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It is interesting to look at the details and see who the (news) 'media' are in this case. Going through the details, I find 1 instance (under Kemp) of the BBC, and everyone else is the 'usual suspects', the Telegraph, the Mail, GB News, the Sun, the Times, and so forth.

The Guardian is only mentioned in context of exposing these conflicts of interests; and whilst I am surprised to find LBC and Nation Cymru as not being transparent about their experts and commentariat, I don't see The National mentioned at all, nor The Herald, The Scotsman, the Metro, the Financial Times, and The i.

This may tell us that these experts only appear in the 'usual suspect' news media. Or it may tell us that this report didn't look at a wide range of U.K. news media. The latter seems unlikely given the inclusion of some niche publications (I've never even heard of London Loves Business until today.) and things like Nation Cymru, so I am more inclined to suppose the former.

The report doesn't say the media mentioned is an exhaustive list of the media that failed to disclose ties to the arms industry, which is what you're assuming.

You mention the Guardian. I took one of the names listed in the report, Richard Barrons, and quickly found an article in the Guardian where he's quoted but his ties to the arms industry are not disclosed: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/20/britain-def...

> the Telegraph, the Mail, GB News, the Sun, the Times

Indeed. These are pay-to-play propaganda and should not be accorded the dignity of "newspaper". Peter Oborne's resignation from the Telegraph is still worth reading: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31510152

How much of that is down to the Guardian being disinclined to air views seen as pro military? Or not asking the sorts of questions where such views would naturally be called upon. For example a left publication is less likely to be concerned about a(n alleged) lack of military readiness.
LBC certainly falls within the "usual suspects"
The survey excluded veterans with no commercial ties. Maybe those publications not mentioned used them instead.
> I am surprised to find LBC

Why? From afar my vague impression of LBC is that it's talk radio opinion slop, even if it puts in some effort to avoid the cartoonishly-far-right conservatism endemic to that genre.

> How the UK Security Services neutralised ‘The Guardian’ newspaper (2019) (dailymaverick.co.za)

> 3 points by indigodaddy on June 2, 2023 | past | 1 comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36170406

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-09-11-how-the-u...

I'm not sure that the Grauniad has a particularly good global reputation for independent and critical journalism. It publishes the same mix of disguised opinion pieces and rather biased junk articles as the other side of the political spectrum.

There isn't a single news source that you can trust as such. You have to compile a lot of them, remove the unverified information and see what is left. Usually not a lot.

fascinating article thank you for posting. Everyone should read this!
"Ex UK military members discover the private sector pays 10-20x more" underlines the title, but yes, media should disclose it. But even if they were "just" retired ex-military, their bias would be the same (being a member of the UK military).
Media in general is poor on declaring any and all bias of their various interviewed "experts".

Quack doctors spruiking amazing new treatments (that they hold shares in).

Automotive experts promoting car brands (that they receive advertising and influencer dollars for).

etc.

10-20× more in private sector for senior leadership/advisory role sounds reasonable, but still, I wonder if some part of that compensation stems from the fact that the person is availing him/herself as an asset of influence, i.e. can be used to push narrative through media while posing as independent, credible expert. Needs further research and/or A/B testing I guess.
Surely all experts are employed in some form in their field? Should we have their entire CV read out before their expertise is given on a subject matter?

Unless there is a clear conflict of interest, such as an "expert" urging a particular course of action which aligns to benefit their employers, then the audience should probably just engage their critical thinking a bit more.

The majority of UK experts will probably have opinions that align with UK ethics/morality/society and urge options that benefit the UK state and it's allies. I would assume that would be an absolute given too.

When I watch Chinese citizens give their expertise on matters, I know that it will probably align with the Chinese state and benefit them (as opposed to strictly the UK state). Have people lost all of their critical thinking skills?

> Unless there is a clear conflict of interest, such as an "expert" urging a particular course of action

That's exactly the issue

If somebody is discussing about defense in the media the viewers/readers should know that the person works for the defense industry in a commercial role.

Presenting them merely as experts because they are "former X" creates a false impression of impartiality.

You're asking that question in 2026?
Manufacturing Consent continues being relevant
For the unfamiliar.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

While I'm neither a Brit, nor a professional historian, my understanding is that corruption - meaning everything from foot-dragging delivery to inferior & defective goods to exorbitant prices to outright theft - is an ageless problem in the UK military equipment & supplies business. And it was an ageless problem before the Acts of Union (1707, England & Scotland) had even created the UK. And it has rather often been a problem at such scale as to have serious strategic consequences.

(Not that the UK's gov't actually required outside corruption to ruinously squander military budgets. Try asking a naval historian about Britain's post-WWII aircraft carrier construction & refit fiasco.)

My point: News sources failing to flag defense sector conflicts of interest is a minor & downstream fuss over mediocre journalism. The real problem, from the PoV of someone who really cares about the UK and its future, is that Britain both wastes vast resources and punches far below its weight, due to its massive defense sector corruption & incompetence.

> These individuals had also been quoted, featured, or otherwise used as commentators in UK media coverage of defence, conflict, or national security issues.

If they are promoting defence spending or plugging their employers products that's bad, but using their experience to comment on the Iran war or Ukraine, or Russian/Chinese Spy networks doesn't seem that bad?

