this page last updated: Monday 20 April 2020
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Dispatches investigates celebrities charging huge fees to support charities. Reporter Antony Barnett sets up a fake charity and goes undercover to reveal how some of the most famous people in the world are profiting from the work they do for charity, charging tens of thousands of pounds for a single post on social media and appearing at events.
stream Channel 4
This past week saw the commencement of a court case that will determine whether Britain should extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the United States. The US government has charged Assange for his part in the release of classified military documents — he's looking at a maximum prison sentence of 175 years. Assange's advocates say he has little chance of getting a fair trial in the US and, if sent there, he could end up facing conditions amounting to torture. It is a case against Julian Assange and, by implication, modern-day journalism?
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Despite her murderer's best efforts, she would not be silenced.
stream YouTube
Do Portugal's mainstream media deny racism and lack diversity? A look into reporting of race in Portuguese media.
stream YouTube
New details are emerging about how the shadowy data firm Cambridge Analytica worked to manipulate voters across the globe, from the 2016 election in the United States to the Brexit campaign in Britain and elections in over 60 other countries. A new trove of internal Cambridge Analytica documents and emails are being posted on Twitter detailing the company’s operations, including its work with President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton. The documents come from Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, who worked at the firm for three-and-a-half years before leaving in 2018.
stream Democracy Now
From political manipulation to complaints of bias, all eyes are on the media ahead of the UK's election.
stream YouTube
Sacha Baron Cohen is the well-deserved recipient of ADL’s International Leadership Award, which goes to exceptional individuals who combine professional success with a profound personal commitment to community involvement and to crossing borders and barriers with a message of diversity and equal opportunity. Over 100 years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant.” Through his alter egos, many of whom represent anti-Semites, racists and neo-Nazis, Baron Cohen shines a piercing light on people’s ignorance and biases.
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Journalist Mona Chalabi uses hand-drawn sketches to break down complex data and challenge mainstream misconceptions.
stream YouTube
British inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee talks about his aspirations for the future of the World Wide Web, now in its 30th anniversary year. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is well underway: the Internet of Things, AI and virtual reality are soon to be commonplace in our lives. Yet fewer women than men are online, more than half the world remains offline, and developing countries are missing out on revolutionary opportunities. For the first time, the lecture will be followed by a Q&A, providing further insight into the importance of access to the web and how it can adapt to fight threats like fake news, unbalanced opinion, corruption and crime to realise its true potential.
stream YouTube
Journalist Andrew Marantz spent three years embedded in the world of internet trolls and social media propagandists, seeking out the people who are propelling fringe talking points into the heart of conversation online and trying to understand how they're making their ideas spread. Go down the rabbit hole of online propaganda and misinformation — and learn we can start to make the internet less toxic.
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How far-right outlet Rebel Media uses YouTube as a powerful force for radicalisation, misinformation and propaganda.
stream YouTube
This television essay is written by the American media theoretician Douglas Rushkoff. We are at the same time through modern media in several places, but where are we really? Is “here and now” what's on your screen or is it where you physically stand? It is time to return to the real NOW says Douglas Rushkoff.
stream YouTube
There's one thing that touches nearly every aspect of our lives. Whether you're using social media, putting in a health insurance claim or online shopping. It's algorithms. A five-part series exploring the impact of algorithms on our everyday lives
stream Aljazeera
Why Britain's media are front and centre in Boris Johnson's bid to become Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister.
stream YouTube
How a British media trend demonising the poor could have implications for the welfare system and people depending on it.
stream YouTube
Are media outlets to be blamed for sowing the seeds of the hate unleashed in Christchurch? In Australia, where the killer came from, a lot of people are blaming the media — especially news outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch — for sowing the seeds of the hate unleashed in Christchurch. A study conducted by OnePath Network, an Islamic media outlet based in Sydney, tallied up the number of negative stories that five Australian newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp produced in the year 2017. It found almost 3,000 such stories referring to Islam or Muslims, alongside words like “violence”, “terrorism” or “radical”.
