Citizens 2024 Round-up & what’s to come next

Before we break for Christmas, I want to thank you all for reading our journalism and supporting our campaigns.

We want to make tech journalism accessible and report on behalf of people and not the tech industry. With a small team working across everything you can possibly imagine, since summer, we have managed to publish fifteen features here on The Citizens Dispatch, and produce a dozen editions of The People. All with a consistently high open rate. That is something we are immensely proud of. None of this can happen without you. 

This year we also launched and promoted a set of election demands to social media platforms. Challenged Meta’s failure to safeguard the 2024 India elections. Held a series of actions in the lead up to the EU parliamentary elections. Launched the Big Tech Narrative Initiative with Doc Society. Developed an impact campaign with filmmaker Asif Kapadia (more on that later). And with our sister company Project Citizen, released The Fake Mayor; directed by Karim Amir, about the 2024 London mayoral election and a deepfake attack on Sadiq Khan.

As we enter Christmas, the same two questions go around my head, cyclically… What does holding power to account look like when traditional accountability mechanisms collapse? How do we and non-profits like us hold the line when philanthropy is under attack and retreating?

Last week two very significant developments happened in the UK. First, the “sale” of the 233-year-old Observer, and its 100 journalists, to Tortoise Media. These journalists work for a public interest media organisation that (unlike its competitors) has a single shareholder - the Scott Trust - the steward of The Guardian and, until this week, of The Observer. 

The entire purpose of the Trust is to secure editorial independence and, as a means to that end, its financial independence. It’s done this with a commitment to responsible investments, divesting from fossil fuels, even turning down advertising revenue to ensure its editorial output stays in the public interest.

I don’t understand the investment logic behind this “sale” with the Scott Trust paying Tortoise Media £5m to become one of its largest shareholders. My co-founder at the Citizens, and Observer journalist for the last 19 years, Carole Cadwalladr, lays it all out showing exactly whose company the Scott Trust will now keep, and making the very salient point that “an owner-editor responsible for both commercial 'partnerships' & editorial is a black box. What's interest? & what's influence? And how do you tell?”

As Carole reports, the Scott Trust will now sit at the table of a company whose “Energy Advisory Board includes noted Trump cheerleader Ivan Glasenberg, and BP’s ex-CEO Bob Dudley”. It undermines everything the Scott Trust, and in turn the Guardian, has stood for. By being a shareholder in Tortoise Media, it has seemingly kamikazed its own investment thesis.

“How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

This historic moment can’t be seen in isolation from its context. The Guardian deciding to sell off The Observer tells us that even supposedly "independent" outlets are being forced to make tough, business-driven decisions. And let's be clear: once something like that happens, the big players controlling the media start having even more influence over what gets reported. Whatever the editorial policies say, slowly, overtime, the culture changes.

“Several reporters I spoke to said there was no evidence that Bezos has ever weighed in on anything other than strategic matters focused on the business side. But one acknowledged the possible impact of self-censorship. “What I feel most is a little bit of reluctance to take him on,” the reporter said. “It certainly can complicate things.”

Columbia Journalism Review, Dan Froomkin

As the crisis of media ownership deepens in the UK, it’s being made worse by the stranglehold of powerful global tech giants that control nearly every way we access and pay for news online. Companies like Alphabet (which owns Google and YouTube) and Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) now dominate the digital landscape. They hold near-total control over online advertising, user data, content distribution, and the way news is presented to us. This level of concentration is nothing short of unprecedented, putting an alarming amount of power in the hands of a few tech companies who decide what we see, what we don’t, and how the media is funded.

Which leads me to the second significant thing that happened last week.  

Elon Musk’s influence isn’t just on tech and culture—he’s now attempting to disrupt global politics on both sides of the Atlantic signalling his intent to make a $1 million donation to the UK Reform Party, the right-wing political group led by Nigel Farage. This picture literally struck the fear of God into me.

