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exposing the origins of antisemitism

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MEDIA CONTROL

The Hollywood sign on a dry hillside above Los Angeles, with a radio tower on the ridge.

The claim that Jews secretly control the news and entertainment is an old antisemitic conspiracy theory, born in a forgery and recycled for every new medium.

 

First published: September 29, 2026

 

 

 

The claim that "Jews control the media" or "Jews run Hollywood" is one of the most persistent antisemitic tropes of modern times. It alleges that Jewish people secretly steer newspapers, broadcasters, film studios, and the music business, and use that supposed power to shape what everyone else sees, hears, and believes.

 

The claim is false. It is not based on evidence. It rests on a document exposed as a forgery more than a century ago, on hand-picked lists of names, and on a picture of the media business that ignores how companies are actually owned and run.

 

Like other myths about Jewish power, it casts Jews as schemers working in the shadows against everyone else. The American Jewish Committee traces it to one discredited text: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

 

A Forgery Is Born

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery, first published in 1903 in a newspaper in the Russian Empire. It falsely claims a Jewish plan to control the media, politics, and the economy.

 

In the autumn of 1903, the text ran in installments in Znamya (The Banner), a newspaper in St. Petersburg. Its owner, Pavel Krushevan, used his newspapers to spread hatred of Jews. In April of that year, articles in one of his papers had helped incite a pogrom in Kishinev. Some scholars believe Krushevan wrote the Protocols himself.

 

The text claims to be the secret minutes of meetings held by the "Elders of Zion." Those meetings never took place, and the Elders never existed. Early versions had 24 chapters. Each claimed to reveal plans to control world politics, the economy, financial markets, the media, education, and other parts of society.

 

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Protocols spread quickly. A German edition appeared in 1919. In 1920, editions were published in France, England, the United States, and Japan. It was later translated into dozens of languages.

 

Exposed as a Fake

The Protocols was shown to be fake soon after it reached a wide audience, and many times since:

  • Lucien Wolf, 1920: The British journalist and diplomat showed that ideas in the Protocols came from a German novel, Biarritz (1868).

  • The Times, August 1921: The Times (London) showed that much of the Protocols was copied from Maurice Joly's 1864 French satire Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, which does not mention Jews. The paper called the Protocols a "clumsy forgery." Its reporter, Philip Graves, printed passages from the two texts side by side.

  • A Swiss court, 1935: The court fined two Nazi leaders for handing out the Protocols at a demonstration. The judge called it "ridiculous nonsense."

  • The U.S. Senate, 1964: A Senate subcommittee called the Protocols "a vicious hoax."

 

None of this stopped it. The Protocols is still published in many languages. The American Jewish Committee notes that in some countries it is sold as an authoritative text.

 

Henry Ford and The International Jew

Henry Ford's The International Jew was first serialized in 1920 in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, and was based largely on the Protocols. It sold more than 500,000 copies and was translated into at least 16 languages, including German.

 

Ford, the automaker, was one of the most famous and respected people in the United States in the 1920s. His newspaper series ran to 91 parts. By 1922, the book was already in its 21st printing in Germany. Nazi Party leaders, among them Adolf Hitler, took inspiration from it.

 

In 1927, Ford publicly apologized for publishing The International Jew and ordered the remaining copies withdrawn. He told overseas publishers to stop printing it. They ignored him.

 

How the Nazi Regime Used the Lie

Nazi propaganda spread the Protocols' claim of a Jewish world plot. The antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer ran many stories built on its ideas. By 1938, the Nazi Party's publishing house had issued 22 printings of the Protocols.

 

Joseph Goebbels, who became the Nazi propaganda minister in 1933, knew the text was not factual. In his diary in 1924, he called it a forgery, then wrote, "I believe in the inner, but not the factual, truth of The Protocols." What mattered to him was that it could be used against Jews.

 

While accusing Jews of controlling the press, the Nazi regime took control of the press itself. When Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazis controlled less than 3 percent of Germany's 4,700 newspapers. That soon changed:

  • Registries of journalists: Under the Editors Law of October 4, 1933, the Nazi regime kept registries of "racially pure" editors and journalists and excluded Jews, and people married to Jews, from the profession. The registries were kept by the Reich Association of the German Press, which Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry controlled. Anyone who wanted to work as an editor or journalist had to register.

  • Seizing publishers: The regime took control of the Jewish-owned publishers Ullstein and Mosse through "Aryanization." By 1933, Ullstein was the largest publishing company in Europe, with 10,000 employees. The Ullstein family was forced off the company's board in 1933 and made to sell its assets a year later.

  • Forced to flee: The Mosse family, which owned a worldwide advertising agency and published several major liberal newspapers, fled Germany the day after Hitler took power.

  • Daily orders: Propaganda Ministry officials sent out daily instructions on which stories could be reported and how. Journalists and editors who did not follow them could be fired or, if accused of acting to harm Germany, sent to a concentration camp.

