A Media Revolution for Economics

For too long, governments and corporations have worshiped growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the only route to prosperity, even as inequality soars and ecosystems collapse. 

Isn’t it time to abandon this outdated obsession and replace it with a vision fit for the 21st century? Economist Kate Raworth’s placard refers to her game-changing model for true prosperity – Doughnut Economics – a manifesto to rewrite the rules of the economy before it destroys the living planet. An economy that meets the needs of all people within the means of the Earth.

The “doughnut” model draws the line between justice and destruction. The inner ring marks the social foundation –  every person’s right to food, health, housing, education, and equality. The outer ring is the ecological ceiling –  the limits of our planet’s ability to support life. Between these two lies the safe and just space for humanity. Right now, we’re overshooting and undershooting: billions left behind, and the Earth pushed beyond its limits. And yet, despite all the evidence, all we hear from the news media is the assumption that ‘business as usual’, i.e. growth, is the only option.

Humanity is currently operating in a state of ecological overshoot, consuming natural resources at a rate that exceeds the planet’s capacity for regeneration. According to estimates from the Global Footprint Network, humanity is using nature 1.7 times faster than our planet’s biocapacity can regenerate. Such overconsumption depletes forests, overexploits marine ecosystems, and accelerates the combustion of fossil fuels, thereby generating ecological debt and contributing to widespread environmental degradation.

Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity in the UK Tim Jackson, for example, has shown that if the developed nations grew GDP by 2% over coming decades, and by 2050 the global population had achieved the same level, the global economy would be 15 times larger than it is today. If it grew at 3% from then on it would be 30 times larger than the current economy by 2073, and 60 times larger before the end of this century.

Given that the global economy is already in gross ecological overshoot, just imagine the environmental burdens of a global economy fifteen, thirty, or sixty times bigger than today. What makes this growth trajectory all the more terrifying is that if we asked politicians whether they’d prefer 4% growth to 3%, they’d all say yes, and the exponential growth scenario just described would become even more absurd. It seems too much growth is never enough. 

In a report published just after the economic crisis of 2008, the Deutsche Bank identified a “green sweet spot” as an attractive focus for an economic stimulus spending consisting of investment in energy efficient buildings, the electricity grid, renewable energy and public transportation.  And a study by the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute calculated that spending $100 billion on these areas over a two year period would create 2 million new jobs. 

Anyone who still believes GDP growth is the only measure of progress might like to imagine  a Petri dish of bacteria. Watch it multiply until it runs out of nutrients or chokes on its own waste. That’s what endless growth looks like.

Now imagine humanity: eight billion, soon eleven, all chasing the “Western dream” on one exhausted planet. From space, Earth must look like that Petri dish –  a bright, frantic bloom consuming its own future. Unless we change course, the experiment ends the same way: collapse.

It’s time to stop worshipping growth and start building balance before the dish goes dark.

The Doughnut Economics framework demands a revolution in thinking — seven radical shifts:

1. Change the goal: ditch GDP, aim for collective thriving – a wellbeing economy.
2. See the big picture: the economy is part of society, which depends on nature.
3. Nurture human nature: we’re not selfish consumers but cooperative, creative beings.
4. Get savvy with systems: economies are living systems – unpredictable, adaptable, and full of leverage points for change.
5. Design to distribute: build fairness into the system from the start.
6. Create to regenerate: stop extracting, start restoring.
7. Be agnostic about growth: design economies that can thrive without endless extraction and expansion.

Globally, news outlets of all political affiliations present extractive growth as the only option whether due to economic blinkers or the malignant influence of extractive businesses.

Doughnut Economics is a blueprint for transformation. It challenges activists, policymakers, and citizens alike: stop chasing growth, start building balance. The future depends on it.

We are all caught in the tramlines of consumerism which is consuming the planet – and crucially the malignant media are ignoring it. Partisan reporting and high carbon product advertising hold us in thrall. 

But in reality, as Tim Jackson says:

“Prosperity in any meaningful sense of the term is about the quality of our lives and relationships, about the resilience of our communities and about our sense of individual and collective meaning […]. Prosperity itself –  as the Latin roots of the English word reveal –  is about hope. Hope for the future, hope for our children, hope for ourselves. An economics of hope remains a task worth engaging in.” 

It is time for honest reporting on the bright future a carbon free world heralds as well as the disaster that lies ahead if we do not change course. 

Infinite growth on a finite planet is madness.

We need a Media Revolution for the economy.

