BBC bias stories drive many people wild because it is a taxpayer-funded organisation, and also because we have a long-held reverence towards what people used to call ‘Auntie’. But in the long run, the issue of fairness and freedom in news-reporting and opinion-forming is going to focus far more around information giants such as Google and Facebook than it is for the national broadcaster, its best days already behind it.

Viewing figures for Newsnight — to pluck an example at random — are currently at under 300,000. In contrast an endless number of podcasts and online-only content providers get far larger viewing figures; Joe Rogan gets 6 million downloads a day. So while Emily Maitlis’s monologues are of great concern to small clusters of people in Britain, the overall impact is limited; Google and Facebook, in contrast, have the sort of power media barons of the newspaper age could only dream of.

And just as the tech platforms have allowed a great flowering of online debate, discussion and information-sharing, so the power of these companies to shut off that debate, by de-platforming or muting content they do not approve of, is an issue which becomes more troubling by the month.

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The issue recently hit particularly close to home. Earlier this month, an UnHerd interview with respected oncologist Professor Karol Sikora was, bizarrely, taken down by YouTube. According to the tech giant’s website, the interview was found to have ‘violated guidelines’ because the high-profile immunity specialist was critical of the lockdown policy (which, he believes, may end up killing many people due to missed cancer screenings).

YouTube has said in the past that it would delete any videos critical of WHO coronavirus guidance, the same World Health Organisation that has been heavily criticised for its links to the People’s Republic of China, (and its lack of links to the Republic of China).

But this in itself is not a simple public safety issue, because there is still much expert disagreement about how to fight the coronavirus pandemic; WHO, for example, has advised against mask-wearing in public, while some governments and states encourage or even enforce it.

After a certain amount of press attention, YouTube allowed the interview to go back online — which is entirely normal YouTube policy.

For years, the company has been hiding or removing content it didn’t approve of, and whenever public attention was brought to the matter YouTube would simply blame error or oversight. What it looks like, more often than not, is that the site acts as censor up until the moment that it is caught, at which point it’s one of those unfortunate errors again. If the unexplained disappearance of bad thinkers on the platform is not noticed, the error mysteriously remains in place.

Similar censorship happens at an astonishingly micro level. Just this week YouTube was accused of automatically removing below-the-line comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party. According to The Verge, statements containing certain words critical of the Chinese government have been regularly deleted from YouTube since at least October last year; statements that include ‘communist bandit’, for instance, have been being automatically erased in around 15 seconds.

When this was brought to YouTube’s attention, with all the attendant publicity and embarrassment, the company once again claimed that this censorship had been happening in error and that they were working on fixing the issue. Those damn gremlins in the machine, once again.

The problem for YouTube and other platforms is that over the last decade the goodwill that users initially had for these dynamic young tech start-ups has perceptibly faded, for a number of reasons. Some of the most high-profile include the revelations about Facebook data-harvesting and Google’s extraordinary desire to be seen to stand up to all governments apart from the authoritarian ones. 

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But equally significant is simply the growing number of individuals with their own experience of the tech platforms instituting forms of censorship, censorship which the companies first deny and then implement.

Twitter is perhaps the most pernicious case in point. For years, users of the addictive social media site — myself included — have noticed strange patterns on the platform. Certain tweets, or tweets containing particular words or relating to certain themes, would land as though into a great silence. They would go out and be liked by tiny numbers of people or none at all; or there would be nothing and then a sudden surge, as though in acknowledgement that the zero figure was unsustainable. Or people would find that the ‘likes’ for a particular tweet did not only remain static but would suddenly go down, as though Twitter had decided that a particular tweet needed to look less popular than it was.

I have experienced a certain amount of this myself, with readers regularly having to ‘re-like’ tweets promoting certain of my books. They had liked it, and Twitter had mysteriously ‘unliked’ it for them and they had then had to come back again to say that, no, they really did like it. I don’t think it is paranoia to observe that these shenanigans have a particular political bent.

