How the EU Pays Mainstream Media to Promote Its Narratives
by Robert Williams • September 11, 2025 at 5:00 am
The report also shows that the EU runs a highly sophisticated "EU media complex" through which it gets to shape media narratives about itself and its agendas.
The European Commission has, it seems, has literally paid off almost everything and everyone in the media world -- meaning that everyone, from news agencies to media outlets, public broadcasters and other media organizations, sits in the pocket of the European Commission to greater or smaller degrees.
These abundant examples of media and news organizations are just those within the EU. The EU, however, is also operating a large-scale influence operation outside of the EU....
There is nothing transparent about any of this funding. According to the report, it is opaque and difficult to uncover.
"The EU's ever-expanding system of media financing...creates financial dependencies, incentivises narrative conformity and fosters an ecosystem in which dissenting voices are marginalised – all under the virtuous banners of 'fighting disinformation', 'promoting European values' and 'building a European public sphere'" — Thomas Fazi, "Brussels's media machine: European media funding and the shaping of public discourse," June 2025.
The EU sadly appears to be a deeply corrupt and undemocratic regime, which desperately clings to power through influence peddling and the imposition of heavy-handed censorship. Hundreds of millions of Europeans continue to put up with these tactics. When will they please wake up?
The unelected leadership of the evidently corrupt European Union (EU) is now paying mainstream media to promote the agendas of its EU "elites." The EU appears to have spent as much as 1 billion euros during the past decade alone in the process, according to a recent report, "Brussels's media machine: European media funding and the shaping of public discourse," by Thomas Fazi, from the European think tank MCC Brussels.
Framing the projects as "fighting disinformation" and "promoting European integration" the EU has been throwing taxpayer money, conservatively estimated at €80 million annually, to "media projects" -- not including indirect funding, such as advertising contracts.
The report also shows that the EU runs a highly sophisticated "EU media complex" through which it gets to shape media narratives about itself and its agendas.
According to Fazi's report:
