It was a fearless female investigative journalist who ended the monopolistic empire of history’s richest man, John D Rockefeller. So perhaps it is some kind of cosmic revenge that Rockefeller’s modern-day equivalents in Big Tech are behind the collapse in investigative journalism, as cash-strapped publishers slash jobs.
Ida Tarbell was in 45 when, in 1903, she began a series of articles in McClure magazine uncovering criminality and bullying within Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company. Tarbell grew up in northern Pennsylvania, a landscape dotted with oil derricks. But when Standard Oil moved in with illegal deals and unfair tactics in the early 1870s, her father’s business and dozens of others went bust. For Ida, the story was personal. For America, it led to a Supreme Court ruling that Standard Oil’s monopoly should be broken up, and to a new public scepticism about big business.
Over the past few weeks another American courtroom, this time in Virginia, has been considering another monopoly, as the US government’s Department of Justice brings a case to break up Google’s grip on the global digital advertising market.
I appreciate that sounds dull (that’s why I had to use an intro about a swashbuckling journalist), but if you’ve ever griped about clickbait, or the collapse in regional news, or a title closing its office on your high street, or even a proliferation of typos, please read on.
Google controls 90 per cent of all online searches. On mobiles, it’s 96 per cent. “To google” has become the verb for all digital discovery. The company allegedly also controls 91 per cent of publishers’ ad servers (which generate the adverts that appear alongside content) and over 80 per cent of ad demand (from companies wanting to place ads). Google serves up 13 billion adverts a day, with nine out of ten global publishers dependent on it. Last year it made about $238bn from online advertising.
The four-week trial, which was covered diligently by the journalist Ricky Sutton on his Substack “Future Media”, heard how other advertising platforms had tried to compete but were bought out by Google, left to languish and then closed down.Meanwhile, publishers told of how they were unable to leave Google’s clutches for fear of unmanageable losses. The News Corp employee Stephanie Layser told the court the company had wanted to innovate, but leaving Google would cost $9m a year: “I felt like they were holding us hostage.” It’s enough to make Rockefeller blush.
By taking the majority of ad revenues (not to mention directing what content is promoted to readers through its algorithm), Google is starving publishers of millions of pounds and hollowing out journalism. Hundreds of titles have closed, job losses increased and investment in costly investigative and foreign journalism slashed. Analysis by Press Gazette shows 2,500 media jobs have gone in the UK and US this year. The true number is probably far higher. Clickbait has worsened as publishers decide their only hope is to create more content to display more ads.
If Judge Leonie Brinkema concludes that Google’s behaviour is monopolistic, it may be forced to sell parts of its business. That will help, but the damage is already done – to news organisations and to society, as trust in the media weakens while the polarising extremes of unregulated social media flourish. As Tarbell once said about Rockefeller: “Our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence he exercises.”
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As revealed in these pages last month, the editorship of the Spectator has fallen to the one-time journalist, one-time politician, all-time machinator Michael Gove.
The GB News founder Paul Marshall, who spent £100m on the title, has dropped out of the race for the Telegraph, with insiders saying he wants to focus on growing the Spectator in the US. Money will be no object for Gove on either side of the Atlantic, and even Spectator staff most loyal to the former editor Fraser Nelson are saying the cash injection and renewed attention will be good for the title.
Gove was telling anyone who would listen at the Tory conference that he had landed “the best job in the world” – even better than prime minister. One person listening with a raised eyebrow must surely have been his on-off friend Boris Johnson. One of the funniest lines in Johnson’s new memoir recalls when he fell ill with Covid: “‘Pericles died of the plague,’ I had earlier reminded my friend Michael Gove, and his spectacles seemed to glitter at the thought.”
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The BBC has apologised to the Sherlock actress Amanda Abbington after upholding “some, but not all” of her complaints about her Strictly Come Dancing partner Giovanni Pernice. An investigation cleared the dancer on allegations of physical aggression, but said he had been verbally abusive towards Abbington. The actress pulled out of the show last year, later claiming she suffered “inappropriate, mean, nasty bullying”. Complaints were also made by other previous contestants.
The BBC has pumped huge resources into duty of care for contestants this year, including rehearsal chaperones, a daily training log system, a psychological review, well-being questionnaire, exit interviews and behaviour workshops for staff.
Strictly’s shame is the latest in a long line of allegations about bad behaviour on reality TV shows. Perhaps the reality they reveal is the ugliness of human nature.
[See also: The dark heart of Strictly Come Dancing]
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This article appears in the 02 Oct 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The fury of history