This is a story about YouTube, journalism
and what I think it’s only right to describe as propaganda. It takes place at the unlikely
meeting point between traditional news reporting, the “influencer economy” and a multi-million
dollar campaigning organisation which exists to advocate for the interests of
the world’s largest corporations. And it centres on one of YouTube’s rising
stars of the past 12 months: Johnny Harris. So, a few months ago, I was sat on my sofa,
mindlessly scrolling the homepage of the YouTube app when something increasingly rare
happened: the all-powerful algorithm served up a video I was genuinely interested in. The
video was by a creator named Johnny Harris who, by all accounts, has had a pretty
good year on the platform. Until 2020, Harris was a video journalist for Vox,
where he created the much-celebrated (and Emmy-nominated) series Borders. That year,
after four seasons, Vox made the surprising decision to cancel Borders and Harris left
the company to strike out on his own as an independent creator. He has remained prolific,
combining making casual lifestyle content with continuing to produce highly-polished, broadly
geography-themed reportage-slash-explainer videos. The video of Harris’ I was recommended is
called I’m a Journalist Who Hates The News and is a really interesting watch. There is a lot
of critique, complaint and outright conspiracist discussion about the mainstream media on
YouTube, but there’s something relatively unique about hearing the perspective of
a professional journalist on the current state of the press. Harris themes his critique
of the news (in particular television news) around three headers, but they all coalesce around
the same notion: that the contemporary media puts too much emphasis on making its reporting
exciting, entertaining or otherwise emotive in ways which actually leave us less informed about
the world around us than we would be without it. Now, I really enjoyed that video; just as I
have enjoyed a lot of Harris’ work. A month or so later, however, I was recommended another
video from his channel which was frankly alarming; and not so much for what was said (although that
wasn’t great either) but for the behind-the-scenes reasons for why it was said and the exchange
of (even if not money) access and support which brought it into existence. This second video
not only changed my perspective on Harris’ work, but also provoked some alarming questions
about the future of independent journalism in cases where, as with Harris, that journalism
comes into contact with the so-called “influencer economy”. For, it raised the
prospect of a new kind of influencer brand deal (made all the more worrisome when that creator
presents themselves as a journalist) where, unlike the plugs for, say, the fantastic
VPN services of Surfshark that have become a mainstay of platforms such as YouTube, a
creator is not paid simply to sell a product or service, but gives over creative control of
their platform to those seeking to sell an idea. The video of Harris’ that provoked these
concerns is titled How China Became So Powerful. For the first minute or so, it seems to
be a fairly standard Johnny Harris video; an engagingly-written, gorgeously-edited attempt
to demystify a country which most people in the English-speaking world know shamefully little
about. Things take a slight turn around the 90-second mark when, in an effort to try and add
some global context to his discussion of China, Harris evidences a pretty threadbare understanding
of post-Second World War politics and economics. Yet, it’s around the 7-minute mark when
things become bizarre. At this point, Harris stops talking about China almost entirely
and, instead, embarks upon a polemic about the state of contemporary capitalism. Drawing on a
couple of graphs, he argues that what he calls “shareholder capitalism” has led to
massive inequality both globally and within individual nations. He also charges “shareholder
capitalism” with having put the very planet we live on in jeopardy through its preference for
increasing profits over reducing CO2 emissions. And, of course, thus far, he’s right. The truly
odd moment comes when he begins to offer us a solution to these crises. Does the route to
addressing inequality and the climate emergency lie in moving away from this evidently
and existentially destructive system? No, he sarcastically laughs that idea off pretty
quickly. The solution, according to Harris, lies in a subtle shifting away from
what he calls “shareholder capitalism” and towards something he calls “stakeholder
capitalism”: an idea which he defines so loosely as to make it almost meaningless but which broadly
involves corporations taking into account the impact of their business practices on people
and the planet as well as trying to turn a profit for shareholders. In fact, he goes
further, to suggest that companies such as Walmart, Apple and JP Morgan are already doing
this. Fantastic, I guess then, crises averted. Now, I don’t have a problem with polemical YouTube
videos; a good deal of my channel is comprised of such content. Yet, this is not the kind of video
that Harris usually makes. During his time at Vox, he was a reporter, not an opinion writer.
