Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Age When Press Organisations Are Run by -- Not Just Funded by -- Plutocrats



Summary: Today's news sources are increasingly being centralised and put in the hands of fewer individuals who can afford the luxury of controlling information

Pierre Omidyar is not the only super-rich person who pretends to be the voice of the people (to the point of sort of monopolising Edward Snowden's leaks). Bill Gates is not the only big source (just biggest) of bribes to press outlets and blogs, either. A lot of today's biggest media bodies (AP, Reuters, CBS etc.) are managed or funded by firms in New York City or Canary Wharf in London. The mainstream media is literally run/owned by corporations which are financial (like Bloomberg) and some are run by CIA partners (like Washington Post, now formally owned by Bezos of Amazon). Those very same people and organisations are behind the banking embargo/blockade against real new organisations (in the public's interests) like Wikileaks, not to mention the censorship and Web shutdown (also induced by Amazon). Surprisingly, a lot of people don't know it. Even the BBC, which British citizens are forced to subsidise/fund, is officially run like a company with its own agenda. Real journalism in the UK is now equated with terrorism [1, 2, 3].



Back in the days before the pseudo spokesman for the poor became even richer by selling the work of her exploited volunteer writers to the Microsoft-friendly AOL [1, 2, 3] she was meeting with and grooming another pseudo spokesman for the poor, the world's richest thief (hiding behind his tax exemption instrument, the Gates Foundation). Like-minded people, no doubt...

Well, Arianna, whose special relationship with Bill Gates we wrote about before [1, 2, 3], is having another go exploiting writers and selling agenda. The Guardian, which was bribed by Gates (see articles about it in The Guardian Wiki page), says she will use a war criminal and the world's biggest thief to attract writers. As Glyn Moody put it, "Gates?? Blair??? speaking power to truth, clearly..."

The other day we wrote about Microsoft's special relationship with power through surveillance, citing the ties with Ford. Someone from there was rumoured to be considered for CEO position at Microsoft (succeeding Gates and another criminal, Stage Ballmer). As Ryan put it, this man, Alan Mulaly, "did his job for them already. He got their software into Ford cars."

In order to understand how those in power get served we need to see how they are connected, who they meet, and who at the end of the day owns or manages sources of information (or disinformation). There are two sides (or more) in every story, but sides can be 'vanished' when one has an agenda. It's censorship and bias by omission.

Recent Techrights' Posts

GNU/Linux Has Become More Mainstream in the United Kingdom
It's a long weekend here and we guess some people dabble in GNU/Linux migrations, at least at home
 
Even Linux Cannot Cope With Slop
Bots on the Web are truly obnoxious
Links 30/08/2026: Soldiers in Niger Attack Presidential Palace and Airport, Nepali City Struggles to Handle the Many Dead Bodies
Links for the day
Clownflare Sees GNU/Linux Rising to 11% This Past Week
Is it the year of "Linux in China"?
Links 30/08/2026: Russian Strike on a Ukrainian Warehouse and Rhetoric Escalations
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/08/2026: Photography, Paper Books, Linux Kernel and the Debian Projects Permitting Slop Plagiarism
Links for the day
Imagine a World Where Nobody Fights for Software (and Computing) Freedom
The community keeps fighting back, so some of these ambitions are delayed or watered down
FSF Has Grown (More Staff) After a Year of Financial Growth
On October 4 the FSF turns 41
SLAPP Censorship - Part 166 Out of 200: Garrett Wasn't Found Innocent Per Se, the Court Wanted More Evidence of Who Was Behind Particular Accounts Using Tor
It's complicated
Criminals Don't Obey Laws, California Does Not Enhance Online Safety
It has been a while since we last mentioned so-called 'age-verification' laws
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 29, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 29, 2026
Links 29/08/2026: Stop the Hate, Goldfish Myths, and xmpp.nz
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2026: Wave of Social Control Media Bans, Suno Data Breach Class Actions
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2026: Microsoft GitHub Outage (Again), "Displaying Ads Directly on Your Monitor", and "Election Deniers Could Soon Control Elections"
Links for the day
IBM is "Taking the PIP" (Piss), People 'Retire' 'Voluntarily' to "Focus on Family"
IBM has a billion bucks for 'the butcher', but not a million dollars for critical projects and initiatives in Free software
It Should be Uncontroversial to Say That Social Control Media is a Weapon
Democracy is not compatible with the likes of Kapo-Berg and MElon controlling public discourse of billions
Misuse of Bots (Now Sold as "Agents", "Hey Hi", "Automation", and "Efficiency")
They even try to rebrand robotics as "hey hi" and try to sell slop as "work"
Debian: Plagiarism OK, Just be "Responsible" About It
The result isn't the worst, but it's not good either
Don't Let Them Kill Activism
Are the oligarchs shutting the lid on activism and whistleblowers?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 165 Out of 200: Two Years Since My Wife and I Sued
In early September 2024 we hit back
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 28, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, August 28, 2026
Gemini Links 29/08/2026: Death Notice, Systems Biology, and Gopher
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2026: Chatbot Pushers Admit They're Used Heavily for Social Engineering Scams, Strong Backlash Against "Smart Glasses" (CCTV on Legs)
Links for the day
Michael Catanzaro's Latest Blog Post Affirms Rumours of Red Hat Changes and RAs/PIPs at IBM
reading between the lines, IBM is "spitting out" Red Hat staff
If Linux Was Written in Rust, 80% or More of Linux Developers Would Not Understand It (Same If It's Composed by LLM Slop)
The licence (GPL) is not enough when there are ways to bypass it
Gemini Links 28/08/2026: Absurd Tomodachi Summer, Screen Piggery, and Jugulans 1.0.3 Released
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2026: "UK Power Grid Has a Phantom Data Center Problem" and "Growth at All Costs is Cancer"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 164 Out of 200: Patent Troll SLAPPs, Defamation Trolls, and Stranglers From America
You start to wonder if the core issue is insecurity
Rumours of More PIPs and Layoffs at Confluent Just Months After IBM Bought It
It is meanwhile apparent IBM will have mass layoffs next week (September)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 27, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, August 27, 2026
After Many Waves of PIPs (Silent Layoffs) IBM Makes Non-Silent Layoffs, Effective Next Week (September)
What we heard is turning out to be true