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Artist, writer and activist Alipoor and director Irshad Ashraf step into the dark, blurry online world of fantasists and extremists to tell four fictional stories — of an ISIS recruiter, two British recruits and an alt-right ‘white boy’ from California. Extremists communicate openly on social media and young men find power in digital fantasy, unleashing their wrath on the world. Alipoor’s fictional play captivated audiences with its portrayal of a shifting world of truth, fantasy, violence and hyper-reality just one click away and his television adaptation promises to take BBC Four audiences deep into this digital realm.
stream BBC iPlayer
showcase YouTube
A Listening Post special marking 30 years since the publication of Manufacturing Consent and its relevance today. The book was published in 1988 — a year before the end of the Cold War when it was announced that western liberal democracy had triumphed, heralding the end of ideology, authoritarianism, and propaganda. In the past 30 years, we have seen the mass communications industry multiply, providing an illusion of choice, echoing the rhetorics of freedom — of press, of expression — but not necessarily yielding the pluralism liberal democracies had promised. In that way, the book continues to resonate.
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Is Trump's special relationship with the conservative evangelical network just an alliance of political convenience? Donald Trump has repeatedly labelled much of mainstream American media “fake news” and the “enemy of the people”. But there are a few outlets that are in Trump's good books. It's common knowledge that Fox News is a soft landing spot for the president, but what's less well known is the wide-ranging access he, and many members of his administration, offer to the much smaller Christian Broadcasting Network, or CBN.
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The promise of Facebook was to create a more open and connected world. But from the company’s failure to protect millions of users’ data, to the proliferation of “fake news” and disinformation, mounting crises have raised the question: Is Facebook more harmful than helpful? This major, two-night event investigates a series of warnings to Facebook as the company grew from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to a global empire. With dozens of original interviews and rare footage, The Facebook Dilemma examines the powerful social media platform’s impact on privacy and democracy in the US and around the world.
stream part 1 Facebook
stream part 2 Facebook
Seymour Hersh's name is well-known in the world of journalism. The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, who exposed the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, has become a legendary figure for some. Upfront speaks with the seasoned journalist and author of Reporter: A Memoir about the Syria war, Donald Trump, the media and alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
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Consider which came first: public support for far-right movements or media coverage of them? Extremism on the UK's airwaves — are the media reporting the rise of the far right or manufacturing it? more »
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Dispatches goes undercover in the secretive world of the people who decide what can and can't be posted on Facebook, exploring how their decisions are made and the impact they have on users.
stream YouTube
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People are increasingly glued to their smartphones and consumed by social media, but why? Reporter Hilary Andersson tracks down tech insiders who reveal how social-media companies have deliberately developed habit-forming technology to get people hooked. A former Facebook manager tells the programme: ‘Their goal is to addict you and then sell your time’ and the creator of the ‘like’ button warns of the dangers of social-media addiction. Panorama investigates the science behind the lure of technology, and shows how behavioural science has been used to keep people endlessly checking their phones.
stream BBC iPlayer
The internet is perhaps the defining technological advance of the last 50 years. It has opened up a new world of possibilities, but what if it also represents an existential threat to humanity? That is the alarming possibility raised by computer scientist Jaron Lanier. He is no tech-phobic sensationalist; he is a Silicon Valley insider who was a hugely influential pioneer in virtual reality and a consultant to some of the biggest tech giants. In what ways are we sowing the seeds of our own destruction?
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In this episode, GU are joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh who exposed NATO nation war crimes of the military-industrial complex. From Abu Ghraib prison in the Anglo-American war on Iraq to the My Lai Massacre, Seymour Hersh has exerted a damning scepticism of the official line. His new book Reporter — A Memoir is out now.
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Big data politics and how the American public was tricked into opening the doors of the White House to Donald Trump. more »
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Author and journalist Nafeez Ahmed discusses the murkier roots of Big Tech and the overlooked dangers of oversharing information.