It is well known that Silicon Valley is perhaps the most liberal (in the American sense of the term) place in the world. The people who work at the tech companies are almost uniformly left-leaning progressives, if not something stronger, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has admitted in the past that the corporation’s few conservatives don’t feel safe to voice their opinion. Similarly a former Facebook employee has accused the site of ‘curating’ feeds to screen out conservative content.

At the higher end, these companies have strong links with progressive politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The flood of former officials from the Obama administration into Silicon Valley after he left office, and Hillary Clinton failed to reach the White House in 2016, is well recorded. In recent times there has been a certain British flavour added to this, with reports that since Nick Clegg joined the top ranks of Facebook, that company has seen a marked influx of otherwise unemployed, perhaps otherwise unemployable, Liberal Democrats, swelling the ranks.

All of this and much more means that the tech companies swim in a bubble within a bubble. Their awareness of where the political or moral centre skews consistently left. When they do manage to take down terrorist material from their platforms, for instance, they placate the criticism they expect by stressing that they are opposed to ‘extremism’ in general; or ‘hateful content’, to give just one of the fabulously flatulent terms currently in vogue.

It is the reason why Twitter and all the other platforms acted so swiftly against Milo Yiannopoulos even as Dorsey’s site continued to allow Lashkar-e-Taiba (which carried out the Mumbai massacre in 2008) to keep active Twitter accounts.

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It is the same with YouTube, which even before you get to the issue of banning has the subtle art of ‘demonetisation’, by which the media giant signals whom it favours and whom it does not. For years it has become clear that conservative-leaning content in particular is having its ability to monetise (that is, make money from advertising revenue raised by views) removed because the site disapproves of the politics.

Regrettably, again, I find myself to have been on the receiving end of a fair amount of this, as has almost everybody I know who has questioned not just regular political orthodoxies, but specific Silicon Valley orthodoxies, such as anything to do with trans issues.

The kicker in all of this is that as the various platforms are caught out in various forms of censorship, their final move is to confirm in their terms of service that they are allowed to do the things that, up till that point, they denied doing. So having spent years denying that they engaged in ‘shadow-banning’, in January the new terms of service agreement that all Twitter users were requested to agree to included having the right to refuse to distribute certain content and to “limit distribution or visibility of any Content on the service”. Otherwise known as shadow-banning.

Now that much of this is out in the open, perhaps it is inevitable that there is a surge in people volunteering to make themselves the arbiters of what is and is not acceptable material to publish online. In recent weeks there have once again been calls to either ban Donald Trump from Twitter or insist that his tweets are in some way fact-checked into irrelevancy by the company. Well, good luck to anybody auditioning for that job.

The debate around this political curating, as with the scandal over these companies’ China policies, returns us to the simultaneous recognition of two deeply troubling facts: that the social media companies have an awesome responsibility, greater than perhaps any comparable information-wielding power in history; and that this is a power that the platforms in question are utterly unfit to wield.

BBC rows will come and go. But the inadequacies and malignancies of the social media platforms are here to stay.

This couldn’t come at a worse time. Newspapers and magazines that were already struggling are now facing an existential crisis. As the BBC’s Amol Rajan points out, the free-sheets that relied on advertising and distribution via public transport have seen their revenue streams not just cool, but freeze.

Media always was a matter of survival of the fittest. But it’s precisely the ‘fittest’ who are the problem. Regional papers with their numerous hardworking hacks are struggling for distribution and respect across the country. Meanwhile, the big guns, the frontmen and women on television, the show-boaters, the most prominent figures in the media landscape —are overseeing a massive decline in faith in an entire industry. It’s an industry vital to any democracy that wants to keep itself healthy.

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We don't need 'gotcha' journalism now

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The style of ‘gotcha’ journalism to which British journalism has increasingly stooped and relied upon in recent years is beyond inadequate. Of course, hacks pretending that they are experts in ventilator-acquisition will struggle to earn respect. Just as bad, though, are those journalists who, sensing the approaching tumbrils, succumb to a different temptation: the temptation to preach. For at the moment there are journalists — television presenters, in particular — who are assuming the mantel of moral arbiter. They are making their stance the story.