Outside of How China Became So Powerful and I’m a Journalist Who Hates The News, Harris
might point to a localised problem in the country or region he is reporting on but he usually steers
well clear of making any pronouncements about how we can solve these problems. As vague as the
notion of “stakeholder capitalism” might be, to hear him suddenly promoting a unified global
political and economic system was, in all honesty, a bit of a shock. It just seemed out of character. At the very end of the video, however, we get
an explanation for Harris’ pivot to political idealist which, for anyone who values journalism
in any way should be deeply, deeply worrying. In the final minute when, realistically, most
people will have stopped watching, Harris reveals that this video was produced in partnership with
an organisation called the World Economic Forum. He tells us how great the World Economic
Forum is and encourages us to buy a book by their founder and current Executive Chairman,
Klaus Schwab. We’ll talk in a second about what the World Economic Forum is but, in short,
this is a promotional video. And, not only in the sense of containing a brief plug within it but in
the sense that, from beginning to end, this is an advert. It may be dressed up as essentially an
independently-created episode of Borders, yet, this is not journalism; this is a piece of
propaganda produced in very close partnership with (in fact, as we’ll see shortly, seemingly
co-written by a very senior PR Executive from) an organisation which no journalist should be
uncritically echoing the talking points of. The same guy who, two months previously, was
bemoaning the state of journalism was now (even if not selling, in which case I would
question his business acumen) at the very least lending his platform and journalistic reputation to exactly the kind of organisation which
we expect journalists to be critical of. So, before we dig deeper into why someone
who presents themselves as a journalist creating sponsored content of this kind is so
worrying, I think it’s useful to take a brief look at what the World Economic Forum (or WEF)
is. For, Harris describes it merely as a “think tank” and its (frankly quite boring) name makes
it sound fairly harmless, right? Well, to use the proper terminology, the WEF is an international
non-governmental organisation (or NGO). What this means is that it is essentially a campaigning
group which attempts to persuade both national governments and supranational organisations
such as the United Nations and European Union to implement certain political and economic
policies. Many large charities are NGOs; alongside its direct aid and poverty relief activities, for
example, the charity Oxfam also operates as an NGO which advocates for the adoption of policies
which alleviate poverty and suffering. If Oxfam advocates for an end to poverty,
then, what does the World Economic Forum campaign for? Well, on its website, the WEF
describes itself (again in cryptic corporate speak) as ‘the International Organisation
for Public-Private Cooperation’, continuing that ‘the Forum engages the foremost political,
business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas’.
In short, it seeks to bring Presidents, Prime Ministers and other governmental figures together
with CEOs and business leaders to encourage them to think about how they might work together to,
as they describe it, ‘make positive change’. As the notion of “stakeholder capitalism” that
Johnny Harris discusses in his video suggests, the World Economic Forum tends to remain fairly
vague about exactly what “positive change” they are working towards. We can begin to
get some idea of the kind of policies that the Forum might promote, however, by
taking a look at how it’s funded. For, whilst the WEF claims to be ‘independent,
impartial and not tied to any special interests’, its annual revenue of just over 408 million
US dollars (as of 2020) comes mostly from the fees paid by global corporations such as Apple,
Amazon, Google, Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Nestlé, The Coca Cola Company, Goldman Sachs and pretty
much every other significant global company to be “partners” of the Forum, to attend its glitzy
events and to shape the policies it advocates for. Now, some draw on the World Economic Forum’s
function as essentially an advocacy organisation for the richest companies in the world as the
basis for highly spurious conspiracy theories. To give the most recent example of this,
a key part of the WEF’s activities is its organisation of the annual Davos Summit in which
billionaires, business leaders and heads of state gather in the resort town of Davos in the Swiss
Alps to discuss the future of global economics and politics. The 2021 event, which owing
to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic took place online (and which, as we’ll see, Johnny
Harris’ video was produced to coincide with), saw the WEF launch an initiative which it called
“The Great Reset”. Online conspiracy theorists soon took this foreboding title as
proof that Bill Gates and the rest of the global elite were finally getting
around to establishing the New World Order. The truth is more mundane. As the
journalist George Monbiot put it on Twitter, “The Great Reset” ‘is basically a cynical
rebranding of capitalism as a force for good’. For the most part, it’s an attempt to convince us
that the World Economic Forum and its corporate partners recognise the various economic and
ecological crises which our present economic system has engendered and to make it seem as
