Donnachadh McCarthy

Thank you. Our parliamentary petition calling for a Media Sovereignty Act closed at midnight on Friday with 32,234 signatures. Stage one of this campaign is over. Stage two starts today. When we launched the petition six months ago, the aim was simple: to put media freedom from billionaire capture on the political table. We were […]

“System change, not climate change.” But which system, and changed to what? After 34 years of campaigning, our answer is the ownership of the media.

A handful of billionaires and foreign owners control what Britain reads. Here, in plain terms, are the five things the Media Sovereignty Act changes.

The BBC’s deepest problem is not the licence fee. It is that it operates inside a news environment set every morning by newspapers owned by billionaires.

The Guardian columnist has urged his own followers to sign the petition, joining Peter Oborne, formerly of the Telegraph, in backing a law to break up billionaire ownership of the British press.

They stand no candidates and publish no programme. But they have one, and for forty years British governments of both parties have delivered it.

The editor of one of Britain’s most politically powerful papers responded to Europe in flames by telling Britain to give up and enjoy the heat.

Brexit, human rights, climate. The same playbook three times: promote the insurgent party until the Conservatives surrender, then drop it.

As Europe burned, Britain’s billionaire-owned papers ran a sustained campaign for more oil — and a personal campaign against the minister standing in the way.

The President gave another one-to-one to GB News. Donnachadh McCarthy was given three slots afterwards to take the claims apart, one by one.

The Government waved through the sale of one of Britain’s most politically powerful newspapers to a German media group whose journalists sign up to a set of corporate “Essentials”. Not one national title thought that was worth examining.

Over a year ago, when the Labour government’s manifesto promised no new North Sea oil and gas, Just Stop Oil announced the end of their campaign. Following an endless billionaire media onslaught demanding that every last drop be drained from the depleted North Sea oilfields, there have been consistent hints that the new Burnham government

Two days left. Here is exactly what would make the most difference, in order.

Our YouGov poll found majorities in every party, and on both sides of the Brexit divide, backing a ban on foreign media ownership. Not one billionaire-owned title reported it.

Sky’s £1.6bn purchase of ITV’s broadcast arm would hand Comcast a stake in ITN — the company that makes the news for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. The final decision rests with the Culture Secretary.

One editorial page in Monday’s Daily Mail took four positions. On all four, the British public is on the other side. Nobody voted for the man who decides them.

Five years of billionaire media promotion of Reform has not just changed how people vote. It has quietly changed who holds our institutions.

An independent news outlet has been shut down — not by its readers, but by its banks. When only billionaires can reliably hold a bank account for journalism, press freedom is already gone.

One of the world’s most decorated actors and one of the world’s most influential climate scientists have joined our campaign.

The fourth measure of the Media Sovereignty Act requires national papers to be members of a truly independent regulator, independent of the state and of the owners.

“A handful of billionaires, controlling the media here and abroad, is heading the world into disaster.”

Why would migrant media billionaires living in the US or Monaco want to constantly stir up hatred against their impoverished fellow migrants, in a country they do not even live in?

We need more rewilding and no fossil fuels. The billionaire media want no rewilding and more fossil fuels.

Your urgent help is needed to end media billionairism. Have you got four minutes?

McGuire joins a growing list of senior British establishment figures joining the campaign to end the capture of our democracy by the foreign owned billionaire media.

Donnachadh more livid than usual this week at our foreign-owned climate-trashing billionaire media.