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Intelligence Squared · 2025-11-28 · 34 min · 6,135 words

Why Do Authoritarians Want To Control The News? With Martin Moore

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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorenti. In a world flooded with information, who decides what reality looks like? On today's episode, academic and author Martin Moore joins us to discuss the global battle to control the news. Drawing on his new book, Dictating Reality, co-written with Thomas Collie, Moore speaks with Carl Miller about the rise of authoritarian approaches to media, from the United States to China, Brazil, to India, and how news is increasingly being used not as a check on power, but as a tool to shape and manipulate it.

Let's join our host, Carl Miller, now with Moore. Very warm welcome, everyone. Hello and welcome to this Intelligence Squared with me, Carl Miller. I'm delighted to introduce our guest today, Martin Moore. So Martin's a senior lecturer in political communications and he's director of the Centre for the Study of Media and Communication and Power at King's College London.

He's the author of lots of important things, actually, but also, and importantly, along with Thomas Collie, a new book, Dictating Reality, The Global Battle to Control the News. Uh Martin, very warm welcome to you. Thank you very much. Good to be here. So, Martin, I mean, I've known you for a long time and, you know, you were one of the very first people that started to raise the alarm about the power of platforms back in the day, you know, about how they were capturing news, how they're in many ways controlling news, even accidentally.

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