About this episode

The episode discusses the implications of controlling narratives in media and politics, particularly in the context of recent events in the UK.

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster. ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION After Labour’s election last year, the new defence secretary, John Healey, wrote a memo to Cabinet colleagues in relation to the scandalous Afghan data leak and the subsequent cover-up of relocations. Healey stressed the need to ‘maintain control of the narrative’, particularly in the wake of that summer’s riots. The riots themselves were arguably fuelled by suppression of information about the Southport murderer, in an attempt to contain public reactions. The desire to control the narrative by curtailing public information has implications for the media’s idealised role of telling ‘truth to power’. Beyond super-injunctions, governments seem preoccupied with muting the widespread availability of counter-narratives on social media. Countries across Europe are introducing measures such as the UK’s Online Safety Act or the EU’s Digital Services Act, which are partly designed to deal with threats to the establishment narrative via suppressing what has been dubbed ‘misinformation’. This mirrors governments’ pressure on online and offline media…

Topics covered

• narrative control
• media bias
• government transparency
• social media regulation
• public information suppression

Keywords

• narrative control
• media
• government
• misinformation
• public information
• social media
• politics

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Labour

Places: Southport, UK, EU

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