though they’re going to do something about it. In reality, very little will actually change (at least when it comes to dealing with
inequality and the climate emergency). In a recent article for The Intercept, Naomi
Klein concurs, pointing out that this kind of “rebranding” exercise is nothing new for the
Forum. Since the early 2000s, the WEF (and the Davos Summit in particular) have become a platform
for global corporations to feign regret about the human and environmental consequences of their
business practices. They regularly invite climate and inequality activists to give them a public
dressing-down in front of the world’s press. It was at Davos in 2019 that Greta Thunberg
declared that ‘our house is on fire’. That same year, the Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman garnered
global headlines when he implored the Summit to ‘start talking about taxes’; by which he meant
that the rich needed to be paying more tax and that governments needed to be cracking down on tax
avoidance. Both Thunberg and Bregman’s comments received solemn nods and gracious applause from
Davos attendees, but led to zero material action. Davos and the World Economic Forum, then,
are essentially where the richest 1% go to pretend to have a conscience. While I’m
sure there’s plenty of backroom wheeling and dealing which is facilitated by the WEF,
in terms of its public-facing activities, it serves as a means for global corporations
and the super-rich to repeatedly pretend to have seen the error of their ways
and to be on the cusp of change before they go back to their boardrooms
to carry on with business as usual. The World Economic Forum’s decision to work
with Johnny Harris to create a video about how companies such as Apple and Walmart are
currently enthusiastically moving away from “shareholder capitalism” and towards this vague
notion of “stakeholder capitalism” is just another in a long line of examples of the Forum attempting
to convince us that, against all the evidence, they are even remotely concerned about anything
other than profit. For the purposes of today’s video, however, I’m not overly interested in the
specific claims that Harris makes in How China Became So Powerful. Instead, I’m interested
in the partnership between Harris and the WEF that led to him making those claims and the
warning it represents about the growing trend of governments and advocacy organisations such
as the WEF using YouTube (and YouTube creators) to spread propaganda and disinformation; and
why we should be particularly worried about this trend in instances where those
creators purport to be journalists. So, this video isn’t propaganda but
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bit of today’s video. Now, on with the show. Earlier in this video, I suggested that
the reason that Harris’ How China Became So Powerful video was so worrying was because (in
addition to the fact that Harris is presenting himself as a journalist) the relationship
between Harris and the World Economic Forum appeared to go much deeper than the kind of
relationship which underlies most of the other brand deals, ad placements and shout-outs that
you’re likely used to seeing on YouTube. Whilst it might seem like a little bit of a digression,
then, I think, in order to explain this fully, it’s useful to give a very brief sense
of how such sponsorships tend to work. Now, there are many ways in which companies
work with creators on this and other social media platforms to promote, usually, products and
services. If you want a more complete overview, I would suggest checking out Tom Scott’s
video about influencers and product placement. Generally speaking, however, there are two
main types of paid brand deal on YouTube. The terminology varies, but the first is what,
for today’s purposes, we’ll call an “integration”. This entails a creator making a video in almost
exactly the way they would if it wasn’t sponsored. The only difference is that a company
will pay them to, at some point, segue into a (usually relatively distinct) section
in which they tell you about the product or services sold by that company; much like I did
earlier in this video with the Surfshark spot. The creator will normally encourage you to
use a discount code or follow an affiliate link (again just like I did) which helps the
company sponsoring the video to get a sense of whether it’s worth them sponsoring more
videos by that creator in the future. The creator will then, in most cases, segue
back into the main topic of the video. An integration of this kind is essentially an
ad break. Companies will normally be keen to advertise in videos about topics relevant to
their product or service and will often have other topics they’ll avoid. They’ll also give
the creator some bullet points regarding the particular features of the product or service they
sell which they’d like the creator to highlight within the integration section. Outside of this,
however, creative control over the wider video is entirely in the hands of the creator. Whilst
there are higher-level ways in which the prospect of scoring a sponsorship might encourage
creators to cover certain topics and to avoid others which are more complex
than we’ve got time to go into today, the company generally has no say
in the content of the wider video. The second type of brand deal relevant to
our discussion is what we’ll refer to as a “sponsored post”. Here, a company partners
with a creator to produce a video which they otherwise probably wouldn’t have made
at all. In most cases, this will involve a creator making a video about a product or
service the company sells and presenting it in a pretty much uncompromisingly
