The Guardian’s Katharine Viner hits out at Facebook and the blurring of real news and fake news
The editor of the second largest English language news site in the world, the Guardian’s Katharine Viner, has hit out at Facebook creator Mark Zuckerburg, saying he doesn’t care about content.
Lenore Taylor, Katharine Viner and Mark Colvin at last night’s event
Speaking at last night’s Guardian Live event, the editor-in-chief implied the social media site is careless about content, blurring the lines between the truth and fake news.
“I’m not sure how crucial news organisations are to him (Mark Zuckerberg). To him it’s just about content, it’s not about good, factual content, true content, it’s just content,” she said.
Social media and internet users are the second main cause of the challenge of the truth within news and associated publications, says Viner.
She said: “Every time you form any action on Facebook, just liking something, you are doing their work for them by feeding their algorithm that makes their profits. This works by leveraging the closeness of our relationships with family and friends as hosted by Facebook.”
Viner said facts are becoming more about what you feel to be true which makes challenging your own opinions and ideas increasingly harder.
She discussed the rise of the internet and Facebook and the ways in which its impacted news today and the truth.
“On the internet all stories look the same, a story from a trusted news source like The Guardian and a story from a Macedonian fake news farm are given equal status in your Facebook feed. It can be hard to differentiate, even when you work in the news.”
“We now spend a lot of our time in echo chambers, hearing views the same as our own, reinforcing our perspectives, driving ourselves deeper in.”
“We’re rarely challenged, we’re rarely hearing a different point of view,” she said.
Advertising expenditure has also significantly decreased alongside the variety of news on individuals Facebook’s feed, she said.
Viner attributed Facebook’s large profitability to its “giant store” of personal data, holding the information and algorithms of 1.7 billion people around the world.
“All the advertising money that used to go to news organisations now goes to Google and Facebook instead,” she said.
“Advertising, which has helped fund news organisations and fund the Guardian for nearly 200 years, is moving away from them at a dramatic pace. Google and Facebook now take an unbelievable sum of 99 cents for every new dollar of advertising money in the US.”
“Some people thought the internet would democratise publishing in fact it has put the power into the hands of the very few into the hands of the two (Facebook and Google) without any of the accountability and responsibility of the old gate keepers.”
Abigail Dawson was Mumbrella's senior content journalist covering event content. She left Mumbrella to move into an agency role in 2020.
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Pot calling the kettle black
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