Speech by Richard Sharp, Chairman of the BBC

Richard Sharp

Introduction

Good afternoon. Thank you, Stephanie.

I am six months into the job and consider myself fortunate to be the Chairman with the quality of leadership team we have at the BBC, led by Tim Davie.

I came to the BBC having spent most of my career in the financial sector - another industry which, through the benefit of deregulation and technology, experienced tremendous global growth.

However, as it focused on short-term growth and value creation, it's pretty clear that it failed to take account of longer-term threats to financial stability, and we all know the catastrophic consequences of the financial crash that followed.

There are parallels which are intriguing. When I look at the media industry I see a similar justified excitement, with the growth opportunities which technology developments create. I see the UK with a similar opportunity to play a leading role as a global centre of excellence.

However, I also see analogous threats to stability. In this case not financial stability, but social stability arising from the nature of the growth of the media industry and its direction of travel.

Twenty years ago, the launch of Wikipedia was seen by many as a sign that the digital era would bring about a great democratisation of knowledge. It fitted with the philosophy that information would no longer be handed down by a few 'oracles of fact' to the many, that would have included 'Auntie', but would now be shared by the many with the many.

Hence, knowledge would be open source, and owned by all.

Subsequently, social media has developed and become dominant - and with it a manifestation has become clear: that, challengingly, for most people affirmation is more satisfying than information.

Gossip sells

Of course, the idea that sensationalism sells over sober reporting is nothing new. But it's only relatively recently that we've started to understand why.

The evolutionary psychologist, Robin Dunbar, argues that gossip is what makes us human.

It releases endorphins, it binds us together in our social groups, it tells us who we should trust.

He argues that, for primates, the size of your social network is the single most important factor for survival.

It's no wonder that the social affirmation we get from those likes and shares is so potent… and that corporations wish to monetise this need, and, for their parts, bad actors to exploit it.

While we might understand the rewards of this online behaviour at an individual level, what it means at an aggregated societal level is clearly concerning.

We are now in a marketplace where quality journalism competes on an equal footing with partisan opinion, conspiracy theory and the deliberate disinformation of bad actors… and frequently loses.

It forces us to think again about the relationship between capitalism and the media - and I speak as someone from a capitalist background - and the consequent implications for democracy; not merely the current implications which are disturbing, but the threats for the decades to come.

What do we want this relationship to be in another 20 years' time?

Truth And The Market

The debate is not a new one.

In the 17th century John Milton argued against the licensing of pamphlets in the belief that market forces would drive out falsehoods:

'Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?'

As recently as 2009, James Murdoch, then News Corp CEO, argued in his MacTaggart Lecture that the only media regulator should be the market:

'The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.'

This is a thesis, in my view, that has been thoroughly tested in the US and has been found wanting.

What began in the late-80s with the abandonment of the 'fairness doctrine' - which required broadcasters to be 'honest, equitable and balanced' in presenting issues of public importance - may well have led to the events we saw in the Capitol in Washington in January.

It was a moment that should be seen as a stark warning of the danger to democracy where the media leaves truth contested and a society unable to speak across political divides.

There is an economic law in finance called Gresham's Law, whereby bad money drives out good money.

We seem to be perceiving the emergence of an analogous law where bad media can drive out good media.

It was Swift who said, 'Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it'.

It is certainly more true now than in the 18th century when the phrase was coined.

The 'Sixth Column'

This makes disinformation the perfect modern weapon for those who deliberately seek to undermine social cohesion and democracy.

Today we see a sinister tactic.

The world can be flooded with false narratives, the more confusing and contradictory the better. People can be encouraged to abandon the idea of 'truth'.

In the 20th century, fifth columnists were human agents working within a nation to undermine its solidarity.

Today's digital agents are far more numerous, powerful, and insidious.

We might coin a phrase and call them 'sixth columnists': agents acting from within but controlled from without - bots seeding disruptive disinformation through many thousands of social media accounts.

Policing will only get harder and harder with the rapid advances we're seeing in AI, deep learning and quantum computing…

…We know that Deepfakes can be constructed to speak with the voices and faces of real public figures, and, in effect, anyone can be made to appear to say anything at all.

Power without responsibility

Where does this leave the tech giants whose platforms have become playgrounds for disinformation?

One starting point in the debate is the principle of media freedom, as enshrined in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression'; 'to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media…'

But digital platforms have forced new thinking on what types of expression should be able to circulate freely, given clear real-world harms - from the deliberate spread of vaccine disinformation to the incitement of violence in Myanmar, and there are obviously many others.

Most agree there should be pressure on platforms to limit the availability of potentially harmful expression.

But fewer agree on how that huge power should held to account.

Just as the press barons of the early-20th century wanted, in Baldwin's words, 'power without responsibility', today's tech barons have vast power to police their own sites - with limited responsibility to explain what they block, who they block and their liability for the content they permit.

There is a risk that their policing could be just as democratically challenged as the disinformation they are seeking to combat.

And what about the personal data that these platforms hold and exploit?

Fundamental to the concept of freedom is not only what we choose to express, but also what we choose not to disclose.

The Bottom Line

This brings us back to the concerning question of conflicting incentives.

A few years ago, when America's biggest food companies met to discuss growing public health concerns around packaged and processed foods, the CEO of General Mills pointed out that they offered healthier products to those that wanted them.

