Press contact: DMC@MediaSovereignty.org
+44 (0)7947884299

After just seven weeks, a Parliamentary Petition demanding that the government pass the Media Sovereignty Act has reached the necessary threshold of 10,000 signatures. This means that the Labour government now has to state its position on the domination of British politics, through the hijacking of our media, by a tiny billionaire elite.

We do not have a free democracy, as our media is captured by a tiny billionaire elite.

The Media Sovereignty Act has five demands:

• Ban foreign media ownership.
• Ban the concentration of UK national media ownership by one person or corporation.
• Fund independent and local media with a social media levy.
• Require national media to be under the remit of the statutory regulator.
• Require dark-money funded think-tanks that are covered by the media to declare donations in real time. 

Director of the Media Sovereignty Campaign Donnachadh McCarthy said: “In my extensive career, I have come across visceral fear of ‘the Daily Mail test’ across all sections of British society and its establishments. It is time to end this billionaire hijacking of our democracy once and for all.”

Co-Director, Caspar Hughes, said: “I believe deeply that the most urgent political issue of our time is ending the hijacking of political power by the billionaire media owners. They persuade the UK population to vote against their own best interests, and this must stop.”

Notes to Editors:

1. Once the government has provided its response to the petition, the campaign will then ramp up to get the necessary 100,000 signatures, which then requires the government to consider the petition for debate in Parliament.

2. Read the full text of the draft Media Sovereignty Act on our website: https://mediasovereignty.org/full-draft/

3. This is the link to the Media Sovereignty Act Campaign Petition: https://mediasovereignty.org/petition/

4. The parliamentary petition backing the Media Sovereignty Act has support in every single constituency in the United Kingdom: https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=760061

At the core of Extinction Rebellion’s philosophy is Nonviolent Direct Action. It is built on a long history of successful civil disobedience campaigns, from Indian Independence to the British Suffragettes and the American Civil Rights Movement, and evidence of how nonviolent social movements can create change. 

Extinction Rebellion’s actions and campaigns focus on disrupting the seats of power because we are living in a time of Climate and Nature Emergency with our eco-system and society at risk of collapse in the sixth mass extinction. 

Working with care, within our Principles & Values, we always have the same 3 demands:
TELL THE TRUTH
ACT NOW
DECIDE TOGETHER

As a society, we can not achieve these things without a democratic media, free from the control of the billionaire elite.

We’re building towards something this September that tries to hold both sides of how it feels to stand up and take direct action for all living things:

LOVE & RAGE 12–14th September ❤️‍🔥 join the love&rage telegram to get involved and keep updated. See you there x