It is a temptation that the generally excellent interviewer and presenter Emily Maitlis gave into earlier this month, in an unprecedented edition of Newsnight. Sitting in the studio, and speaking directly to camera, Maitlis unleashed a monologue.

Her monologue took aim at people who had been describing the Prime Minister (in hospital at the time) as a “fighter”, while also addressing, on a wider level, the issue of inequality in the UK. So what were Maitlis and her producers up to? Did they honestly think that the nation seeks moral improvement from their late night news programme? Or, sensing a change in the weather, were they trying to get ahead of the storm and prove that they were on the side of the poor and dispossessed all along?

Whatever her motivation, Maitlis and her team, and journalists like her should know where this will lead. It’s not to greater trust in journalists. It takes you straight down to the show-boating sewer that is American political entertainment.

Anyone who harbours doubts about quite what a disgusting drain that is should consider just four examples from the last month, all from the ‘liberal’ side of the media in the States — precisely because that side now sees itself as some sort of ‘official opposition’. All these examples are all from the most powerful parts of an industry that is, by turns, obscenely self-congratulatory, sycophantic towards people of whom it approves, and visibly inadequate when trying to take on opponents in a fair fight.

Let’s take them in order.

British readers may be unfamiliar with Chris Cuomo. But it is worth watching this clip to observe the deep levels of delusion in which some US anchors can be encouraged to exist. It is surely one of the most fascinatingly boring segments ever aired on US television.

Earlier this week, CNN broadcast a video of Cuomo coming out of self-isolation in his own basement. The network dedicated precious time to this ‘news’ story. Ordinarily, ‘Journalist emerges from basement’ would need a certain heroic quality for it to be deemed newsworthy. Maybe a certain Terry Waite / John McCarthy vibe. But here is an auto-cue reader for one of the main networks having himself filmed coming out of quarantine from the car-park sized basement of his mansion and thinking that him emerging from his well-fed hell is a matter for national news.

It isn’t just the Marie Antoinette-ishness of it all. It is the fakery. The fact that the cameras just happen to be there. The fact that it now seems Cuomo did not in fact spend the whole period down in his basement. And the fact that this clearly isn’t the first time Cuomo has laid eyes on his wife and kids in weeks.

It is a sham: a glossily-produced, tin-eared, sprayed-on make-up, fake-tan sham. And one that no human being outside the Cuomo household could possibly have any interest in. Which isn’t to say that the rest of the Cuomo family looks particularly interested in said intrepid reporter’s re-emergence from their lower-ground floor.

Next: sycophancy. Parts of the media don’t bother to even pretend that they don’t have candidates who they favour and ones who they don’t. James Corden may not be a journalist in the normal sense, but he is the sort of television front-man whose boosting of, and pleasantness towards politicians can have a big impact. So, when Corden does one of his soft-ball interviews it can surely only help the person on the receiving end.

His efforts to humanise Speaker Nancy Pelosi during lockdown, however, make one wonder if Corden isn’t a fervent Trump-supporter. When he went live to her house, where would Speaker Pelosi happen to be but in the kitchen. She was hanging out like any American mom, with a cashmere sweater delicately draped round her shoulders. The viewer was lucky enough to hear Corden ask what Pelosi keeps in the deep freeze.

How one hoped that there would be something embarrassing in there: class-A drugs, gin, the disembodied heads of her opponents. But, almost as though everyone knew this was the question he was going to ask, lo-and-behold Speaker Pelosi’s freezer — the size of the average starter home – was filled with ice cream. It turns out she likes ice-cream. She also likes chocolate.  What can she say? She just likes the stuff, the crazy lady. If Corden had pressed further, he could probably have discovered that Pelosi also had a positive attitude towards new-born babies, puppy dogs and fluffy little kittens.

As I say, this soft-ball schtick is Corden’s ball of choice.