positive light. As an example of this, we might look at this video by the channel Linus
Tech Tips in which the host, Linus, tells us how all your computer backing-up needs can be solved
by purchasing a device by a particular company. Where an integration essentially involves
the insertion of an ad break in a video, a sponsored post is basically an advert
in its entirety. From beginning to end, the whole purpose of the video is to sell a
particular product or service. Alongside the fact that the creator usually wouldn’t have made
the video at all if they hadn’t been paid to, the key difference here is that the company paying for
the video has significant creative control over the final product. Whilst they’ll normally rely
on the creator to write, film and edit the video, they might ask for a section to be taken out or
for something to be added in order to ensure it achieves their objective of presenting their
company, product or service in the best light. In my experience, people are generally more
amenable to integrations than they are to wholly sponsored posts. At least, I hope so given that
this video contains an integration. I know that, as a medium-sized creator whose income through
the automated ads on YouTube can vary wildly, integration deals can make a big difference
in providing some kind of financial stability to my life. This is the same for a lot of
creators and I like to think that viewers understand this. When it comes to wholly sponsored
videos, however, I think people are rightly more sceptical. However upfront a creator is
about the sponsoring company’s involvement, it’s hard to eradicate the aura of insincerity
and the notion that the scales have shifted from a creator using a brand deal to better enable
them to create content for their audience to using their audience to allow them
to get a brand deal with a company. Now, given how focussed we’ve been on the selling
of products or services in this section, it might seem to not be all that relevant to the case of
Johnny Harris and the World Economic Forum. But, this issue of control over the content of a video
(or, indeed, a written article or any other kind of content) only becomes more important when it
comes to that which is presented as journalism. So, to return to Johnny Harris, we don’t know
what kind of arrangement existed between Harris and the World Economic Forum. In his brief
acknowledgement of the WEF’s involvement in the video at the very end of How China Became
So Powerful, Harris initially suggests that they merely provided him with the graphs which
he uses to illustrate some of his points; although both graphs are freely and
widely available on the internet. He later describes the video as having been produced ‘in
partnership’ with the WEF. It’s all very vague. Now, it’s entirely possible that Harris’
partnership with the World Economic Forum didn’t involve the exchange of a single penny.
Perhaps the allure of working with such a large and influential organisation was enough.
Yet, I think the most important takeaway from our discussion of the differing forms of
relationship between companies and influencers is not that money exchanges hands or how much
but this issue of control over the content. And, this is where things get interesting. See, not only did the release of How China
Became So Powerful coincide with the 2021 Davos Agenda meeting, but an alternative,
text version of the script for that video was included as part of a series of blog posts
published on the World Economic Forum’s website which served as provocations for the wider
event. The blog post is shorter than the video and is worded differently but has the
same structure, references the same events, draws on the same data sets and makes all the same
points. The video which Harris released on YouTube is also embedded within the blog. What’s
particularly interesting is that, here, it is not only Harris who appears as the author of
the piece; in fact, he’s only listed as the second author. The other author, who gets top billing, is
Peter Vanham, the Head of Communications for the World Economic Forum’s Chairman’s Office (and who,
as a side note, co-wrote the book on Stakeholder Capitalism by the World Economic Forum’s Executive
Chairman, Klaus Schwab, which Harris recommends at the end of How China Became So Powerful).
Harris’ video, then, was not only influenced by the talking points of the World Economic Forum
and was not only produced in partnership with them but was seemingly co-written by one of the
organisation’s most senior PR executives. In the previous section, we looked at the
(fairly routine) practice of creators on YouTube and other social media sites handing over
their platforms and reputations to companies to create whole posts which present their products in
an uncompromisingly flattering light. And, there’s obviously questions to be asked about the ethics
of such deals. But this, to my mind, is far more worrying. Here, we have an influencer who presents
themselves as a journalist shaping their work to meet the agenda of a campaigning organisation
which seeks to encourage us to view the world from a certain perspective: the perspective
of the largest corporations in the world. For, to stress the point, this is not journalism.
This is a piece of promotional content, seemingly co-written by a PR executive, produced
as part of a much larger PR campaign which wrapped around the 2021 Davos Agenda meeting. See, in
our contemporary moment, many young people, assessing the scale of contemporary inequality
and of the climate emergency, are asking deep questions about how they want our world to be run.
