Talk:Media capture

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected, closed by Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:16, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

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• Article history

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• ... that notable scholars of media capture say that events in 2025 in the United States are "unbelievable" and "worse than anything we imagined"?

• Source: Simon, Joel (2025-08-05). "Why so many experts think media capture is already a reality in America". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2025-10-21. Now experts warn that media capture has come to the United States. "We watch unbelievingly," Mungiu-Pippidi said. "In the old days we thought capture was mostly a problem in Africa and Latin America and then in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall," noted Anya Schiffrin, another scholar of media capture and the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at Columbia University. "What's happened in the last six months in the US is worse than anything we imagined.".

• • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Protests at UNHCR humanitarian center in Agadez and Template:Did you know nominations/Wallace Presbyterian Church
  • Comment: The word "notable" is used as Mungiu-Pippidi is the scholar whose definition of media capture is most widely used, and Schiffrin is the scholar who has written or edited the most publications on the subject.

Created by Onceinawhile (talk). Number of QPQs required: 2. DYK is currently in unreviewed backlog mode and nominator has 84 past nominations.

Onceinawhile (talk) 13:54, 25 October 2025 (UTC).

• Not reviewing it, but there is a problem I have with the article: in the scope of the article you mention "platform capture" (social media) but you don't speak about social media apart from the very first sentence and from a cursory look you don't seem to cite any source that speaks about social media. Is there a reason for this? Szmenderowiecki (talk) 00:56, 29 October 2025 (UTC)
  • Also, the entire source is available online on the publisher's site. While social media is mentioned in other parts of the book, the cited page number for the lead and the content don't really add up. I suspect that the cited sources are mixed up a bit and the editor needs to go back and take a look. Viriditas (talk) 23:57, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

• Comment: Various kinds of systemic biases in media is important topic, but not sure of above hook being suitable. Present hook sounds to me bit like recentism, sensational and vague. Not sure, even good number of audience is aware of concept of Media capture, hence whether hooks explaining concept itself will be more interesting and easy to understand. Alts something like on following lines?

"... that, Media capture, is a form in which mass media and social media platforms are controlled by governments, corporations, or powerful individuals to serve their own interests instead of the public interest?"

"... that, media capture describes how vested interests can dominate or co-opt nominally independent media institutions through ownership, regulation, or financing, whilst maintaining the illusion of press freedom?"

"... that, media capture is distinguished from censorship by its indirect mechanisms—such as ownership concentration, clientelism, and state advertising—used to manipulate editorial independence?"

"... that, according to Marius Dragomir, media capture involves the takeover of four key levers of influence: media regulation, state-owned outlets, government financing, and private ownership?"

Bookku (talk) 07:03, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

Some of these are a bit long, but I don’t object to changing the hook. Onceinawhile (talk) 04:43, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile, Szmenderowiecki, Viriditas, and Bookku: What else needs doing here?--Launchballer 10:36, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the user forgot to watchlist this page and needs to be contacted on talk. I will do so. Per my comment above, I would not pass this until the concerns have been addressed. It is not ready. Viriditas (talk) 10:40, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I have removed "platform capture", in order to address the comment from Szmenderowiecki. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:41, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