But Anderson Cooper of CNN? He is surely meant to be more than just an autocutie. He sometimes wears glasses. He has often been abroad. Earlier this week, Cooper and Doctor Sanjay Gupta had Joe Biden on their show as a guest. As with many other recent appearances by the Democrat Party’s nominee, Biden was all over the place. He had constantly to refer to his notes. He appeared on occasion to have got his notes muddled up. Without them he appeared able to wing it on occasion, but only by getting onto a talking point he has slipped into many times before.

Yet it wasn’t Biden’s performance that was so startling. It was the fact that his interviewers were so clearly willing him on. They didn’t interrupt him. They certainly didn’t shout over him. They sat there, and even when their eyes registered a flicker of concern about the answer he might be directing their way, it was swiftly replaced by the even clearer look in their eyes of them hoping he was going to pull it together and do well.

The fact that everyone is currently having to conduct interviews remotely could be blamed for some of this awkwardness. But it is in the final class – in which the interviewer turns out not to be so good without his supporting chorus — that Covid-19 makes its greatest exposure.

Most people have mixed feelings about Bill Maher — they like him when he agrees with them and dislike him when he doesn’t. Perhaps I should note that throughout his career I’ve always admired him. But there’s a problem with his show: the unnaturally close relationship between him and studio-audience. When Maher says something vaguely funny, the audience whoops and hollers. When a guest he disapproves of says something funny or wise that he doesn’t agree with, the guest is met with stony silence. It is made to seem as though it is very hard to get one over on Bill Maher.

It was only when someone who had been in the audience explained to me the warm-up procedures for the show and the fact that the audience is actually directed when to laugh, clap and applaud, that you realise how much power Maher has (far more than almost any other host) to be the one who decides which guests do well, and which points fly.

In lockdown, though, Maher has been deprived of this asset. And this past week he had Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw on his show. Crenshaw is a very impressive figure. A former Navy Seal, only in his mid-thirties, he is also a cerebral, restrained and very polite interviewee.

The ladies of The View among other programmes have already discovered how hard he is to isolate, denigrate and destroy in the way they ordinarily would with a figure of the political Right. But the Maher interview was fascinating. Not only because Crenshaw knew more about every issue raised than Maher did, but because it became clear that without the audience in the studio on his side, or the opportunity to turn to another guest when the wrong guest made the right impression, Maher was all at sea. When he wise-cracked it seemed inadequate to the task at hand. Crenshaw remained polite; Maher looked disrobed.

These are only a few examples — all from American media in the last few days — which exemplify a problem. A problem which — whatever its other faults — the British media has thus far avoided falling into.

The BBC matters for the same reason that CNN and other networks matter. These are the big beasts. They will almost certainly still be around once this is over, and for many years to come.

So when they go bad, the whole profession — the whole idea, purpose and justification of the trade — is threatened. When the British media apes its American equivalents, it may think it is ensuring its survival. It isn’t. It is hastening its decline in the only currency it should care about – the eyes of the viewing public.

Yet the social media platform does have an ability to highlight at fast speed some problems that are only noticeable at a slower rpm in the real world — one of which is the uncomfortable, ever-vanishing line between comment and journalism. While this blurring is not a completely new phenomenon, Twitter does have an ability to highlight as well as speed along cultural shifts.

Earlier this week there was a fine example of this trend. As news of Boris Johnson’s successful Conservative Party election victory broke, Lewis Goodall – Sky’s Political Correspondent – tweeted a photo of a television autocue with the caption “So great to share a set with Black Mirror today”.

So great to share a set with Black Mirror today. pic.twitter.com/lhQYQjhjqO

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) July 23, 2019

For those unfamiliar with it, Black Mirror is a Netflix series created by the former Guardian journalist Charlie Brooker featuring various dystopian fantasy futures. There is not very much for Goodall or anyone else to gain from this observation. It is possible that some people saw it and gave a snort of appreciation. Perhaps somebody somewhere actually laughed. But it is unlikely that anyone is still roaring, days later, at the brilliance and perceptiveness of the observation. So, like most things on social media, the short-term gain is not worth the cost. For a cost there is, paid in public trust even if not by the individual tweeter.

