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The head of Channel 4 has called on the television industry to unite to battle the “wanton abandonment of the pursuit of truth” by “tech titans” seeking profits.
Alex Mahon said tech giants are so “hellbent” on making money from “what they deem to be free speech that they are perfectly happy to eradicate truth and facts along the way”.
Following a survey carried out by the broadcaster that claimed over half of generation Z think the UK would be better under a dictator and 45% of young men agree that “when it comes to giving women equal rights, things have gone far enough,” Mahon said: “These are massive issues which we ignore at our peril.”
Speaking at a Royal Television Society event to launch Channel 4’s report Gen Z: Trends, Truth and Trust, Mahon said gen Z “curate their own understanding of ‘the truth’ in ways that exacerbate a gender division and undermine the value of democracy.
“There is clear evidence of democratic disengagement and an increasing shift towards authoritarianism already. Among those aged 13 to 27 in the UK, we found, shockingly, that 52% say they think the UK would be better with a strong leader, unfettered by parliament and elections.”
“Algorithms designed to elicit anger, surprise or outrage have a devaluing effect on the currency of reliable information. The business model of the technology giants is at odds with the safety of our societies.”
Mahon pointed out TikTok, Meta and YouTube are “not classified as publishing businesses”, so are not regulated “to take responsibility for what they publish, nor prioritise facts over opinion”, yet they “broadcast, every second, content that influences democratic discourse”.
She pointed out that the tech giants can “with the touch of a keyboard” make “their algorithms brush aside or skip over our news output in favour of news made up in someone’s living room”.
Referring to Meta’s recent decision to follow X’s path and remove fact-checkers, Mahon said “we are facing a new era … where unregulated platforms that dominate distribution have publicly announced a wanton abandonment of the pursuit of truth.
“Lying is more exciting and fiction travels faster than fact.”
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She added: “The dangers are clear – a shift to non-facts, to untruth, a world where the challenging rigour of our media ecosystem is steadily devalued; where meaningful engagement, integrity and shared understanding are subsumed by the trade in shallow attention.
“If we do not come up with a British solution, it is clear that international market forces will impose on us some other reality that we can regret at leisure.”
Aside from creating “thumb-stopping” video that appeals to gen Z, solutions suggested by Mahon include creating a “TrustMark” stamp of authenticity on public service media (PSM) videos to show what is true and untrue; algorithmic prominence on social media for PSM content, as it is already on TV; and “regulation that supports PSM to shape AI” by using validated PSM content to train AI systems.
C4’s survey of 3,000 youngsters also revealed “gender rather than education” is now driving an “ideological split where young women hold more liberal views on gender politics, immigration and racial justice than their male peers”.