'Bottom line being, though,' he added, 'we need to ensure that our products taste good, because our accountability is also to our shareholders…

'There's no way we could start down-formulating the usage of sugar, salt, fat if the end result is going to be something that people don't want to eat.'

The result that we now have is that the US is the most obese OECD nation, with around 37 percent of the country considered clinically obese.

It's central to the business model of technology companies that they are similarly motivated to serve us a diet of what we want to consume, and an incentive to cater to our unhealthy wants, rather than our needs.

In response, some companies have promised greater transparency around their decisions to remove or block content.

But as a New York Times editorial recently observed: 'It's hard to imagine a truly honest accounting when such an accounting would go against their business interests.'

And Facebook's appointment last year of an 'oversight board' to review decisions on content moderation, whilst welcomed by some as a radical shift, is seen by others as more limited and cosmetic.

This issue of who controls the flow of information has even broader implications at a geopolitical level.

Look at China's massive 'Belt And Road Initiative', which continues to build IT infrastructure such as broadband networks across the African continent.

It raises serious concerns about recipient countries choosing to adopt a Chinese-style approach to internet governance, which normalises censorship and blocks the transmission of ideas.

The Draw Of Conspiracy Theories

The dangers of a national closed media environment are clear.

But these days they are not limited to repressive regimes. Each of us has the ability to create a closed media environment of our own. In the last few years, this has proved to be fertile ground for conspiracy theories - from anti-vaxx, to 5G, to QAnon.

And where once these theories would bubble away in private echo chambers, Covid in some ways has created the perfect conditions for them to boil over into the mainstream - fed by algorithms that are great at recognising viral potential but not so good at spotting nonsense.

The pandemic and 'infodemic' that has spread alongside have left us in no doubt of how vulnerable we all are and society is.

But it has also suggested that some are more vulnerable than others.

The magnetic draw of conspiracy theories in our societies is getting stronger.

And we can no longer pretend it doesn't have real-life consequences - whether it's pulling down 5G masts, driving down vaccine take-up, or leaving the results of democratic elections in doubt - extremism can be amplified.

Critical Thinking & Information Literacy

But while Covid has shown that the dangers of disinformation have never been clearer, it has also shown, and the BBC represents this, that the demand for high-quality information has never been higher.

UK audiences in their millions have turned to traditional sources for news they can trust.

Fact-checking services have been critical in helping to debunk dangerous myths.

And many platforms are now collaborating closely with trusted news brands such as ours, to flag up falsehoods in real time.

But we have to be clear about the limitations.

We know that fact-checking skews to an already engaged audience; that there are plenty of people it simply doesn't reach.

Nor can it entirely undo the damage done by disinformation.

Prevention is better than cure.

Before Covid struck, a report from the National Literacy Trust found that only two percent of children and young people had the critical literacy skills they needed to tell whether a news story is real or fake.

Research suggests that it's this information literacy - the ability to think critically about the avalanche of news we face every day - that can make the biggest difference.

An education of children which prioritises critical thinking alongside mathematics and basic literacy is now of fundamental importance.

Impartial News

This is how the presence of impartial sources in our daily news diet will become increasingly valuable.

News that is independent of commercial or political interest… that has an obligation to consider events from all sides, and offer the context and analysis to help audiences make up their own minds.

Free access to accurate, impartial news is essential as a key factor in building up our resistance against the harmful effects of fake news.

If disinformation is the disease running through our societies, impartial news can be the vaccine.

From a BBC perspective, there is clearly a major national and global role here for us as a force for good.

The Orwell quote outside our London HQ sums up our commitment to information over affirmation:

'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.'

Reporting without fear or favour is fundamental to the reach, trust, and respect the BBC brand enjoys at home and worldwide.

That's why the Board and the Director-General, Tim Davie, have identified impartiality as our first priority.

Impartiality is, candidly, a prerequisite for the existence of the BBC. And it must be seen as a journey not a destination - something we must prove again every day.

Getting this right is about more than safeguarding the future of a cherished institution that continues to have a critical role to play at the heart of British national life.

It also offers the BBC a chance to define itself globally as a pre-eminent purveyor of facts in the disinformation age.

At a time when news provision has become a key weapon in the battle for global influence, the BBC World Service has historically been one of the jewels in the UK's crown.

Our opportunity in the digital age is bigger than ever to deliver information across the globe as a good in itself, and as an opportunity to drive UK values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law worldwide.

Conclusion

As someone who walks past that Orwell quote every time I enter the office, it's hard not to wonder what he would think about the moment we're in.

What would the prescient creator of the world of Big Brother think about the world of big data and those who control it?

I suspect I know how he'd feel about Eric Schmidt and his comment as Google CEO back in 2009: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'

There are urgent questions to be answered about the future media world we want to live in.

We need to rethink the regulatory environment in this country - and replace a Communications Act that pre-dates Facebook with one that can deliver on a clear vision.

But we also need to look at where the digital world comes up against the fundamental rights, freedoms and privacies we sign up to as societies and individuals.

Does the principle of media freedom need to be redefined and re-enshrined for the digital age?

Do we need to claim our personal data as a human right, rather than an asset to be bought and sold?

Now is the time to put in place the rights, protections and education that will safeguard not just our media environment - but the stability of our societies and democracies long into the future.

Thank you.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.