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Cambridge Analytica, owned by Robert Mercer, is in the news, but other companies — like the Koch Brothers’ i360 and Karl Rove’s Data Trust — are far more dangerous, says investigative reporter Greg Palast.
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How the Strategic Communication Labs/Cambridge Analytica scandal leads to the heart of the British establishment with Liam O'Hare. Yes this is a scandal about Facebook and data. But it’s also a scandal about networks of unaccountable power influencing democratic elections and it leads to the very heart of the British government. It’s time now for the British government and ministry of defence to come clean about exactly what ties it has now or has previously had with Strategic Communication Laboratories. This story has important consequences for how elections, referenda and our democracy works.
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Britain’s Channel 4 details the dirty tricks that Cambridge Analytica, the data-mining company owned by billionaire Robert Mercer, uses to sway elections around the world. If the story is true, it would mean the company is not only sleazy, but also blatantly criminal, says white-collar criminologist Bill Black.
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Watch all of Channel 4 News’ investigations into both Cambridge Analytica — the British data firm linked to Trump’s win — and the Brexit campaign. The British data firm described as “pivotal” in Donald Trump’s presidential victory was behind a ‘data grab’ of more than 50 million Facebook profiles, a whistleblower has revealed.
stream Channel 4 News
On 16 March 1968, US soldiers committed a war crime during the Vietnam war. More than 500 men, women and children were systematically slaughtered in the village of My Lai. The terrible truth was exposed thanks to the work of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. He can look back on a lifetime of reporting that has been punctuated by scoops, prizes and plentiful confrontations with the powers that be. Fifty years on from My Lai, are journalists still able to tell the truth to power?
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A two-part investigation into the threats to democracy posed by fake news and propaganda on social media. more »
stream part 1 YouTube
stream part 2 YouTube
Does Facebook identify and manipulate your feelings? Is it able to recognize your personality type, habits, interests, political views, level of income? Does it use all the information in order to reach us with personalized ads or sponsored content? You bet! Mark Zuckerberg's empire is based on analysing the digital dandruff that we leave behind on the Internet, transforming it into a valuable consumer profiles and selling it to advertisers. In this factory we are not even a product — we are just a human biomass, which only gains value after being shaped and worked on by algorithm. How exactly does it work? Take a look.
stream Vimeo
We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says technosociologist Zeynep Tufecki. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren't even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us — and what we can do in response.
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Psychographic targeting and the so called "Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine" have been blamed for swaying public opinion in recent political campaigns. But how effective are they? Why are people so divided on certain topics? And what influences their views? This talk presents the results of five studies exploring each of these questions.
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In this interview for Real Media Tom Mills (sociologist at Aston University and author of The BBC – Myth of a Public Service) talks about growing public mistrust of the media. While the establishment media seems to be closing ranks and pointing the ‘fake news’ finger at new outlets, Tom reminds us of who owns the print media, and how the broadcast media tends to draw its journalists from certain sectors of society. As episodes like Occupy and Grenfell reveal a chasm between the concerns of establishment media, and the experiences of ordinary people, it’s no wonder people are turning to alternatives, and now might be the time to start supporting and funding the new media landscape.
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Richard Seymour reviews the state of political satire in the US and UK. Satire has been declared ‘dead’ many times throughout the last decades and survived. But has it finally come to its end in the era of ‘satire-resistant president’ Donald Trump?
stream YouTube
Two years of political turmoil have revealed the depths of institutional corruption, political opportunism and — crucially — media power in Brazil.
stream Aljazeera
Jamie Bartlett uncovers the dark reality behind Silicon Valley's glittering promise to build a better world.
stream BBC iPlayer
Facebook is thought to know more about us than any other business in history, but what does the social network that Mark Zuckerberg built do with all of our personal information? Reporter Darragh MacIntyre investigates how Facebook's powerful algorithms allow advertisers and politicians to target us more directly than ever before, and he questions whether the company's size and complexity now makes it impossible to regulate.
