Mirror publisher warns Facebook poses ‘potent threat to civil society’

The publisher of the Mirror and Express newspapers has warned that Facebook poses a “potent threat to civil society”, despite having the social media giant’s UK boss on its board for eight years.

Reach, which also owns dozens of regional titles, took aim at Facebook’s parent company Meta for its decision to deprioritise news on its platform.

It said: “The damage Meta has done to the news industry cannot be under-estimated.”

The broadside comes despite Reach counting Steve Hatch, Facebook’s UK chief and later vice president for Northern Europe, as a board member until last year.

Mr Hatch joined the publisher as a non-executive director in 2015. He stepped down after taking up the role of chief executive at pollster YouGov.

Reach is battling to turn its fortunes around following a botched shift to the digital era under chief executive Jim Mullen.

The publisher suffered a 15pc slump in digital advertising revenues last year, which it blamed in part on the wider economic downturn.

But Reach, which relies heavily on readers clicking through to its websites from social media, has also been hammered by Facebook’s decision to prioritise user content over news articles.

Bosses said this had led to page views falling by as much as 30pc for some local titles, which include the Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News.

Reach slashed around 800 roles last year, including many in its editorial department, in a bid to cut costs and shore up its balance sheet.

In its submission to a House of Lords inquiry, Reach said Facebook’s algorithm changes were a “contributing factor” behind the job cuts.

The company said: “Our assessment is that Meta has concluded that supporting the news industry globally is just too much hassle, and if given a choice, it would rather deplatform news and serve other stuff up to people, rather than be an active player in ensuring communities globally have access to reliable, researched information.”

Reach warned that this was damaging not only to publishers but to society more generally as “reliable, accurate information is, at best, being given only equal billing to conspiracy theories and misinformation”.

The company said it had “worked well” with Facebook for a number of years prior to the move to deprioritise news. Meta was contacted for comment.

Reach said Google had a “more proactive” relationship with publishers and did try to support the industry.

However, it took aim at the tech giant for its frequent algorithm changes, as well as its cannibalisation of advertising revenues.

Google said it paid out more than £245m to the top five UK news publishers in its ad network between 2018 and 2020, adding that it paid to license content from almost 300 titles.