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If broadcasters still cared about the editorial independence of their employees, then comments like this would not be made by their journalists. For they further reveal what most of the public have come to suspect – that broadcasters presenting themselves as non-partisan in fact hold very clear political views and that these usually veer in a particular direction. Most, for instance, tend not to be enthusiastic Leave voters who secretly admire Prime Minister Boris Johnson and occasionally let this truth slip.

Of course, people have always harboured their suspicions, but not until journalists began to freely give away their thoughts on social media was such a smorgasbord of evidence presented.

For years, Gavin Esler was the apparently impartial presenter of many leading BBC political shows, including Newsnight, holding people to account whatever his own views. This was back when we viewers did not have access to a presenter’s opinions. Instead we would have to guess from throwaway remarks or the way they might interview one person compared with another.

After the Brexit vote, however, it became clear that Esler had exceptionally strong views about British membership of the EU, and then, in April, of this year he announced his membership and candidacy for the pro-Remain “Change UK” Party. In a speech at its launch and in subsequent media appearances, the man who had only recently been presented as impartial on our television screens turned out to be as partial as it was possible to be. Indeed, some of his political interventions could legitimately be described as “foam-flecked”.

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Are the public to pretend that Gavin Esler pre-2019 was a different beast from the Gavin Esler of this year? Or do we presume that he always held certain views and only really broke out when there was a chance to express them while standing – unsuccessfully, as it turned out – as a candidate for the European Parliament?

Esler may have broken cover, but by following a number of broadcasters on Twitter, particularly BBC and Sky broadcasters, it is now clear that the barrier is eroding for everyone. When Goodall sent his Black Mirror tweet, the journalist Tim Montgomerie (formerly of this parish) tweeted “Throughout Sky News we have pundits posing as reporters. Neither Sky execs or OfCom seem to give a damn.”

In response, Goodall’s Sky News colleague Kay Burley went for Montgomerie herself: “You’re an absolute disgrace to our profession,” she tweeted. “Seriously.” It was, as Montgomerie went on to say, a pretty unprofessional response in itself, but he was right – there is something strange about this whole game.

Partly it is so eroding to public trust because it all goes in one direction. On one single occasion in recent years has a television presenter let slip a view that did not fall into lock-step with the narrow orthodoxies of the broadcasting class. When Politics Live presenter Andrew Neil sent out one tweet last year mocking the increasingly conspiratorial Observer writer Carole Cadwalladr, he not only deleted the tweet but himself immediately became a news story. There were swift calls for his sacking, and the BBC felt compelled to publicly chastise Neil. As it happens, despite being almost uncontested as the country’s leading political interviewer, Neil no longer has a regular slot on the BBC.

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The incident stands out partly because it is so unusual for a broadcaster not to go in one predictable direction, but also because it was clear that a price must only be paid when the opinions are the “wrong” ones. And yet the breaking of the “fourth wall”, the one which meant impartial broadcasters once refrained from veering into personal political expression, has had a damaging effect on broadcast journalism.

Just observing what a broadcaster like Emily Maitlis chooses to retweet tells me more than I want to know about her own political views. Of course, these retweets go in the usual direction, and, of course, it bothers me not a jot where those views differ from my own – the trouble is that they begin to colour the rest of the work.

So, when Rod Liddle appeared on Newsnight last week and was roundly harangued (indeed rather basely insulted) by Maitlis I did not think “What a tough interview”. I had seen the sort of things Maitlis tweeted and retweeted in recent months and then – in the Newsnight studio – simply saw the same set of views played out in another form. There was no mystery anymore, no separation between the impartial interviewer and the opinionated tweeter.

Will this have an impact? My guess is that it already has, and when the media complain about disappearing levels of trust in our profession, it is worth remembering that we only have ourselves to blame.