Freedom of expression is at the heart of democracy. Yet ‘free speech’ is constantly wheeled out as an excuse for attacks on democracy – blatant lies and propaganda that mislead the public, stir up division and provoke hate-fuelled violence.

Racist rage-baiting, vicious stereotyping and fabricated allegations are targeted at those who the speaker wants to shame or silence. Critics of this so-called ‘free speech’ are accused of promoting ‘cancel culture’ and stifling open debate.

The media lap it up, because angry, emotive slogans make strong headlines and grab attention online. Oh, and because in many cases those media outlets are politically and financially hand in glove with the powers behind the propaganda.

It’s not ‘free speech’ when someone’s paying for it.

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A media revolution for free speech means reclaiming the true meaning and intent of the principle, and putting it into practice.

Carrying the torch for human rights

Progressive free speech has carried humanity forward. It gave abolitionists the power to challenge slavery, suffragettes the power to demand the vote, and civil rights leaders the power to break segregation. Anti-colonial leaders across Africa, Asia and Latin America relied on their voices — often branded as “subversive” or “terrorist” — to expose imperial violence and claim independence. These declarations were dangerous to the powers of their day, but they were the lifeblood of progress. Without the right to speak truth to power, none of these movements would have won through.

Yet history also shows us the power of hate speech in the media as a political weapon. Nazi propaganda in 1930s Germany did not only accompany the Holocaust — it deliberately prepared the ground for it. In Rwanda, instigators of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi people used radio broadcasts to brand the Tutsi people “cockroaches” and openly call for their extermination.   

In each case, words were not commentary – they were inflammatory. They lit the fuse. That is why international human rights law has always distinguished between expression that challenges power and expression that incites violence. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the UN in 1966, makes this distinction explicit .

Today, that distinction is being deliberately blurred – and in some cases, completely ignored.  On 13 September 2025, Elon Musk appeared by video at an anti-migrant rally in London organised by the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, and billed as a demonstration in support of free speech. Musk declared: “violence is coming to you” and “you either fight back or you die.” He also called for the dissolution of parliament before the next general election. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the remarks as “dangerous and inflammatory” but stopped short of taking any action against Musk.

What makes Musk’s speech especially volatile is not just the content of his words, but the reach he can guarantee for them. In 2023, he reportedly instructed engineers at X (formerly Twitter)to change the platform’s algorithm so that his own posts would always appear more prominently in people’s feeds, whether they followed him or not . When someone who controls both message and distribution seeks to stir up violence, ‘free speech’ is a flimsy excuse for his actions.

And this is not only a British or American issue. In Myanmar, Facebook admitted that its platform had allowed hate speech against the Rohingya minority to spread unchecked, fuelling ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In Brazil, disinformation was circulated on WhatsApp before and during elections, undermining trust in democratic institutions under President Jair Bolsonaro. In Kenya, coordinated online hate campaigns have stoked ethnic violence around elections, leaving scars that last for generations . In India, mainstream TV channels have been criticised for amplifying divisive rhetoric against Muslims, emboldening extremist mobs.

Across the world, the pattern repeats: words become weapons, with the media as their mouthpiece.

So what does a media revolution for free speech look like? Well, let’s go back to the reasons why freedom of speech was established – as a right, not a get-out clause.

 First, it means redrawing the boundaries with clarity — and enforcing them. Speech that challenges power, including dissent or satire, must be protected; speech calculated to provoke violence or hatred must not. The Media Freedom & Accountability Bill — a new UK bill, (LINK) drafted and proposed by campaign group Hacked Off — shows that this is possible. It proposes enforceable duties for national newspapers and websites to prevent disinformation, protect against intrusion, and end discrimination and hate, while guaranteeing freedom of the press and protecting journalistic independence. This is how to protect dissent while refusing protection for harm.

Second, it means strengthening media literacy. If citizens can spot inflammatory rhetoric, fearmongering headlines, and fake “free speech” excuses for propaganda, we turn manipulation into empowerment. News Clubs – being set up by Media Revolution and others – are one way of introducing these skills into communities.  

Third, it means real accountability for the powerful. Politicians, media hosts, and influencers who whip up hatred must face consequences — not applause — for putting lives at risk. The Media Freedom & Accountability Bill in the UK would empower OFCOM to investigate and fine outlets that spread harmful falsehoods, and require corrections to be published prominently – and this could set a precedent around the world. 

Free speech is vital — it has carried every liberation struggle in history. But when it becomes a weapon of oppression, it violates the social contract of mutual respect and equality. Exercising free speech to incite harm or intolerance is not an act of liberty — it is a direct threat to the fabric of a democratic society.