Farage advocates for free markets, limited government intervention, and sovereign control over digital infrastructure. Right up Musk’s street. 

Remember back in 2018 when Steve Bannon told Farage he would ‘help knit together the populist nationalist movement all over the world”? It’s taken a while, but with Reform spiking in the polls, Trump back in the White House and the rise of Europe's far-right - it feels scarily possible. 

And what changed in the last 6 years - well as Steve Bannon says “He (Elon) came in with money and the professionals. To be brutally frank, it’s the reason we won.” 

Now Musk wants to repeat this in the UK.

So here we are - tech billionaires capturing global politics, buying our democracy, and one of our most important guardians just abandoned their post. 

As is typical of this time of year, I’m in a moment of reflection thinking back on the last 4 years since the Citizens was born - and something supremely screwed up has happened. We’ve gone through a Stranger Things “space-time rupture into the Upside Down World”. The cast from 2016 are all here - Farage, Trump, Bannon - but it’s even worse and more decayed. In this world, Big Tech has captured our politics.

We’ve had many warning shots and our politicians have failed us. 

Back in 2020, the Intelligence and Security Commission’s Russia Report was finally released. It identified major shortfallings in our election defences - from political donations, cybersecurity to disinformation, and it spurred us to take legal action. A global pandemic has come and gone but we are still fighting this one. That tells you something.

We’ve been trying to tell the whole story via a new podcast “Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring”. We are ready to publish but the legal protections we need keep getting more and more expensive. I’ve spent the last several weeks trying to make sure the team is protected from litigious individuals - and just as the news about Musk ‘coming in with the money” behind Farage breaks. This is all part of the same picture - democracy for sale!

We could see this building… Slowly at first and now suddenly. 

Two years ago we made the strategic decision to focus exclusively on Big Tech and its impact on democracy. A lot of people didn’t understand why we were so preoccupied with the Tech Bros. Most of our readers and supporters followed us for our coverage on the Conservative party, Russian political donations, Palantir in the NHS, the crony contracts, to name a few of our investigative and campaigning tracks. 

We looked into it all -  on Big Tech monopolies, on hate speech and real world violence, on tech enabled human rights abuses, on the manosphere and gendered disinformation, on surveillance and privacy, on lobbying and political capture. There were so many angles, so many threats, so many different geographical contexts to consider. This stands us in good stead for the battle ahead. 

Thanks to Elon Musk we can all see it all very clearly now. What we’ve been talking about is capture. It’s no surprise that just as our work becomes more vital than ever, funding is in decline. Trump is threatening the philanthropy space. The threat is serious. 

As Jo Deutsch at Campaign Legal Center explains, "The U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 9495, dangerous legislation that would give President-elect Donald Trump and his secretary of the Treasury unmitigated power to weaponize the IRS and shut down any tax-exempt organization the administration falsely accuses of wrongdoing."

What this means is that anyone funding the type of work we do - is on a hit list. 

We saw this capture coming - though we didn’t anticipate its extent - first of the information space. Then we saw capture of the cultural space - and we knew what that meant because the Breitbart Doctrine told us "politics is downstream from culture”. We realised that to change politics, we had to first change culture.

It’s why we have joined forces with Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia, to develop impact campaigns to accompany his new feature documentary 2073, which portrays a terrifying vision of a future controlled by AI and on the brink of climate collapse, in an America where Chairwoman Ivanka Trump is celebrating her 30th year in power. Guess who else is in it - Farage, Bannon, Musk, Theil - they are all there.

On January 15th we will be hosting a “Warning to America” briefing with leading global journalists who feature in the film 2073 - Rana Ayub, Maria Ressa, Carole Cadwalladr and Asif. You are all invited. 

In February we will be hosting specialist screenings and a Q&A with Byline Times, the Good Law Project and other partners. You are all invited. 

We will keep fighting the good fight to get Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring released asap… we are getting closer.

2025 is going to be a tough year. We really need your support.

Please share this with your friends. Most importantly, please stay engaged and resist!