Media capture occurs when governments strategically take over the news media, amplifying misinformation.

One media-capture strategy is censorship through “noise,” flooding the zone with an overload of information.

Noise leads to cognitive overload—and the negative emotions of stress and feeling overwhelmed.

Critical ignoring is a strategy that helps us decide what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

Here at the Misinformation Desk, we are fans of the podcast, Question Everything, in which host and reporter Brian Reed asks, and tries to answer, deep questions about journalism as a field. Misinformation is a frequent feature of the episodes. Recently, Reed interviewed Natalia Antelava, a foreign correspondent with expertise on media capture.

Media capture is a political strategy, often used by authoritarian governments to co-opt independent news organizations for use as tools to spread propaganda and silence dissent. Media capture occurs when the news media fail to report in the public interest and fail to hold powerful groups accountable—and instead “advance the commercial or political concerns of state and/or non-state special interest groups controlling the media industry.” Reed outlines the four stages of media capture. First, the government takes over broadcast regulators,........

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