And the sources? Go back and make sure you have the right refs. I checked the above and couldn’t verify the content. Viriditas (talk) 10:44, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Viriditas: I have just fixed this. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:54, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile: You have the bibliography sorted chronologically. I've never seen that before, although I understand some disparate fields have different ways of doing this. Did you do this on purpose? Viriditas (talk) 20:43, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I have changed it to alphabetical. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:10, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Still doesn't address the scope issue as the lead sentence still reads Media capture is a form of systemic corruption in which mass media and social media platforms. This may be a legitimate topic to cover but the article doesn't do it. If you do a section about social media acquisitions being cited as platform capture then fine. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 10:52, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Szmenderowiecki: Good point. I want to add this in but can't find broad enough sources yet. So I have removed it per your suggestion. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:55, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile: Why are there two refs after the title phrase in the first sentence? Viriditas (talk) 20:56, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I have moved these to the bibliography. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:11, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile: You write: "Media capture is a form of systemic corruption in which mass media is controlled by governments, corporations, or powerful individuals to serve their own interests instead of the public interest, undermining media independence and media pluralism." This seems like an odd definition. Have you returned to the sources to double check? The reason this raises a red flag for me is because I am somewhat familiar with the problem of media capture. Media has been "controlled" by these entities since time immemorial, so that loads the definition in a way that makes it less meaningful. Obviously, the important part here is not necessarily ownership per se (although deregulation which led to concentration of media ownership in fewer hands is part of the problem), but the failure to serve the public interest. For example, we know in the U.S. that deregulation of the media environment led to concentration of ownership in fewer hands, mostly billionaries. This led to the decline of local news rooms and a focus on national issues, which in turn led to widespread public apathy at local levels to the point where people in small towns no longer knew what was happening in their areas. This is currently a major issue in Alaska, where the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has led to small towns losing their only source of community news, which also serves multiple roles such as an ad hoc civil defense, etc. So in many ways, media capture is a highly complex problem that has major consequences far beyond ownership. Please check the sources to make sure your definition is accurate. Also, take a look at what happened in Hungary in the last 25 years, which is a case study for modern media capture and is endlessly fascinating. The media was given a choice to voluntarily let themselves be captured by the government, but in a way that is somewhat opaque and not readily apparent to outsiders. This is similar to what happened in U.S. and British media during and after WWII, but at a much lower level of capture. U.S. media, particularly entertainment, was highly censored by corporate and government interests working together during this time, but was implemented voluntarily, much as Hungary does today. Previous to this, in the 19th century, media capture in the U.S. was often the result of wealthy individuals working on behalf of a specific industry. The capture of West Coast media by the sugar industry from the late 19th to early 20th century is well known, for example. But more importantly, these interests intersect with others in often new ways. The interests of the sugar industry mirrored the interests of the U.S. government, its economic interests, and the military. The media becomes a major player in terms of promoting propaganda to advance the agendas of all of these special interests. It is in the stories that they tell, in their very narrative, that we can see hints of media capture, but in many cases most people can't tell. It is when that propaganda diverges from the interests of the public that we begin to see the capture at work. I am curently working on an article about MLK that required me to review newspaper articles about him from 1966-1968. It was only then that I learned about how the U.S. government waged a campaign against MLK in the pages of the news when MLK turned against the Vietnam War effort. This is one way the media capture became evident. Viriditas (talk) 21:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile: You write: "The most widely held definition of the term was published by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi in 2008: "either directly by governments or by vested interests networked with politics". That's not what she writes. She says: "By media capture I mean a situation in which the media has not succeeded in becoming autonomous to manifest a will of its own and to exercise its main function, notably of informing people, but has persisted in an intermediate state, whereas various groups, not just the government, use it for other purposes." This is very interesting because it dovetails exactly with the red flag I noted up above. Viriditas (talk) 22:10, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile: Where did you find a copy of Dragomir 2020? That link doesn't work for me. Does it work for you? Is there a place to download it? BTW, there is an updated sister/companion pub to it. It is found here. It further clarifies the definition:

Independence is a precondition for quality journalism, allowing for the production of verified information and informed analysis in the public interest. The professional standards of journalism mark out this kind of communications within the wider content mix and rely on space for self-regulation as well as independent regulatory institutions. Such independence is of increasing importance in the face of the contamination of the online public sphere with mis- and disinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories. But this is also happening in parallel with a financial crisis for news outlets. That financial crisis in turn endangers editorial independence and professional standards. It deprives newsrooms of the resources needed to produce quality reporting and it makes them more vulnerable to pressures to serve political agendas or commercial prerogatives over public interest. When these trends are exploited by political and economic actors to erode journalistic autonomy, it is referred to as 'media capture'".

[...]

The erosion of media freedoms and challenges to financial sustainability in the news industry makes newsrooms in many countries more vulnerable to pressures both from external actors and from outlet owners and executives, placing professional standards at risk. In a captured media environment, news media are ostensibly free but compromised in terms of independence. 'This form of media control is achieved through a series of systematic and premeditated steps taken by governments and powerful interest groups', explains one recent UNESCO report [Dragomir 2020]. 'Their aim is to take over four levers of power: the regulatory mechanisms governing the media; state-administered media operations; public funds that finance journalism; and the ownership of privately held news outlets'.

