There is an staggering amount of media in our world: newspapers, magazines, TV networks, music, movies, video games, streaming platforms, sports broadcasts, theme parks, live events. Billions of videos. Trillions of articles. Created by people from every corner of the globe, holding diverse ideologies and beliefs.
At first glance, it seems impossible that such a chaotic, sprawling ecosystem of content could be driven by a single agenda.
But zoom out, and the illusion shatters. The studios, publishers, streaming platforms, news stations, and entertainment networks—the satellites, servers, and cell towers that carry their content—are all strands in the same web. And at the center of this vast network sits a tiny, clenched fist.
Six corporations—Comcast, Disney, Paramount Global, Warner Bros., Sony, and Fox—own over 90% of media in the West. Fewer than 40 people control nearly all of what the world watches, reads, and hears. From news broadcasts to blockbuster films, from pop music to political discourse, this elite circle dictates the stories we consume and the culture we inherit.
And yet, we don’t even know their names:
- Brian Roberts (Comcast)
- Bob Iger (Disney)
- Sumner Redstone (Paramount)
- Rupert Murdoch (Fox)
- Kazuo Hirai (Sony)
- Jeff Bewkes (TimeWarner)
They are the unseen architects of our perceptions, the gatekeepers of information, the authors of our collective consciousness.
Information Distribution
While Big Media manufactures the narrative, Big Tech ensures its delivery. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tencent control the digital pipelines, amplifying messages, suppressing dissent, and shaping perception with machine precision. They don’t just distribute content; they weaponize attention.
Every search, scroll, like, and pause is logged, analyzed, and fed into predictive models that determine what we see next. Our eyeballs are auctioned to the highest bidder, fueling an economy where the most polarizing, emotionally charged, and divisive content rises to the top. Outrage sells. Fear sells. Scandal sells.
But beyond the social feeds and search engines, Big Tech’s true power runs deeper. These companies own the infrastructure—the data centers, cloud storage, AI models, and servers that power the modern internet. They don’t just control the content. They control the very systems that allow content to exist.
And behind them stand a handful of men, wielding more influence over global information than entire governments:
- Satya Nadella (Microsoft)
- Sundar Pichai (Google/Alphabet)
- Jeff Bezos (Amazon)
- Tim Cook (Apple)
- Ma Huateng (Tencent)
- Jack Ma (Alibaba)
In perfect symbiosis, Big Media and Big Tech extract profit from our attention, turning news, entertainment, and propaganda into a single, seamless content-as-product pipeline—designed not to inform, but to capture, manipulate, and monetize.
Information Control
With absolute control over news outlets, journalists, and digital platforms, a handful of corporations dictate what we know, how we feel, and what we forget. This power isn’t just in creating content—it’s in controlling access. The ability to suppress, prioritize, and algorithmically manipulate information gives them dominion over our perception.
Big Tech and Big Media don’t just report the world; they construct it. They decide which stories are amplified and which are buried, which crimes deserve outrage and which slip into silence. When oil spills poison the ocean, when factory collapses bury workers alive, when governments commit atrocities in broad daylight—these stories are fed into the cycle, churned through headlines, then drowned in an avalanche of clickbait and celebrity gossip. They know we can’t stop what we don’t see.
They decide which wars deserve our sympathy, which revolutions we rally behind, which deaths are worth mourning. They build heroes. They build villains. And when the cameras stop rolling, those moments fade from existence. The past is rewritten in real time, not by truth, but by profit.
They tell us to “move on,” and we do. By some magick, we forget every scandal, every human rights violation, every environmental disaster. We forget the sweatshops behind our fast fashion, the child labor behind our smartphones, the warlords funded by our demand for resources. Instead, we obsess over manufactured outrage, political theater, and influencer drama.
Silence.
Control isn’t just about broadcasting—it’s about deciding who gets to see what. Algorithms bury dissent, entire websites vanish with a click, and platforms throttle independent voices. Movements are erased from public memory—protests demonetized, strikes deprioritized, police brutality flagged as “sensitive content.” The same tools silence opposition worldwide, blocking funds, banning apps, and deleting discourse. What we cannot talk about, we cannot change.
They don’t just shape what we see—they shape how we feel about it. News isn’t reporting; it’s storytelling, feeding us myths about our leaders and enemies. Fear is the product. Division is the strategy. They pit us against each other so we never turn against them.
While we rage over distractions, they consolidate power, untouched and unchallenged. This isn’t only propaganda. This is information control.