A 2019 poll found that 70% of Millennials and 64% of Gen Z’ers in the United States—the ideological
centre of contemporary capitalism—would be somewhat likely or extremely likely to
vote for a socialist candidate for President. The World Economic Forum are more than aware
of the threat this poses to the companies which fund their activities. Their partnership
with Harris, then, is essentially an attempt to use his platform and voice to connect with that
demographic in order to say, “hey fellow kids, capitalism’s cool actually and is totally gonna
solve all the problems it’s also causing”. Coming directly from, say, Lockheed Martin or Goldman
Sachs, such a statement would sound ridiculous. But, place it in the mouth of a relatively
young person with a hipster aesthetic, a sizeable YouTube following, some
ridiculously good skills on After Effects and a reputation for high-quality
journalism, and it almost sounds convincing. I do want to say that, for all I’ve criticised
Harris in this video, I don’t think that all of this was necessarily a calculated, nefarious move
on his part. One thing that is noticeable in his video about hating the news is the absence
of any real acknowledgement of the issue of media ownership and how the manner in which
media companies being owned by wealthy private individuals and corporations who would like to
stay wealthy might shape the way in which they report on the world around us. Generally speaking,
most journalists are either naive about these matters or are highly hesitant to admit that how
their work is funded might affect their reporting. We also have the fact that Harris is still likely
trying to find his feet as an independent creator following Vox’s cancellation of Borders and, on
top of this, has found himself in the strange position of being somewhere in between an
independent journalism and a lifestyle influencer, both of which come with very
different ethical codes. If Harris is sincere in his statements
that he will be continuing to act as a journalist on his personal channel, however,
then producing content in partnership with organisations such as the World Economic
Forum should be completely beyond the pale. This is precisely the kind of institution that we
need journalists to be critical of, to ask deep, probing questions about the intentions and
motivations of, not to serve as mouth-pieces for. I want to close out this video by acknowledging
that the vast majority of contemporary journalism relies on some form of advertising revenue. In
the case of solely online outlets or independent journalists, it might be the only revenue stream.
That’s unlikely to change in the near future. But, again, the distinction lies in who has
control over the content of the journalism itself. I think the prospect of a greater amount of
proper, professional, independent journalism on YouTube and elsewhere on the web is really
exciting. It has the potential to allow new voices to circumvent the rigid hierarchies
and biases of legacy media and to provide new perspectives on current affairs. Yet,
as we’ve seen, the manner in which such independent online journalism is likely to
see it come into contact with the so-called “influencer economy” also leaves it
open to distortion by bad actors. There are already several groups who use YouTube
and other social media platforms as vectors of misinformation. Whole channels, such as Prager U,
funded by billionaires who want to encourage us to see the world in a certain way, exist to this
end. Yet, there’s also been a rise in advocacy organisations and national governments working
with creators with pre-existing platforms to help push their agendas. Last month, The Times (the UK
one) published an article about how the Chinese government is using British YouTubers to spread
pro-China propaganda for the benefit of both a domestic and international audience. Last year,
the conservative Canadian YouTuber J.J. McCullough also reported having been approached by someone
with at least some connection to the Chinese government asking him to post a ready-made
piece of pro-China propaganda to his channel. The prospect of this kind of brand deal-style
propagandising coming into contact with those who present themselves as independent, impartial
journalists, as in the case of Johnny Harris and the World Economic Forum, is particularly
worrying. While Harris did at least acknowledge the partnership at the very end of his video, I
think we need to resist this kind of deal becoming a norm. For, else we risk finding ourselves in a
scenario when all the potential for independent journalism on platforms such as YouTube is lost
in a sea of paid-for misinformation which looks like journalism on the surface but, in
reality, is little more than propaganda.
I'm 100% conviced that if YouTube was a thing during the beginning of Iraq war he would make a video talking about the dangerous of Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction the country "had".
Also, the timing of this video coming out is pretty good considering that just today he released a video titled "How Belgium Imperialism gave us the Covid Vaccine"
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it's pretty damn disappointing to see johnny harris make an offhand comment about how the profit motive affects what's being reported on the news in his video about "why i hate mainstream media as a journalist" and see him pull this shit in the span of two months. you hate to see it
Johnny Harris actually commented on the video lol.
“OMG I love this video so much. I never thought I’d see the day where id make it into a conspiracy. I’ve made it”
Honestly, I really can't stand Johnny Harris anymore. The editing is good, but the content... I mean, he's got two different video types. One where he parrots Wikipedia and doesn't add anything except clickbaity titles, and the other which is nothing more than nauseating propaganda.
his video on navalny was clearly nato propaganda.
a couple of days later the whole bullshit came crumbling down.
fuck harris. used to enjoy the videos. kinda feel betrayed.
Carlos Maza > Johnny Harris
I'm so glad that this came out. I loved Johnny's Borders series with Vox, and so when he split off I was really hopeful. Started having doubts as a few of his videos seemed rushed or overly simplified. Then the China video, which was an instant un-sub for me. Felt like a gut punch, I really wonder how much money they paid him so that they could "reach the youth."
Tom Nicholas is such an incredible teacher and public speaker. Really nice to see his videos here!