In this context, exercising free speech to incite harm or intolerance is not only morally damaging but also a threat to the cohesive fabric of a society built on respect and inclusion. In short, it is anything but an instrument of freedom.

We need a media revolution for free speech: one that defends the powerless, challenges the harmful, and equips people everywhere to recognise the difference. Because ‘free speech’ is not okay when the malignant media decide whose voices to amplify.

Would silencing dissent succeed if the media refused to collude?

Around the world, people who stand up to injustice are silenced, criminalised, and branded as threats. It’s been happening for generations. Again and again, dissent is recast as extremism. Malignant media and governments co-script the narrative, portraying those in resistance to oppression as fringe criminals rather than citizens demanding change.

The UK government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is another chapter in this long history. Since its proscription, over 1400 people have been arrested — some for nothing more than displaying a slogan on a T-shirt or placard of support.

The UN has called the move “disturbing” and disproportionate, warning that it is crushing political expression. Yet the press and government work together to brand activists as violent extremists instead of asking the obvious: why are those exposing the profiteering of war treated more harshly than those selling the weapons?

On Saturday, 7th Sept, 890 people were arrested during a peaceful protest in Parliament Square organised by Defend Our Juries. Witness statements and video evidence shows police intimidation and aggression towards bystanders and demonstrators  alike.

However, the aggressive arrests were cynically reframed by the media as violence on the part of the protesters.

Independent media reporting on the ground contradicts that narrative. The Canary observed police “manhandling disabled older people“, with disproportionate force used despite the protesters’ peaceful sit-in. Officers were seen dragging away frail and elderly participants merely holding placards.

The same tactic is visible around the world. In 2024, Kenya’s Gen Z protesters filled the streets, chanting opposition to corruption and inequality. The government responded with abductions, torture, and over 60 killings, while newspapers called the protesters “rioters”.

In Senegal, security forces opened fire on political demonstrators and arrested hundreds, with Amnesty demanding justice for thousands of victims of repression since 2021.

The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests saw pro-democracy demands echo through Beijing and 400 cities. Hundreds – possibly thousands – were killed when the state imposed martial law and unleashed troop violence. Independent and foreign reporting was shut down while state outlets recast the uprising as “riots.”

Under the Trump regime in the US, student-led campus protests for human rights and immigrant justice are being met not just with disciplinary measures, but with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detentions and visa revocations.

As student media organisations have urged: “Ethical journalism demands that we minimise harm”, calling on newsrooms to rethink anonymity, exposure, and takedown policies when survivors become targets.

Whether the cause is democracy, climate, or freedom from oppression, the pattern is strikingly similar: redefine dissent as a security threat, and the media will help justify the crackdown.

Yet history tells us that those once labelled terrorists are sometimes those who change the world for the better. 

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison, branded a terrorist by Western governments. The Suffragettes were hounded as extremists. Martin Luther King Jr. was treated as an enemy of the state by the FBI.

Years later, these struggles are now celebrated and seen as examples of how media suppression helps erase dissent from history – but only because the people and movements standing up for justice refused to accept the labels imposed on them at the time.

The lesson is clear: labelling peaceful dissenters as “terrorists” and “extremists” is a control tactic. When governments face resistance, they pretend public safety and public servants are at risk. They collude with the media to repeat that message without questioning its motive, so repression escalates unchecked.

But in the rare cases of the media changing its approach, reporting the truth and allowing readers to make up their own minds, public opinion shifts.

In 1970, at the height of the anti-Vietnam war protests across the US, National Guard troops shot dead four unarmed student protesters at the Kent State campus in Ohio. Until then, the local newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, had been reporting the protests as “riots,” echoing the official government angle. But the shootings prompted its editor to seek out the truth; to “get the facts right, even when there is chaos, violence and confusion.” The paper investigated the incident and published a 30,000 word report three weeks later, in which it said: “It is our responsibility as a newspaper to provide the information that allows public judgement to function”. Its report concluded that the students had done nothing that justified their deaths, and the guardsmen had fired without orders to do so. The paper was strongly criticised at the time, but later won a Pulitzer Prize — and was instrumental in changing public opinion and fuelling broader anti-war resistance.

Would today’s mass arrests and deportations of student protesters in the US be tolerated if coverage headlined their demands rather than dismissing them as extremists?

From Nairobi to Sydney, from Dakar to London, resistance is under attack. Protest is not a threat to national security. Civil disobedience is not extremism. Those who resist unjust and outdated laws are often standing on the right side of history.

Malignant media mislabels them terrorists. History shows they are dissenters. Dissent is the heartbeat of democracy.

