John Whittingdale takes aim at tech giants

John Whittingdale has celebrated the plurality of the TV news landscape while accusing the tech giants of “exercising censorship”.

Delivering a keynote at the IPPR Oxford Media Convention yesterday (19 July), the culture minister said he “welcomes the advent” of disruptors such as GB News.

“I’m a huge admirer of the BBC but I don’t want people to have to rely on the BBC and that’s why we support ITN, Sky News and any others who seek to join,” he declared.

“I’ve always believed in plurality and allowing people the maximum number of viewpoints to choose from. The difficulty now is you have a small number of companies exercising censorship to some extent.”

To that end, Whittingdale took aim at the likes of Facebook and Google for removing journalistic content from their platforms.

He pointed to a drastically shifting news landscape that has come a long way since “everyone was worried that Rupert Murdoch was too powerful for owning four newspapers and a big chunk of Sky”.

“Today, the power rests with the [tech] platforms,” he said.

“[The government is] keen to ensure journalistic content is protected because at the moment if Mark Zuckerberg or one of his people decide they don’t like a particular viewpoint then they remove it and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Ofcom will have to “wrestle” with questions around protecting free speech and journalistic content on these platforms, added Whittingdale, with the regulator handed new powers under the Online Safety Bill.

Speaking earlier in the day, Ofcom chief executive Melanie Dawes said the outfit will take a different approach than it does with the broadcasters.

“This isn’t about regulating individual pieces of content but holding platforms to account,” she added.

Whittingdale said: “We are absolutely clear that we want to protect journalistic content against the…economic and political power of these platforms.”

Earlier this year, Facebook temporarily blocked access to news services on its platform in Australia amid a row over payment terms.  

Latest privatisation thoughts

Questioned again on the privatisation of Channel 4, Whittingdale reiterated that selling the PSB to a private buyer will help sustain it in a highly competitive world.

His argument is that a private owner would be able to borrow money to invest in the channel, whereas under public ownership C4 is unable to secure borrowing as “reducing the deficit is absolutely central to the government’s strategy”.

“By no longer being in public ownership it will no longer be constrained,” he added.