europe. But in fact, by a narrow margin, it voted to leave Europe. So since 2016 The UK has no longer been part of Europe, and that's what we call Brexit.

I think our newspapers had a very large part to play in that vote, because for the past three decades, tabloid press had been endlessly talking about the nonsense that was the EU and ... all sorts of nonsense stories about how bananas had to be a certain shape, or cheeses, the name of great British cheeses had to be changed. These were all largely nonsense stories, but it was all seen feeding this idea that there's an excess of regulation that is coming from the EU. We're paying them loads of money for what they do, and we'd be better off doing it on our own, rather than talking about all the things that we were gaining from the EU.

And of course, as soon as Brexit happened, our economy massively plummeted, and we found that all of those regulations that we thought were were hampering our economy had actually given us huge protections over employment rights and human rights. And so there's now, there's a there's a real antipathy towards that Brexit vote. ... However, it's highly unlikely that the current government will hold another referendum because of the politics that are involved.

”

Final words

Graves said, "We're pretty close to out of time. Any final words for our audience?"

Fenton replied,

“

There are a lot of what we haven't really spoken about is the power of big tech, which I also cover in my book a lot. But the issues around those tech giants are huge in terms of the role they are playing in distorting and corrupting our democracy. And you've got so many examples of that in the US, I probably don't need to tell your listeners that story.

But ... the role that we are seeing Elon Musk play in in the political environment in the US is a kind of extension of what we've had from Rupert Murdoch in years gone by. So he is ... the new kind of oligarch on the block that is disrupting and destroying our political systems in many ways, and it's not just the tech.

Of course, our political systems themselves need massive reform, but those big tech giants have been able to garner so much power that we now don't know how to limit that power, and that's a really dangerous place to be.

”

The need for media reform to improve democracy

This article is part of category:Media reform to improve democracy. We describe here briefly the motivation for this series.

One major contributor to the dominant position of the US in the international political economy today may have been the US Postal Service Act of 1792. Under that act, newspapers were delivered up to 100 miles for a penny when first class postage was between 6 and 25 cents. Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the relatively young United States of America in 1831, wrote, “There is scarcely a hamlet that does not have its own newspaper.” McChesney and Nichols estimated that these newspaper subsidies were roughly 0.21 percent of national income (Gross Domestic Project, GDP) in 1841.

At that time, the US probably led the world by far in the number of independent newspaper publishers per capita or per million population. This encouraged literacy and limited political corruption, both of which contributed to making the US a leader in the rate of growth in average annual income (Gross Domestic Product, GDP, per capita). Corruption was also limited by the inability of a small number of publishers to dominate political discourse.

That began to change in the 1850s and 1860s with the introduction of high speed rotary presses, which increased the capital required to start a newspaper.

In 1887 William Randolph Hearst took over management of his father’s San Francisco Examiner. His success there gave him an appetite for building a newspaper chain. His 1895 purchase of the New York Morning Journal gave him a second newspaper. By the mid-1920s, he owned 28 newspapers. Consolidation of ownership of the media became easier with the introduction of broadcasting and even easier with the Internet. This consolidation seems to be increasing political polarization and violence worldwide, threatening democracy itself.

The threat from loss of newspapers

A previous Media & Democracy interview with Arizona State University accounting professor Roger White on "Local newspapers limit malfeasance" describes problems that increase as the quality and quantity of news declines and ownership and control of the media become more highly concentrated: Major media too often deflect the public's attention from political corruption enabled by poor media. This too often contributes to other problems like scapegoating immigrants and attacking Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) while also facilitating increases in pollution, the cost of borrowing, political polarization and violence, and decreases in workplace safety. More on this is included in other interviews in this Media & Democracy series available on Wikiversity under Category:Media reform to improve democracy.

An important quantitative analysis of the problems associated with deficiencies in news is Neff and Pickard (2024). They analyzed data on media funding and democracy in 33 countries. The US has been rated as a "flawed democracy" according to the Economist Democracy Index and spends substantially less per capita on media compared to the world's leading democracies in Scandinavia and Commonweath countries. They note that commercial media focus primarily on people with money, while publicly-funded media try harder to serve everyone. Public funding is more strongly correlated with democracy than private funding. This recommends increasing public funding for media as a means of strengthening democracy. See also "Information is a public good: Designing experiments to improve government".

Discussion

[Interested readers are invite to comment here, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view citing credible sources and treating others with respect.]

Bibliography

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