 

By 1944, no more than 1,100 of Germany's 4,700 newspapers were left. Even those still in private hands published only what the Propaganda Ministry's directives allowed.

 

A New Medium, the Same Lie

Each time a new way of reaching people appeared, the trope moved into it:

  • Newspapers, 1903: The Protocols first appeared as a newspaper serial in St. Petersburg.

  • Newspapers and books, 1920s: Ford's Dearborn Independent turned the Protocols into The International Jew.

  • The radio era, 1930s: Father Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest in the Detroit area, reached millions of listeners through his radio addresses. In 1938, he serialized the Protocols in his newspaper, Social Justice.

  • Television, 2000s: In 2002, a privately owned Egyptian television channel broadcast a 41-part series based largely on the Protocols. In 2004, Iran's Arabic-language Al-Alam TV aired a documentary series that drew on the Protocols and claimed that Jews control Hollywood.

  • The internet, today: The Protocols circulates widely online and on social media. Some recent versions blame Jews for the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

The Modern Version

Today the trope appears across the political spectrum and in many countries. Some people say "Jews." Others say "Zionists" or "globalists." The ADL notes that "globalist" often works as a code word for Jew. At a protest in Seattle in November 2023, a sign read "Zionist control the media." The words change, but the claim stays the same.

 

Famous people have repeated it too. Beginning in October 2022, Ye (formerly Kanye West) made a series of antisemitic claims in interviews. On the show Drink Champs on October 16, 2022, he said, "Jewish people have owned the Black voice," and, according to the ADL, used the phrase "Jewish media" more than twenty times in that one appearance. The ADL notes that his remarks drew on long-standing tropes about Jewish power and control in entertainment, the media, politics, and business.

 

Common talking points include:

  • Lists of names: Picking out executives, founders, or journalists thought to be Jewish and presenting the list as proof of a plot.

  • Early Hollywood: Pointing to the men who founded early film studios as if they still ran the industry.

  • Code words: Saying "Zionist," "globalist," or similar terms in place of "Jewish."

 

Why the Claim Is False

  • The founding text is fake: The Protocols, the source of the modern trope, was exposed as a forgery in 1921 and many times after.

  • Jews are not a monolith: As the ADL puts it, Jews "do not act as one to advance a particular, unified agenda." Their interests and identities are diverse.

  • Media ownership is corporate: Large media and entertainment companies are mostly publicly traded corporations. They are overseen by boards, owned by shareholders, and driven by audiences, advertisers, and profit. Their decisions are not made by any religious or ethnic group.

  • Founders are not today's owners: Adolph Zukor was born in Ricse, Hungary, in 1873. He came to the United States at 15 and built the Famous Players-Paramount studio. Louis B. Mayer was born in Dymer, in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), in 1884. He ran Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from its formation in 1924 until he gave up control in 1948. Harry and Albert Warner were born in Poland, and Jack Warner in London, Ontario, Canada. With their brother Sam, they set up Warner Brothers Pictures in 1923. These men ran separate companies, and all of them died decades ago. The Warner studio, for example, left the brothers' hands in 1967 and has changed owners several times since.

  • Small numbers, big claims: Jews make up 2.4% of U.S. adults (Pew Research Center, 2020) and about 0.2 percent of the world's population. The trope takes a handful of visible names and turns them into a hidden hand.

 

Why the Trope Is Dangerous

  • It dehumanizes: It paints Jews as one scheming force rather than as individuals. The ADL notes that the myth casts Jews as "manipulative and conniving schemers who work in the shadows."

  • It has been used to justify exclusion: In Nazi Germany, a regime that spread the Protocols' lies barred Jews from journalism and seized Jewish-owned publishers.

  • It prepares the ground for violence: Nazi propaganda campaigns, especially in 1935 and 1938, created an atmosphere tolerant of violence against Jews before new anti-Jewish measures. The American Jewish Committee notes that Jews are still attacked, and even killed, because of the belief that they hold too much power or control.

  • It offers a scapegoat: The Protocols has always been used to explain the world's problems by blaming Jews. Its appeal lies in giving simple answers to a complex world.

 

Criticism Is Not the Trope

Criticizing a news outlet, a film studio, a news story, or the government of Israel is not in itself antisemitic. Media companies can be judged on their work, like any other business.

 

The trope is something different. It is the claim that Jews, or "Zionists" used as a stand-in for Jews, secretly control what the public sees and hears.

 

When someone says the media hides the truth because of Jews or Zionists, ask: Who exactly? Which outlet? Which decision, made by whom? The vague answer, "the Jews," does not survive those questions.

 

The claim that Jews control the media began with a forgery printed in a Russian newspaper in 1903. It was exposed in 1921, spread by a regime that then seized the press for itself, and carried into radio, television, and the internet. It is not a fact. It is an old lie that keeps changing its form. Recognizing it helps us reject it, while still talking honestly about media bias, corporate power, and how the news is made.

 

Sources

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Last updated: October 3, 2026

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