GOGGLE BOX:

● Jon Snow uses Mactaggart Lecture to attack digital giants Facebook and Google over ‘the prioritising of fakery’

Broadcaster Jon Snow pulled few punches yesterday as he delivered the James Mactaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

Broadcasters should have been “far more robust with both the truths and the lies” of the Brexit debate, Channel Four news anchor Jon Snow has told the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

Snow said he believed the British media had become too cosy with “the elite” in recent years and too far removed from ordinary people.

Snow described the Brexit debate as a “ghastly period in which empty vessels and overloaded egos have been allowed to wallow about the stage too often unchallenged”. Drawing comparison between the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as US president, Snow said both had “overwhelmed the media’s ability to call out the lies of those on either side of the debate”. He also accused Facebook of prioritising “fakery on a massive scale”and accused it of “feasting” on news products while paying next to nothing for them.”

Snow was following in the footsteps of Dennis Potter, Rupert Murdoch, Kevin Spacey, Janet Street-porter and Armando Iannucci in delivering the flagship Mactaggart Lecture at the three-day festival.

Snow told delegates the modern-day media in Britain was far too removed from those on the “wrong side of the terrible divide that exists in present-day society”. He also suggested broadcasters had “little awareness, contact or connection with those not of the elite” in a country he said was “more fractured than at any time I have known.” Snow said: “Never have we been more accessible to the public nor in some ways more disconnected from the lives of others.”

Snow, anchor of Channel Four News since 1989, said the Grenfell tragedy had taught him a “harrowing lesson” that he thought he had learned but had perhaps forgotten.

He said: “We’d better accept we are all in this together, all of us in this room are, by definition, part of the elite. Yet I believe that we have, by the nature of our business, an obligation to be aware of, connect with, and understand the lives, concerns and needs of those who are not. I believe we are in breach of that obligation – that in increasingly fractured Britain, we are comfortably with the elite.

“In that moment [of the disaster] I felt both disconnected and frustrated. I felt on the wrong side of the terrible divide that exists in present day society and in which we are all in this hall major players. We can accuse the political classes for their failures, and we do. But we are guilty of them ourselves. We are too far removed from those who lived their lives in Grenfell and who, across the country, now live on amid the combustible cladding, the lack of sprinklers, the absence of centralised fire alarms and more, revealed by the Grenfell Tower.

Addressing the growth of “fake news,” Snow raised concerns about the way both Facebook and Google now enjoy “a monopoly over the world’s information”.

He added: “Many news organisations, including my own, have asked too few questions about the apparent miracle of Facebook’s reach.

“For us at Channel Four News, it has been invaluable in helping us to deliver our remit to reach young viewers, to innovate, and to get attentioni for some of the world’s most important stories. But the other side of the issue – the dark, cancerous side – enabled the story: ‘Pope endorses Trump for President’ to engage more than a million people during the US elections.

“That same algorithm that prioritised many amazing reports of ours, also prioritised fakery on a massive scale. Facebook has a moral duty to prioritise veracity over virality. It is fundamental to our democracy. Facebook’s lack of activity in this regard could prove a vast threat to democracy.

“Rather than simply trying to take down the fakery, there has to be an incentive for Facebook to pay the rate for high quality news and encourage the development of a global bedrock of truths rooted in their offer to the quarter of the world’s online audience.

“We have to look at the new players in this digital age. Facebook needs to pay more taxes; Google needs to pay more taxes, the rest too.

“The digital media duopolies have to pay more to carry professional journalism. It cannot be beyond the bounds of human understanding to come up with a way of ensuring that these mega entities have to pay to play. Facebook feasts on our products and pays all but nothing for them.”

“Facebook has a moral duty to prioritise veracity over virality. It is fundamental to our democracy”

JON SNOW

Mactaggart Lecture