Martin Moore and Thomas Colley, "Dictating Reality: The Global Battle to Control the News" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Nov 1, 2025

Martin Moore is a political communication expert and director at King's College London, while Thomas Colley is a visiting fellow focused on information warfare. They explore how authoritarian regimes manipulate news to cement power, from Xi's China to Modi's India. The discussion highlights Russia's shift to censorship post-Ukraine, China's global narrative strategies, and Hungary's media takeover tactics. They also address how populist leaders position themselves as unique truth sources and the challenges of fact-checking efforts against disinformation.

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INSIGHT

States Weaponize News To Secure Power

Governments increasingly use news to entrench power and shape public realities rather than simply inform.
Martin Moore and Thomas Colley argue this trend accelerated during COVID and after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

INSIGHT

Russia Shifted To Old‑School Censorship

Russia shifted from sowing uncertainty to enforcing a single state narrative after February 2022.
Authorities imprisoned critics and repurposed broadcasts to create a sovereign, opposite reality inside Russia.

INSIGHT

China Uses Repetition And Censorship

China prefers unified, repetitive narratives and extensive censorship to control domestic and international messaging.
Russia and China now blur tactics, but China has greater resources to dominate information environments.

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From the United States to China and from Brazil to India, an authoritarian approach to news is spreading across the world. Increasingly, the media is no longer a check on power or a source of objective information but a means by which governments and leaders can propagate their versions of reality, however biased or false.

In Dictating Reality: The Global Battle to Control the News (Columbia UP, 2025), Dr. Martin Moore and Dr. Thomas Colley show how states are battling to control and shape the news in order to entrench their power, evade scrutiny, and ensure that their political narratives are accepted. Combining in-depth analyses of seven countries with a compelling range of stories and characters from around the world, they demonstrate the unprecedented scale and scope of governments’ efforts to take control of the media. Dictating Reality details how Xi’s China, Putin’s Russia, Modi’s India, AMLO’s Mexico, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, and Orban’s Hungary have all sought, in their different ways, to exploit news to manufacture alternative realities—and how their methods have taken hold in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other democracies. Combining keen analysis of contemporary world events with years of original research, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how authoritarian leaders use the media, why more and more people are living in different realities, and the ways democracy is under threat.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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