stream BBC iPlayer
Sometimes it's hard to know what statistics are worthy of trust. But we shouldn't count out stats altogether... instead, we should learn to look behind them. In this delightful, hilarious talk, data journalist Mona Chalabi shares handy tips to help question, interpret and truly understand what the numbers are saying.
stream YouTube
It's the battle of big data. Campaigns hoovering up masses of personal detail on 200 million voters. A big brother world where your life is captured digitally then the data analysed to win your vote. And developments in America are changing elections in Britain and worldwide.
stream YouTube
Chomsky talks about mainstream media and its purpose to “dull people's brains”, diverting them toward trivial issues, away from things that matter; and in doing so, reducing their capacity to think. Coverage of competitive sporting events serves this purpose and also indoctrinates people into a group cohesion behind a leadership, in other words, an “irrational jingoism”.
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With services like email and social media, Amazon and Apple Pay, health, diet and even sleep-tracking, technology is pushing ever deeper into our lives. But should we just accept the new gadgets and services on offer, or is there a hidden cost to pay? This seven-part series profiles the Rebel Geeks challenging power structures and offering a different vision of our technological future.
stream AlJazeera
Richard Seymour critiques Guido Fawkes, a British blog run by rightwing blogger Paul Staines. Richard dissects the background to Guido Fawkes and talks us through some of the content on orderorder.com.
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Pilger talks about media propaganda; censorship and distortion in the media; deception by “great” newspapers; media agendas and fake objectivity; and mainstream media as power.
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He exposed one of the biggest scandals in recent British political history. Nick Davies, the journalist who laid bare a political controversy that reached into multiple British institutions and painted a picture of a news organisation so powerful that those institutions, including parliament, police and the rest of the British media, dared not take it on. Davies has just published a book on the story: Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch. What starts as a probe into the criminal culture at British tabloids owned by Murdoch's News Corporation ultimately lifts the veil on the shadowy end of government; the cosy relationship between successive prime ministers at 10 Downing Street and a media baron skilled at acquiring assets, wealth and political power. Richard Gizbert sat down with Nick Davies in London, to discuss the story, the power of fear and the future of the Murdoch media empire, which lies disgraced, but by no means defeated.
stream AlJazeera
Pilger talks about western media coverage of the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, and how it is biased and spun to a particular narrative. He also discusses journalism and what happens to trainees who enter large news corporations, the ‘unwatchable’ BBC Ten O'Clock News, and how complete disbelief of mainstream news is approaching the level that was seen in the Soviet Union — where people often laughed at the lies produced by the state.
stream YouTube
Robert Peston investigates the questions behind the phone-hacking trial which saw David Cameron's former spokesman, Andy Coulson, convicted and three other News of the World News editors plead guilty. Did politicians of all parties and police help to cover-up the hacking scandal for years because of their own close relationships with Rupert Murdoch's News International?
stream YouTube
stream BBC iPlayer
Thanks to social media, today's teens are able to directly interact with their culture in ways never before possible. But is that real empowerment? Or do marketers still hold the upper hand? Douglas Rushkoff explores how the perennial teen quest for identity and connection has migrated to social media — and exposes the game of cat-and-mouse that corporations are playing with these young consumers. Do kids think they're being used? Do they care? Or does the perceived chance to be the next big star make it all worth it? The film is a powerful examination of the evolving and complicated relationship between teens and the companies that are increasingly working to target them.
stream YouTube
On the day of Princess Diana's funeral 41 per cent of the nation's television sets were switched off. Debunking the idea that a nation mourned, Christopher Hitchens goes in search of this other Britain. On his personal odyssey he meets with, amongst others, royal biographer Anthony Holden, Private Eye magazine's Francis Wheen and comedian Mark Thomas.
