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In this episode of The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, S2E6 – Who Controls the News?, Renee and Marc examine the machinery behind the headlines.

There was a time when the news arrived at a predictable hour, delivered by a familiar face, framed by a studio camera and a glowing red light. It felt intentional and limited. Today, information moves constantly, personalised, accelerated, filtered, and optimised.

So what changed?

It wasn’t simply ideology or journalistic standards. It was infrastructure.

Printing presses, telegraph lines, broadcast towers, cable networks, search engines, and algorithmic feeds each reshaped who gets to decide what spreads, and how fast. Speed altered incentives. Incentives altered behaviour. Over time, the systems themselves began shaping what counts as news.

We explore how broadcast studios once acted as gates, how 24-hour cable blurred urgency into permanence, how the internet turned publishing into software, and how social platforms made engagement the dominant currency. When distribution changes, power changes. When power shifts, public trust shifts with it.

The anxious question is now, "Who controls the mechanisms that determine what reaches us?"

Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.