This definition is much better than what you have and nails all the major points I've raised. FWIW, I wrote a similar article about a parallel problem known as autocratic legalism. In the modern, post-9/11 era, autocratic legalism is used to capture the media, although this is beyond the scope of this article at the moment as it would be somewhat of a chore to flesh this out without fixing this article first and getting it past this initial article development stage. My point is that media capture is a subset of the autocratic legalism process in terms of authoritarianism and autocracy, and much more can be said about how this works in the future. Kim Lane Scheppele informally places it in the context of "step seven" on the ten-step path to autocracy. In other words, media capture is very much an incremental process of a state becoming an autocracy, so there's a larger aspect to the overall problem. Finally, I would oppose a hook emphasizing this as a recent problem in the U.S. The Trump admin and the GOP have escalated a process that has been underway since Reagan. There are books in the literature going back to the mid-1970s about this problem and I own them. I first became interested in this topic in the 1980s. What is so unique about the media capture we are seeing now, is that much of it is done voluntarily and willingly under the Trump admin, which is the same process that occurred in Hungary (and probably Venezuela, although it may have been more heavy-handed there). There are indicators in the literature that the Trump admin promoted the Hungarian style of media capture on purpose, using threats and intimidation to force the media landscape to bend to its will. This is the most interesting part, that people in leadership positions voluntarily chose to set aside journalistic standards and the basic tenets of the 1A to appease a dictator. Viriditas (talk) 00:55, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile, Szmenderowiecki, Viriditas, and Bookku: What else needs doing here?--Launchballer 17:48, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

@Launchballer: Per the above, I did a random spot check and looked at the literature and compared it to this article. I think the editor means well, but his article isn't ready for prime time. I suggest a major rewrite and revision. Perhaps they can try again bringing it to GAN. Just my opinion based on what I read. Perhaps others are willing to tick this article as GTG, but I am not. Viriditas (talk) 20:43, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

I wasn't reviewing it, the concern I had was addressed. If Viriditas is ready to take up the review - good. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 22:14, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

My impression is that the editor wrote a rough draft and published it. It needs to be rewritten for source-text parity. I would reject it at this time as a simple, random verification did not pan out, IMO. This is the kind of article that I would refer to as a stub in progress, but for whatever reason looks like it is fully formed. It is not. Viriditas (talk) 23:10, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

@Viriditas: DYK is not about fully formed articles. Your comments here would have been better placed for the talk page, and you are welcome (and encouraged) to edit the article directly yourself. If DYK was about creating WP:GA articles, we would have a lot less of them.

I am glad you are passionate about this topic. Please don’t let me get in the way. I hope you are pleased that I did the work to start an article on what we both consider an important topic. Your comments here are well meaning but undermining the DYK process has diminished my interest in finding the time to work with you on this. Onceinawhile (talk) 00:29, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the lesson. I did not speak to "fully formed articles". What I spoke to was the appearance that this article was fully formed, when it's not. More to the point, I was unable to confirm most of the material doing a random spot check. This reads like a first draft that I keep in my sandbox before I am ready to go to DYK. You certainly don't have to work with me, but the sources and the content need to add up. Let's use the very first opening sentence as an example. The source was published online by the author, so it's odd you don't link to it. Not usually a big deal, but visiting the book and turning to pp. 101-107 to verify doesn't turn up anything. That's the very first cited source and it's your opening definition. Would you say that's a problem? Viriditas (talk) 00:40, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

@Viriditas: that source is supporting just the final clause "undermining media independence and media pluralism." p.101 discusses media independence in the context of media capture. p.105 discusses media pluralism in the context of media capture. I didn’t feel the need to add a source to the prior clause, because it is simply a summary of the Description section in the body of the article.

If you write another provocative comment like your “first draft that I keep in my sandbox”, you should expect not to receive responses from me again.

Onceinawhile (talk) 08:20, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Apologies, I don’t see how that cited source supports the statement at all, and this was an example of the larger problem with the rest of the article that I pointed to up above. I just tried to verify the material cited by the second citation and could not. I addressed the problem with citation number 3 up above. Citation 4, a quote by Stiglitz, checks out, but it doesn’t make any sense why you are using it here. He’s introducing the different types of media capture (ownership, financial incentives, censorship, and cognitive capture) which is the takeaway, not the material that you quoted. This article isn’t ready for DYK, and should be draftified in your sandbox where you can work on it. I think we’ve both said our peace at this point. Perhaps someone else will chime in and try to verify the material that I could not. Viriditas (talk) 09:32, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

You said above Where did you find a copy of Dragomir 2020? That link doesn't work for me. Have you got it working now?

Btw it is piece not peace.

Onceinawhile (talk) 17:43, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Dragomir 2020 was down in North America when I originally wrote that due to a Cloudflare outage giving a HTTP 520 error. It is now back up and I still can't verify the material. Spelling and grammar on mobile are difficult. I will leave it as "peace" because it's funny. Viriditas (talk) 19:49, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

• The nomination turned two months old today and it appears that the above concerns were never full addressed, so I am marking this for closure per WP:DYKTIMEOUT. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:54, 25 December 2025 (UTC)