last week a Silicon Valley billionaire asked me a question. Not, unfortunately, “what are your bank details?”, but something rather more testing: “Name one way in which journalism companies are not the same as software companies.”

I could have launched into a long list starting with “at journalism companies, generally the people who write the code are not in charge, which explains a lot”, running through “there are more opinionated women in news companies — or actually more women, or some women”, and ending with “at journalism companies no one can afford a Tesla, or, indeed, to take an Uber”.

What I actually said was “at news organisations the central organising principle is usually to produce something with social impact first ahead of utility or profit.” That’s not to say that news organisations always execute particularly well on that promise or that the cultural impact is always beneficial. But the fact is that doing the job well usually means that journalists end up being ostracised or imprisoned rather than ringing the opening bell at the New York stock exchange.

The said billionaire accepted this explanation, but on reflection I was mildly surprised he needed to be told. The question is a good one, however, as Silicon Valley companies take on more and more functions of the free press. I made this a theme of the Reuters Memorial Lecture recently, focusing on what the right relationship is between Silicon Valley companies and journalism. Why does this even matter? Because, almost without noticing it, we have entered a world where the way we see news is dictated not by what’s on the news-stand or even what leads the six o’clock news, but what we see on our phones through another filter, increasingly through Facebook.

This critical point of transition in the communications world has arrived at a speed we can barely comprehend. In 2011 research from the Pew Center in the US reported that only 11 per cent of US news consumers on any kind of digital device described themselves as getting their news through “Facebook or Twitter”. In the 2014 report of the same metrics 30pc reported getting their news primarily from Facebook alone. That is a very rapid rate of migration in just two years.

Even where news apps are keeping audiences within one news brand, the apps themselves often rely on being compliant with the app distributors to get to your phone in the first place. And it is not just the consumption of news but also the discussion of events which is now almost exclusively owned by social media companies. Last week technology news site Re:Code announced that it would stop hosting comments on its own sites as the conversation around stories was already happening on social media.

We like to self-flagellate in journalism, and here is another birch twig to flex: why have media companies completely failed to create any successful social platforms in the past 20 years? The idea of widespread publishing is anathema to most news organisations. Editors are the highest paid and most revered employees in editorial organisations and their key job is to say “no” to parts or all of an idea. The idea that you would deliberately build something where anyone could publish anything scares and exhausts news companies. And now it is too late, at least for the moment.

Because just as we arrive at the perfect point where a shadow cabinet minister can be sacked for an event entirely conducted on and through Twitter, social platforms are also wondering how they might manage the business of editing rather better. Their answer of course is not to have contemplative meetings involving people nodding sagely at whatever their boss thinks, but to build an algorithm which will decide “on your preferences” which news and comments you should see.

Although so far the Silicon Val­ley solutions have been better, easier and more accessible, they are too opaque, centralised and unregulated for us to think this is an acc­eptable state of affairs. Last week in the US president Barack Obama made a strong statement on protecting “net neutrality” , which is effectively a way of keeping access to the internet centrally regulated and reasonably open and fair.

So far central regulatory organisations have stopped short of asking Silicon Valley companies for more accountability in terms of how they sort content, what their al­­g­o­rithms are, and whether we can tolerate the current level of opacity, but this cannot be far behind.

—By arrangement with the Guardian

Published in Dawn, November 25th , 2014

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