stream Vimeo
Britain is a nation of charity givers. Last year we donated nine billion pounds to good causes, but what do we really know about the financial activities of the organisations we support? Panorama reporter Declan Lawn hears from donors and charity workers with concerns about waste, transparency and questionable investments who believe the quest for money is beginning to undermine the mission.
stream BBC iPlayer
From Little Britain's Vicky Pollard to the Jeremy Kyle Show to toxic documentaries on ‘feckless scroungers’ — writer and broadcaster Owen Jones argues that this growing strain of malevolent British TV programming denigrates the working class. Increasingly, it seems that poor and everyday working people have become invisible onscreen as producers opt to show more extreme stereotypes instead. [transcript]
stream BBC iPlayer
A documentary that exposes what corporations and governments learn about people through the internet and cell phone usage, and what can be done about it... if anything.
stream YouTube
Liberia is struggling to recover from 14 years of civil war. In the capital Monrovia, many people can't afford the price of a daily newspaper. They rely on The Daily Talk — a chalkboard news bulletin — to keep them informed. The film tells the stories of an ex-child soldier, a trainee preacher, a shoemaker and a single mother — all of whom depend upon one-man news agency Alfred J Sirleaf — proprietor, managing Director, editor and chief correspondent of Africa's premier handwritten news daily.
stream WorldView
In this one-hour special Dispatches goes undercover to investigate what's real and what's fake in the brave new online world. Celebrities have considerable influence on social media, but are some less than transparent when tweeting brand names to their legions of fans? Dispatches exposes the new tricks used by marketeers to plug brands, from buying fake Facebook ‘likes’ and YouTube ‘views’ to influence social media conversations. Film-maker Chris Atkins travels to Bangladesh in search of backstreet ‘click farms’ where poorly paid workers manipulate social media for the benefit of big western brands.
stream Channel 4
Humanitarian Interventions: reframing the war on terror. John Pilger talks about ‘lesser evilism’ and the so-called respectable mainstream media organisations and their role in promoting the war agenda to the public. Pilger gives examples of how the BBC and the Guardian are often guilty of promoting state propaganda by normalising the unthinkable and minimising the culpability of our governments.
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Former editor of The Sun newspaper repeatedly refuses to answer questions about his role in the paper's coverage of the Hillsborough football tragedy.
stream YouTube
Inside the phone-hacking scandal that rocked a government and shook a media giant. more »
stream PBS
As Rupert Murdoch faces accusations of law-breaking and corruption at his British tabloid newspapers, Panorama reveals fresh hacking allegations striking at the heart of News Corporation's pay-TV empire. The investigation examines the role of former senior police officers in recruiting people to break the law — in order to bring down Murdoch's commercial rival.
stream YouTube
stream BBC iPlayer
The extraordinary and forgotten story of the dramatic downfall of the newspaper mogul who used to dominate Britain before Rupert Murdoch arrived. more »
stream BBC iPlayer
Keep up-to-date with the latest developments, as the Murdoch empire is destroyed. There are allegations that News International executives had very close dealings with the intelligence services.
stream Guardian
The new film is a powerful and timely investigation into the media's role in war, tracing the history of ‘embedded’ and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an ‘electronic battlefield’ in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy?
stream johnpilger.com
Empire examines the symbiotic relationship between the movie industry and the military-industrial complex with guests: Oliver Stone, Michael Moore and Christopher Hedges. more »
stream AlJazeera
Dispatches examines allegations that during Andy Coulson's time as editor of News of the World, phone hacking was a routine practice at the paper and carried out with his knowledge. Peter Oborne investigates the paper's working relationship with the police and claims of undue influence together with claims of intimidation against politicians, and explores the broader links between Rupert Murdoch's News International and the Conservative government.
stream YouTube
This new film looks at propaganda, its history and nature, and those that use it to control information and thought. The documentary also examines PR in relation to capitalism and the class structure.
stream Metanoia Films
Rolling Stone and reporter Michael Hastings have come under attack in the mainstream media for violating the so-called “ground rules” of journalism regarding the article on General Stanley McChrystal. But Pilger says Hastings was simply doing what all true journalists need to do.
stream Democracy Now!
