PRESS REVIEW #1
WELCOME TO THE PRESS REVIEW. In these weekly reviews, we will examine what I read in the news and found interesting - gosh I love curating impertinent little lists. Please please please, do tell me about your favourite reads (or news watch or podcasts) in the comment section, I am extremely curious and we all need to get out of our media bubbles (death to the algorithm!).
I ran a press review throughout university (my first newsletter I guess!!), for family and friends who didn’t have the time or interest or the tools to connect the news to their own lives. I used a lot of sarcasm and humour, which I also intend to do here, because there is no reason the news should be dry and boring. Can you read how excited I am about this??
TO THE NEWSROOM1
ITV and Channel 4 face summer of uncertainty amidst leadership issues and potential mergers, The Guardian, 04 MAY 2025
With flagship programs such as Love Island and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, the new CEO of ITV has a lot of influence over what Britain watches. Let’s not forget how Nigel Farage, the Reform UK boss, was a ‘celeb’ on the show. Arguably polishing Farage's image for the British public (Brexit who?) and leading to Reform winning 4 seats at the 2024 General Election, and the recent massive gains during the partial local elections.
While any deal with ITV would not involve its broadcasting arm, which would immediately raise similar issues about influence and control over news, some believe that any deal with the UAE-backed firm could be too controversial for a UK public service broadcaster.
“At the moment, the sheikh feels too close for comfort to ITV,” says Alice Enders, a media analyst. “People do not feel happy with his 75% ownership of RedBird IMI. He has to be out of the picture, at least if you want to keep things simple and not face a potential Telegraph-style blowback. The opposition is to the state, the sheikh, and it feels like ITV Studios is not far enough from ITV the broadcaster.”
The real story isn’t young men supposedly voting far right. It’s what young women are up to, The Guardian, 21 MAY 2025
That the media chooses nevertheless to focus on young men illustrates the male gaze that continues to dominate society, which not only means that whatever men do or think is deemed inherently important and worthy of both academic and political attention, but also sets men as the norm. This ends up strengthening the far right’s political prospects: given that men are the norm, what they supposedly do or think is deemed “normal”, which means that all politicians should come up with “commonsense” policies to cater to them.
Truth be told, I didn’t like Gaby Hinsliff piece. While I could agree with her point, I found her argument borderline sexist and simplistic. That being said, Cas Mudde’s article hits that point a lot better in his analysis on the media’s coverage of the male right-turn VS. female left lean. Is one’s gender ever a good indicator to measure politics, and is appealing to that population ever going to work to build a society? No, I don’t think so. It is a tool to better understand society but, like any tool, it has limits, and I hope the media and political establishment are not going to be blinded by this superficial and exhausted division of ‘men VS. women’.
Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%, study suggests, The Guardian, 07 MAY 2025
Why is this important? How does this topic have anything to do with journalism? Everything.
Reading the news is like going to the museum. You may look at paintings, artefacts or bones and feel small at immensity of the world and history, wonder about what makes beauty, or have the impression that it is a vast waste of time. Without the proper tools to analyse, without deeper knowledge it is hard to understand the significance of a broken jar, an old gold coin or an impressionist masterpiece. Reading or watching the news is a bit like that.
I’d like to believe that most of us already know the top 10 - 1 - 0.1% are the biggest polluters and the ones who need to change their habits the most. Some may even think it would be useless for them to change anything about their own habit, a drop in the ocean won’t raise it high enough to submerge London. Could it?
What is missing in this article is what the reader is supposed to bring in: critical thinking, the ability to recognise patterns and see links. The oceans are rising as fast as fascist politicians in the polls, billionaires’ fortunes are reaching new highs, while the number of food banks is growing. Children murdered by bombs in Palestine, starving in the UK. You see where this is going?
I recommend reading Reform Is the Political Arm of the Fossil Fuel Industry from Novara Media, which links the climate crisis and the hypocrisy of Reform UK - and other anti-migrant, climate sceptic parties - to capital.
But here’s a question for Reform. How do its climate-wrecking promises tally with the party’s extreme anti-immigration identity? Climate breakdown will trigger the biggest refugee crisis in the history of humanity, with 1.2 billion people projected to be displaced by 2050 – mainly from the Global South to the Global North. Already, tens of millions are made into refugees by extreme weather events every year. Put simply: if Reform doesn’t want people coming here, why does it support environment-wrecking industries fuelling the climate crisis that forces people to come here?
+ Goodbye to the Brexit bad boys – Farage is now wooing gen X women, The Observer, 04 MAY 2025
This is a perfect example of what a capitalist-owned press is and why it is a threat to democracy. This is the reason I launched watchdogs.
The Observer was sold to Tortoise Media for peanuts in December 2024, and left the Guardian umbrella on 22 April 2025. It didn’t take long for the new ownership to give the far-right some free advertising. For its second edition, published on 04 May, the front page is what one would expect from any capitalist-owned (with money at its heart and core) newspaper. With clear tradwife and white feminism2 influence - women wearing flowery dresses and pastel softness - Reform is getting exactly the type of free advertising it does not need but absolutely wants. To cite Carole Cadwalladr:
“I had no desire to write about the Observer’s new management. And there’s a tradition in UK journalism to not criticise other media outlets. It’s what enables a chumocracy to operate at the highest levels of politics and the media. Both are dominated by a narrow class of men educated at expensive private schools who scratch each others’ backs.”
Isn’t it tiring to lick Farage’s boots day in day out? Asking for the British media.
I have been carefully and with great interest reading Owen Jones’ analysis on the West media coverage of Gaza for months, and as this new article shows, there may finally be a breakthrough. (UPDATE: as of 19 April, Gary Lineker was forced to leave the BBC for “antisemitism”, read “critic Israel’s genocide”. I hailed the press too early).
+ Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College, Intelligencer, 07 MAY 2025
A lot of things about AI terrify me, being a bit of a Luddite, but the use of AI instead of critical thinking is definitely something we should all be aware of.
As J.P. Hill argues in this great essay, it is the future of our civilisation that is in play here. What kind of future do we want, and which one will we get when students are using ChatGPT instead of thinking? What type of education are we giving them that they don’t care to use their brain despite paying for tuition? Why is the result (good grade on an essay) so much more important than the journey (learning and developing an argument)? What is the future going to look like when no one knows anything but relies on the internet, on AI to feed them information? I think we already have a taste of that.
It is easy to blame the younger generation and sigh at the shortcuts they are taking, but we need to interrogate why they are taking those shortcuts and leaving curiosity, the love of learning, behind.
Autocrats, Dictators and the Media. A very useful read to understand the role the media play in propagating the leaders’ ideas and normalise oppression.
This press review was due on 11 MAY 2025, but due to a family emergency I was unable to publish - I added extra articles to the initial content. Sorry, this is Guardian-heavy and not representative of the state of the media. Rest assured, we will dig into other newspapers and media coverage.
Tradwife: an abbreviation for traditional wife, one who embodies the so-called traditional values of womanhood.
White feminism: no one explains white feminism like
who writes unknown canon, and I recommend this article, “Why Exclusionary Feminism Will Always Fail”. White feminism is better described as privileged feminism, one that only preoccupied itself with girlbossing and reaching equality without questioning or changing the system and underlying oppressive structure. Typically, white feminism applauds when Georgia Melonia gets elected as the first female prime minister of Italy, but turns a blind eye to her regressive policies.
Happy New Week, Carole.
Thank you so much for the mention here.
Thank you to my brother Hans for the recommendation.
I appreciate you both.
Thank you for sharing this. I appreciated reading about the male gaze, and I'm glad you enjoyed Neela's writing. I hope you are doing well today.