“He’s a Jew, he’s not going to let him go for nothing, is he?”. That was the racist comment offered by a caller proffering his inane, hateful view of Tottenham Hotspur’s Jewish chairman Daniel Levy in respect of Harry Kane’s future, to TalkSport last week.
The comment was rightly ‘dumped’ by station before it made the air. Why? Quite aside from the moral responsibility the channel has not to platform such bigoted views, it also has an incentive. The regulator, Ofcom, oversees a Broadcasting Code. The Code rightly has a section on Harm and Offence. Read into the detail and you will find that “generally accepted standards” must be applied by broadcasters so that material causing offence is justified by the content. In this case, there was no acceptable context for the comment and there is a high likelihood that broadcasting this hate would have breached Ofcom’s code. There was a framework to address it.
However, whilst it was edited out of the TalkSport radio broadcast, the segment was livestreamed to the channel’s YouTube page, and then shared widely on social media. This, following what has been the worst period of antisemitism ever recorded in the UK.
The missing part of the story is that there is no regulator, no Broadcasting Code, and ultimately there has been no penalty for YouTube for facilitating the dissemination of anti-Jewish racism. There has been no comment from YouTube whatsoever, no apology and no correction. For all their challenges in this area, at least TalkSport acknowledged the issue and is seeking to address it, having stalled its livestream effort to improve its systems.
We cannot nor should we tolerate this free reign for social media companies. In its recent report, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate demonstrated that 84% of the clearly racist content it reported to social media companies was not acted upon, with Facebook performing the worst. As CCDH Chief Executive Imran Ahmed suggested, we can now put a figure on how much social media companies care about antisemitism and hate on their platforms – just 16%. The Antisemitism Policy Trust and Community Security Trust reported earlier this year that Google’s SafeSearch feature is not fit for purpose, and the company’s response, essentially setting out that SafeSearch isn’t designed to filter racist content, was as laughable as it was ill-conceived.
We need regulation now. We would not accept this type of get out of jail free card for racism anywhere else. We have the prospect of the Online Safety Bill on the horizon. We need to make haste and get this onto the statute books as early as possible. We should be giving Ofcom preparatory powers so that it can get moving as the online regulator and we need to ensure that the Bill itself does what is needed.
That means several things. First, the regulation must be systems based. We want attention at the earliest stages to the technology upstream which prevents illegality and hate being spread in content downstream.
Second, we must hold senior executives to account. I will be making the case that fines alone are not enough, and we should not reserve powers to hold individuals accountable for large failures, we need them in the Bill at the start.
Finally, I share the view of some other parliamentarians that we may want to look again at how we register such entities in the UK, and whether we would like them to be licenced corporations here at home, with all the accompanying responsibilities.
At the heart of all of this is a fundamental question of fairness. Social media can connect people in very positive ways, we can make friendships, grow businesses and entertain one another. However, the rules of play must be fair. Social media cannot and must not be allowed to be a free for all, where racism goes unpunished. It does not happen on TV, radio, and many other spaces in the public sphere, it must not be the case online. I hope YouTube’s days of quietly facilitating the broadcast of racism, are numbered.
Andrew Percy is MP for Brigg and Goole
