News brands are increasingly working together to confront the concentrated power of tech platforms’ algorithms, Reach CEO Jim Mullen told the Stationers Company Autumn Livery Dinner this week
According to a report from The Media Leader, Mullen used the speech to underline the scale of the challenge the news brand industry faces against tech giants’ attempts to divert readers’ attention back to their platforms.
He said: “Advertisers understandably like the fact that the platforms can target adverts directly to people who are naturally interested in their products because of their search history.
“We can also do that as we grow our digital audience, but the slope is steeper as a large part of our audience are continually at risk of being diverted away from us by the platforms.”
He went on to highlight the real-life consequences that algorithms’ promotion of “unreliable, untrustworthy and unscrupulous news” can bring to society offline.
He said: “Platforms have so far resisted efforts to be lumped in with publishers and the responsibilities we carry.
“They don’t determine reliable news, they don’t place a value on trusted sources, they just provide avenues of news for the reader to browse.
“It’s why politics of deliberate division and misinformation have sprung up. It’s why teams of people work to influence attitudes and feelings in other countries. It’s why recent elections and referendums have been influenced by such operators.”
Recent insight from Newsworks has demonstrated a clear concern among the British public about misinformation, as well as a reliance upon trusted news sources to verify what they read online.
Our ‘Fact not fake’ report found 74% of Brits turn to their trusted news brands to check the facts behind content they find on social media, rising to 78% among 16–34 year olds.
Elsewhere, data from Ofcom’s latest ‘News consumption in the UK’ report shows that 66% of Brits find newspapers accurate versus 43% for social media.
Meanwhile, Newsworks’ state of the nation report from January 2024 showed a growing appetite to spend time away from social media and towards journalism content.
Four in 10 said they wanted to spend less time on social media platforms, rising to half of 25–34s. Three in 10 Brits wanted to spend more time with quality journalism, pushing to over a third among 16–24s.
