Summary
Democracy flourishes where information is free flowing and abundant, so the logic goes.
In the West the choice of information is limitless in a marketplace of ideas. While authoritarian regimes censor by constricting the flow of information.
But even in the West a new pattern of control is emerging. And this free flow of information, rather than liberate us, is used to crowd out dissent and subvert the marketplace of ideas.
Peter Pomerantsev examines how the assumptions that underpinned many of the struggles for rights and freedoms in the last century - between citizens armed with truth and information and regimes with their censors and secret police - have been turned upside down.
Producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello and thank you for listening to Analysis, the podcast that looks at the ideas behind the news. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm Antedine, the producer of this edition edition and over the next half hour Peter |
| 0:44.8 | Pomeransev explores how our information environment is changing how censorship |
| 0:49.2 | works. |
| 0:51.2 | In the summer of 1976 my father came back from a swim in the Black Sea and was arrested on the beach. |
| 1:02.0 | A writer and poet, and poet, he had been detained for distributing copies of harmful literature, books |
| 1:09.0 | censored for telling the truth about what was happening in Soviet Ukraine and Russia. |
| 1:16.5 | Those are the days when dissidents steered their radio dial through the buzzing of Soviet |
| 1:20.6 | jammers so they could tune into Western radio and information denied them by the regime. |
| 1:28.9 | At the time, my father could barely dream of a world where the KGB didn't pursue you for exercising |
| 1:36.8 | the simple right to read, to listen to what you chose to, or to say what you wanted. But by 1989 it all came crashing down. |
| 1:50.0 | And then at last the wall had tumbled down. |
| 1:57.0 | Oh, Martin! Oh, Martin! |
| 2:00.0 | Open up, they chanted, open up. By now they knew they were free to go west. |
| 2:08.0 | It's 30 years since that BBC report on the fall of the Berlin Wall, which signaled, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.