Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Media myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Social media platforms operating in the UK should be forced or incentivised to promote content from trusted sources to avoid an “American news swamp”, according to the boss of broadcaster Channel 4.Alex Mahon said content from respected broadcasters was being “shadow banned” by computer technology that selected what was promoted online, and regulated providers should be given “algorithmic prominence” to prevent this from happening.“We’ve got to make sure that we fight for what I’m calling ‘algorithmic prominence’, and prioritisation and identification on those platforms,” she told the Financial Times ahead of a speech on Thursday to the Royal Television Society.“The way the algorithms works is salacious and attention grabbing. Things travel quicker, which tend to be more rightwing,” said Mahon, who said the likes of Meta and X should be made to change their behaviour, potentially via tax breaks or regulation.She added: “Here, in the UK, we still have the option to resist a slide into an American news swamp.”Mahon said US consumers received most of their information from social media platforms that were economically incentivised to spread the popular above the factual because it made more money.“We definitely see evidence that trusted sources are being shadow banned because you see stories kind of disappear,” she said. “Are we on platforms where we will get prioritised? How do we make sure they can’t just change the algorithm tomorrow?”Mahon’s views will put her at odds with the large US technology groups that control the majority of social media, with the Channel 4 boss saying the proliferation of online disinformation was exacerbating a crisis in society, affecting younger audiences in particular.“We’re losing social cohesion. We’re splitting into atomised groups who won’t discuss different perspectives, who listen separately to different streams of knowledge,” she said.Mahon also criticised the move by Facebook owner Meta to drop fact checking on its platform in the US, calling it as “antithetical to a cohesive society”.In the UK, the Media Act passed last year requires TV platforms to carry and give appropriate prominence to designated public service broadcaster TV apps and content. Mahon can see a similar approach for algorithmic prominence, saying: “You can regulate it. Or you could say ‘to operate here, we give you a tax break’.”Mahon is pushing for a new quality “trustmark” to indicate fact-checked content from professionally produced and regulated media, and urged better means of monetisation for news providers on social media platforms.She worries how social media giants such as TikTok, Meta and YouTube avoided responsibility for the content on their sites because they are not classified as publishing businesses — unlike broadcasters.“We put rules on television when it took up a vast amount of people’s time” to comply with them, she said. “All these platforms are pretending not to be publishers.”Traditional broadcasters such as Channel 4 are fighting for their future on digital platforms, where their audiences have migrated to but where making money can be harder. The Financial Times this week revealed plans by Sky News to shift resources away from its linear channel to premium paid content.Mahon said Channel 4 was “way ahead” of rivals in its transition to digital, while the group would also diversify its revenue over the next five years by creating its own TV shows for the first time. The UK changed the law last year to allow Channel 4 to make and own rights to its own productions for the first time in its 40-year history, rather than outsource production to the independent sector. This could include taking equity stakes in TV production groups, Mahon said, but Channel 4 would not spend “billions buying companies”.Channel 4 had 1.83bn views on social media platforms last year, the majority on TikTok. It has weekly “reach” of about 35mn on social media, about eight times greater than on live television.
