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, such as the FCC in the United States. Second, the government attacks and undermines public media. Third, the government uses its money and resources to undermine the press in other ways. And fourth, wealthy and powerful allies of government leaders buy private media companies in order to exert control over them. Each stage of media capture can increase the amount of misinformation in the news.

Media Capture, Censorship, and Misinformation

Many experts believe media capture is already occurring in the United States. Reed’s conversation with Antelava seems to confirm this as well. First, Antelava highlights examples in other countries from which she has reported. For example, in the early stages of media capture, journalists can start to engage in self-censorship for fear of employment-related or personal consequences. Antelava shares an anecdote of a Russian journalist who self-censored in a blatant way, reporting obviously false information about Russian troops, and then, off camera, expressed anger and frustration that he had to lie. As Antelava reported, “He was told that he’d be fired” if he told the truth. Moreover, in Russia, Antelava reported, journalists even fear that “they’ll kill you.”

Beyond self-censorship by journalists, there can be actual censorship by news organizations with journalists getting fired, or even not hired in the first place, because of what they wrote or said. Censorship can also occur when news organizations don’t assign certain stories because they may lead to repercussions.

Antelava sees the four stages of media capture occurring in the United States. She observes similar patterns of self-censorship, as well as censorship by the government and media organizations. For example, she observes a disciplined U.S. administration regularly putting out a central message that, repeated enough, becomes a narrative. As one example, she cites the central message that became the absurd narrative that “librarians are the enemy,” something that others have also pointed out. And we recently wrote about the false narrative of election fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, a claim that emerged through a similar disciplined central message.

Noise as the New Censorship

Unfortunately, today media capture goes beyond the traditional stages outlined earlier, as Antelava argues. Instead of self-censorship by journalists and censorship by the government and news organizations, there’s censorship by “noise,” a type of bombardment with information. As Antelava puts it, “noise has become the new censorship.” The sheer amount of information makes it impossible to figure out what is truth and what is fact.

We have written about the Trump administration’s tactic of “flooding the zone,” as well as strategies we can use to push back (critical ignoring). Information overload leads us to become overwhelmed and stressed, which can lead us to tune out, a kind of informational learned helplessness. We just don’t know what to believe and what to disbelieve. We also wrote about clues that can guide us as to what information to ignore (Lewandowsky & Hertwig, 2025). Specifically, we should ignore information that is polarizing or targets a scapegoat, is fact-free or appeals to our “common sense,” has no sources or sources that aren’t credible, or is clearly meant to be a distraction from important news. Our awareness of media capture, including tactics such as flooding the zone, should lead us to become better consumers of information, including through critical ignoring of as much of the “noise” as we can.

Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2025). Critical ignoring when information abundance is detrimental to democracy. Current Opinion in Psychology, 66, Article 102128. doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102128

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