In 17 of the 19 detailed instances, it is stated that they are promoting increases in budgets and spending. The two others are reported as speaking with different conflicts of interest.
I think it should always be disclosed. Even when they aren't explicitly advocating for a direct benefit to their company, their overall analysis is colored by their interests. The defense industry is going to amp up risks of an aggressor, downplay the risk of appearing to be aggressive, downplay non-military foreign policy strategies etc. Allow the defense industry to influence how we think about foreign events is certainly going to influence how we think about policy and spending.
There's lots of indirect ways to promote "defence" spending, such as promoting more involvement in a conflict.
In the context of Julian Assanges' treatment by UK media, and his subsequent disassembly at Belmarsh, who cares what they have to say about Russia or China.
1. Calling it the "defense sector" is already quite biased. Almost all of that sector's activity involves offensive activity. Or just call it the "arms industry" etc. If we were less charitable, we could well call it the "war industry".

2. Reading the article we note there's quite some overlap between arms industry links and links to Israel's fundraising and lobbying circles. I wonder whether UK media discloses those links.

> Almost all of that sector's activity involves offensive activity.

What do you mean? As in invading other countries?

The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs like Russia, or diplomacy through violence. In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability or incoming missiles. So no, it is in fact the defense sector.

What countries have a defense sector, if the UK doesn't?

"war industry" is still very charitable! If you have any standards that distinguish a war from indiscriminate killing, they probably violate those standards in a large proportion of their business.
I wish we had a requirement for every corporation (non-profit, for profit, or politician) to disclose any and all “links”. The fact that there is so much resistance to that notion should tell people all they need to know about how toxic the people’s relationship is to these entities.
how can anyone trust any media report? Even if it is reported from multiple outlets? In the US the sum is around 39 billion dollars for pharma advertising, nevermind our military-industrial complex, as well.

How can any media that has underwriting or advertisers actually do genuine reporting? Ask yourself this!

The only way to really report on the "news" is to not be supported by advertisers or underwriting.

I've known this since Dr. Naji Dahi's class in 2002, with upkeep by Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak, as well as having worked for ABC and a KKR Joint that's all up in "media".

This is the biggest illusion of the media. They portray themselves as informing in an independent way. But any quick analysis will show that they can only report what their clients let them. And in the West their loyalty is to wealthy families and big corporations in the US and Europe.
TL;DR

Military Experts Named:

Nick Carter Chris Deverell James Everard Nick Houghton Mark Carleton-Smith Rupert Jones Richard Kemp Stuart Peach David Richards Patrick Sanders Richard Shirreff Sir Peter Wall Ben Wallace Alan West Penny Mordaunt Greg Bagwell Richard Barrons Tim Collins Richard Dannatt

Media Outlets Named:

The Telegraph Daily Mail Express The Independent iPaper The Sun LBC Sky News Times Radio Channel 4 News

Tip of the iceberg. The Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office, among others, determine the direction of BBC news.
In other words: institutionalized corruption.

It's also a problem because who controls those media? So the taxpayers are at the least two times at a disadvantage here, private interests funding private media, to then set the agenda of reporting very selectively - or not at all in certain areas.

The problem isn't good honest journalism can't be done. Think from the point of view a good critical news story, if that news story is gonna disadvantage a powerful entity, that entity will do everything in its power to discredit and stop that news story from publishing. This is also the reason why I like social media, Game Nexus does so much impactful reporting on hardware.
[flagged]
"our country isn't ready for war" is more difficult to disproof than "solar panels only last for 15 years", so while I agree that disclosures should go for every conflict on interest, it makes sense that the research focused only on this portion of them
It is interesting that any US-centric article causing political flame wars immediately sinks here, but anything generating similar "debate" on UK issues is allowed to sit on the front page, accumulating hundreds of comments. I don't think the conversation here is evolving in way that HN tries to foster, so hopefully this one is shadow-flagged (or however the internal mod tools work) soon.
Still up here a few hours later huh, despite clear propaganda that is nothing to do with TFA.
It seems the same goes for international media to some extent.This example passed as nothing although it should have been everywhere: The general reportedly stated that the UK Ministry of Defence could stage a "mutiny potentially up to a coup d'état,if Jeremy Corbyn -as a potential Prime Minister) attempted to Leave NATO. https://monthlyreview.org/articles/anatomy-of-a-propaganda-c...
No wonder they are so pro russia (but pretend otherwise ), they want the war to go on and on, have people die on both sides.
“This research does not suggest that any individual cited in this report deliberately concealed their commercial affiliations from journalists. Rather, it highlights a recurring failure by news organisations to disclose potentially relevant industry interests when presenting former senior military figures as independent expert commentators on defence, conflict, and national security issues.”

“Of course, holding private-sector roles after military service is both lawful and commonplace. This is not the point of this report. Rather, the concern highlighted here is about the UK’s media.”

“The findings presented here do not argue that the individuals identified are acting improperly, nor that their analyses lack merit, however we assert that the public has a right to full and relevant information when evaluating expert commentary, particularly where it involves lives, public expenditure, and international security.”

“It is important to note that this report does not allege wrongdoing on the part of the individuals identified, nor on the part of the publications presented within the pages of this report.”

Practically every third paragraph reiterates this.