We need a Media Revolution for Dissent.

What if, instead of only the toxic opinions of a few billionaires, the news contained real life stories from migrants?

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The Missing Context: Empire, Exploitation, Land Grabs, Evictions

“That new life that I couldn’t see, because I was born into war and hadn’t known any other reality: I knew that it existed. And hanging onto that hope each day was a method for me to survive.” — Dr Waheed Arian, who escaped Afghanistan as a child and later rebuilt his life as a NHS A&E doctor in the UK.

People don’t become refugees by choice. Displaced people are forced out by war, persecution, or land theft carried out by states, corporations, and profiteers. Across the globe—from Argentina to Zambia – land grabs violently evict whole communities without protection or compensation.

Yet mainstream, malignant media narratives ignore these root causes.

Instead, they caricature displaced people as invaders or burdens on society,  sustaining the false idea that migration is a menace rather than a symptom of global injustice — in which media are complicit.

How Fear is Manufactured

Terms like “invasion,” or “swarm,” are used in order to reduce people to threats. This language doesn’t just stigmatise—it fuels violence. The Hope Not Hate report Stoking the Flames shows how hostile rhetoric drives far-right mobilisation, while research in Nature links media focus on immigration to rises in attacks against asylum seekers.

Displaced people rarely have a platform to tell their own stories. Stripped of voice, they are cast as opportunists or criminals. Not surprisingly, this breeds shame, alienation, and threats of violence.

As writer Elif Shafak reminds us: “History has shown that it doesn’t start with concentration camps or mass murder, or civil war or genocide. It always starts with words: stereotypes, cliches, tropes. The fight against dehumanisation, therefore, also needs to start with words. Stories. It is easier to make sweeping generalisations about others if we know close to nothing about them; if they remain an abstraction. To move forward, we need to reverse the process: start by rehumanising those who have been dehumanised. And for that we need the art of storytelling”

Change the Story, Change the Future

We believe first-person truths must lead reporting. Occasionally, media gets this right.

Like the story in the Guardian about Mohanad, a young Sudanese man forced to flee Darfur, described the moment he had to escape without warning:

“At 19, I had to flee my country, afraid for my life, without even saying goodbye to my family.”
Smuggled across borders, kidnapped and tortured, he risked the sea crossing to Europe and was rescued by Médecins Sans Frontières. After years in asylum limbo, he now studies medicine and volunteers with the Refugee Council.

Christine Onzia Wani, a refugee journalist from South Sudan, explains what happens when those forced to flee have a platform.

:

“Writing has given me a voice. It helps me process trauma, and it helps others in my community know they are not alone.”

Her reporting from Uganda’s Bidi Bidi settlement doesn’t just tell of horror, but of survival, solidarity, and hope.

These stories, and others like them show what becomes possible when displaced people have a platform in the media. Displaced people are no longer “swarms” or “burdens,” but survivors of injustice with hopes, skills, and futures.

When reporting turns its gaze upstream – to the profiteers, land grabs, and wars that drive people from their homes – the role of the media in manufacturing fear becomes clear. A revolution in media means dismantling disinformation, amplifying truth, and creating the platforms where silenced voices have space to be heard.

Change the media, and we change the world.

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Championing Change with Campaign Groups 

International Rescue Committee (IRC)
https://www.rescue.org/
Provides humanitarian aid, resettlement, and advocacy for refugees and displaced people in over 40 countries.

Amnesty International
https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/refugees-asylum-seekers-and-migrants
Campaigns globally to protect the rights of refugees and migrants, challenging unjust laws and calling out abuses.

Refugees International
https://www.refugeesinternational.org/ 
Independent advocacy organisation focused on lifesaving assistance, protection, and solutions for displaced people worldwide.

Together With Refugees
https://togetherwithrefugees.org.uk/ 
UK coalition of 200+ refugee charities and trade unions pushing for fair and compassionate policies. 

The African Refugee-Led Network (ARN) 
https://arn-network.org/
A coalition of refugee-led organisations (RLOs) that work to amplify the voices and advocate for the rights of refugees in Africa

The AMOC: A Global Climate Tipping Point -  another of the #99Problems that the media are ignoring. 

“Scientists are begging politicians worldwide to pay attention to the AMOC” – say climate protesters outside ITN and Scotland Yard in London, UK – 18th August.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation might be a bit of a mouthful, but it seems that not talking about it could be like ignoring a huge ticking time bomb.

