UK Edition
Online giants are 'clear danger to civil society' and effectively 'govern' our lives from abroad, ITV chairman suggests
Google, Facebook and other online media giants represent "a clear and present danger to civil society" and are effectively "governing" our lives from abroad, Sir Peter Bazalgette has warned.
The ITV chairman said the power is being wielded from abroad by "engineers" who may be more concerned with algorithms than ethics.
"The online world, with all its benefits, now represents a clear and present danger to civil society. We are being influenced - and in some cases, you could say, even governed - by people who are not in this country, many of them beginning life as engineers, and engineers are very fine folk but they do not not necessarily think about the ethics of society," Sir Peter said.
"We are being governed and influenced by these people, these worldwide companies, and we would do well to think about the effect that's having."
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, is an engineer who founded the company while at Harvard. It now has two billion monthly users.
Sir Peter was speaking at a Voice of the Listener and Viewer conference and responding to a question about his ITV predecessor, Sir Michael Grade, who warned a decade ago that Google and YouTube were "parasites" feeding off the content produced by traditional broadcasters.
While he did not agree with that choice of word, Sir Peter said: "Google is an extraordinary invention that has large benefits. But only now, 10 or 15 years into the digital era, are we beginning to discover some of the disbenefits."
Google's share of worldwide advertising next year will be 21 per cent, Sir Peter said, an "extraordinary monopoly".
Along with Facebook, it "refuses to accept that it is a publisher" and instead calls itself a platform, he added, despite the fact both distribute content. It is a "frankly unsustainable position".
Ministers are considering a proposal to classify the media giants as publications, forcing them to uphold the same standards as newspapers.
The measures are part of a crackdown amid fears that young people are increasingly at risk from online content.
Sir Peter said the internet is a wonderful resource but "also a latter day Tower of Babel - the home of rumour, gossip and paranoia".
Facebook has been accused of enabling the spread of fake news. Evan Spiegel, the inventor of mobile app Snapchat, said yesterday that Facebook's news feed has come "at a huge cost to facts, our minds and the entire media industry".
Sir Peter also complained about the restrictions placed on television advertising, while the internet is less regulated.
"Television advertising in Britain is more regulated than any other country in the world, with complex rules about what we should and shouldn't do. And I welcome that.
"But the thing that really gets my goat is that we constantly have a dialogue from people about what should not be allowed to be advertised on television - everything from diesel fuel to hamburgers, neither of which, when I last looked, were illegal.
"But it's useless to restrict television advertising when you have virtually no control of internet advertising, because all you do is drive the advertising online and weaken the base of public service broadcasting advertising revenue. We need to get real and smart about that."
Sir Peter, the man responsible for bringing Big Brother to the UK, was also questioned about the lack of arts programming on ITV. He came up with a novel answer.
"Is ITV doing something for the arts? Yes, it's broadcasting almost 24 hours a day making great dramas and documentaries, and that is an art form.
"This narrow discussion about 'why don't we make documentaries about the arts?' - let that be damned as an argument. Let us celebrate television as an art form in itself," he said.