This documentary features images, testimonies and facts relating to the Venezuelan coup d'etat of April 2002. The film unmasks the conspiracies and plots leading up to the so-called massacre at the Llaguno Bridge. Palacios explores how the Venezuelan media twisted facts and news reality to blame the massacre on President Chavez. This work also shows how the people defended themselves against the Caracas Metropolitan Police who helped execute the attempted coup.
stream Vimeo
stream RealMedia
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Pilger joins Amy Goodman for a wide-ranging conversation on Honduras, Iran, Gaza, the corporate media, health care and Obama's wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. more »
stream Democracy Now!
Is what has been presented on our screens and in our papers a true reflection of events on the ground in Gaza? And how do these reports differ to those aired in other countries? Featuring images that have never before been aired on mainstream television, Snow also examines the difference between the coverage at home and that in the US, Europe and the Middle East. more »
stream Vimeo
stream RealMedia
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Short biography on Chomsky, followed by an interview with him.
stream (two parts) YouTube
This edition focuses on TV news and how it has changed over the years. The programme includes a special report from Adam Curtis.
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stream RealMedia
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Pilger addressed the Socialism 2007 conference in Chicago on 16 June. He spoke about what Edward Bernays called the “invisible government which is the true ruling power”: the media, and how propaganda so often disguises itself as journalism.
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Four-part series that examines the manipulation of the public by those with power. Freud introduced a technique to probe the unconscious mind and provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Edward Bernays then went on to create “public relations”.
Part 1: Happiness Machines
stream or download Internet Archive
Part 2: The Engineering of Consent
stream or download Internet Archive
Part 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads He Must be Destroyed
stream or download Internet Archive
Part 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
stream or download Internet Archive
US Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites — oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others — work in combination with Israeli public-relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.
stream YouTube
This film illustrates Chomsky's message of how government and corporate media co-operate to produce an effective propaganda machine in order to manipulate the American people.
stream Internet Archive
Documentary about the American army's involvement with Hollywood and filmmaking. The head of the Film Liaison Office makes no secret of his goals: flattering the US Army, winning support for its actions on the battlefield, and encouraging more soldiers to sign up. In short: pure propaganda. Scripts are cut and watered down; characters are changed; the historical truth is fudged.
stream YouTube
stream RealMedia
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Examines one of the most compelling conspiracy theories of the late 20th century — that Robert Maxwell was assassinated. Reveals that Mossad spy Maxwell tried to blackmail the Israeli secret service in order to pay his massive debts — they were having none of it.
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stream RealMedia
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Lawson asks Hersh about his motivation, his ethics, and why the liberal press in the States has become so marginalised.
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stream RealMedia
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British poet and activist Benjamin Zephaniah on the hypocrisy of the Queen and the British establishment, who tried to bring him into the fold and failed. His article on why he refused the Queen's honour can be read here: ‘Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought’
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‘The mainstream media really represent elite interests, and what the propaganda model tries to do is stipulate a set of institutional variables, reflecting this elite power, that very powerfully influence the media.’
stream YouTube
Stealing the spin from the PR industry with John Stauber. Revealing how powerful wealthy interests manipulate and manage public opinion, news information and public policy through the use of hidden propaganda strategies that are part of the multibillion dollar public relations (PR) industry.
stream YouTube
Ralph Nader's blistering critique of the news media and American politics. A Guerrilla News Video cut to "Countdown," Beastie Boy Ad Rock's remix of Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader's blistering critique of the news media and the current state of American politics. The video features GNN's innovative video-scratching technique, cut with footage from the Battle of Seattle, nightly news broadcasts and Mr. Nader's addresses at the Green Party National Convention and the NAACP.
stream YouTube