Simply put, the AMOC is an ocean current system that moves water north from the tropics to cool it down, before it flows back south again. It works hard to balance temperatures around the globe. From  Europe – kept milder than neighbouring regions at similar latitudes – to monsoon rains in Africa and Asia, rainfall over the Amazon basin, and storm systems along the coasts of the Americas, the AMOC is critical to global temperature.

Without it, vast regions would experience dramatic temperature shifts. Northern and Western Europe could face winters as severe as Northern Canada.

West Africa would see weakened monsoons which would devastate food production. South America’s Amazon basin could face deeper droughts. The US east coast could be battered by stronger hurricanes and rapid sea-level rise.

AMOC collapse would mark a planetary climate tipping point. The colder, drier or stormier conditions would render huge areas of arable land completely unsuitable for cultivation, leading to global declines in agricultural output and triggering widespread food insecurity.

Globally, the IPCC warns that an AMOC breakdown would not simply shift weather patterns but fundamentally threaten the stability of food systems, water supplies and ecosystems on multiple continents.

Even agricultural industry voices have warned that an AMOC collapse could have catastrophic consequences, not just for farming but for economic stability and geopolitical cohesion

A University of Exeter study shows how even in one region, land suitable for farming in the UK could fall from 32% to just 7% under AMOC collapse:

While moderate global warming gets portrayed as beneficial — longer growing seasons here, milder winters there – even people celebrating that vineyards and oranges could be grown in traditionally cooler places  — these are a day dream compared to the reality – the nightmare of an AMOC collapse. Model projections show Europe cooling by several degrees, rainfall falling sharply in critical agricultural belts, and entire monsoon systems destabilising.

The Potsdam Institute warns that some scenarios are especially dire, with cascading “tipping elements” triggering further climate breakdown:

Despite the gravity of this potentially imminent risk, appeals from the scientific community for urgent policy intervention have received only limited political response. Independent media coverage is available, but mainstream media are largely ignoring the AMOC completely.

The press must begin to do its job: to educate and inform the global public, empowering people everywhere to demand urgent action from their governments….and it doesn’t look like they’re going to, anytime soon.

Just another reason we need a Media Revolution.

Join the campaign for a transformation of the media system. 5th November 2025. Will you be part of it?

Protesters outside ITN – News producers in London.

Ask yourself this. Would genocide be happening in the first place if malignant media weren’t influencing politics and broadcasting hatred and division?

The BBC is the largest broadcaster in the world. Yet its own staff have described it as a “propaganda machine” — a phrase quoted in a 2025 article by The Guardian, highlighting the BBC’s reckoning over bias in its Israel-Palestine coverage (source).

Reports from Media Lens (2024), FAIR (Israel/Palestine), and The New Humanitarian (2023) expose how mainstream media amplifies extremist Zionist narratives while downplaying Palestinian deaths, displacement, and the systemic nature of the violence. 

A Human Rights Watch report (2023) further exposes how Meta’s algorithms disproportionately suppress Palestinian content — erasing critical documentation of human rights abuses and reinforcing wider patterns of media complicity.

A major study by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM)found that the BBC consistently downplayed Palestinian suffering and perspectives while amplifying Israeli narratives in its Gaza war coverage. Analyzing nearly 4,000 articles and over 32,000 broadcasts from October 2023 to 2024, the report highlights a 34:1 Palestinian-to-Israeli death ratio and notes systematic omissions of crucial context, including genocidal rhetoric and war crimes allegations. The findings point to an institutional bias that has contributed to underreporting what many now view as a live-streamed genocide.

One of the starkest examples of this media failure is the refusal by many mainstream news organisations – including the BBC – to use the term “genocide” despite growing consensus among international law experts and human rights organisations that what is happening in Palestine is just this. This selective language reflects a wider culture of bias, erasure and editorial cowardice.

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In contrast, many independent outlets speak clearly. They name the genocide. They amplify Palestinian voices. And they challenge the toxic narratives that have long dominated the headlines.

A Media Revolution means exposing these failures not just in the reporting – or lack of – of the many genocides around the world but in their creation in the first place. In the perpetuation of a world of lies and war.

It means working toward a world where journalism is accountable, independent, and just. It means shifting attention and support to movement media and citizen journalism. It means applying pressure to legacy outlets to improve while building new, decentralised ones that serve the public interest.

At the moment, the BBC take their lead directly from the billionaire press, and cover ‘what’s in the papers’.

So, let’s think together. Would genocide be happening in the first place, if malignant media – BBC and the billionaire media owners weren’t influencing politics and broadcasting hatred and division?

Switch your source.
Challenge the root cause.

Change the media, change the future.

Photos by Media Revolution. Palestine march, London 2025.