a journalist, if you feel that it s useful, but what about people who perhaps feel a little bit more conflicted about it and then receive, become targets of abuse? sure. it s not compulsory for any of ourjournalists to be - on social media. we do encourage it. we have very strict guidelines about what they should be - posting and whatl they shouldn t be. we urge them to steer clear of all kind of hyperpartisan i debates, not to get sucked into fierce arguments. - but, you know, it is a danger, and i think that the job that l rebecca is doing is- a very worthwhile one. isobel asher hamilton, does insider expect you to be on twitter? i think i would find it hard to do myjob if i weren t on twitter, because i find it useful as a tool because so many of the figures that i follow, you know, tech ceos and people like that, use it as a very instantaneous pr service. there was never a point when the company i m at now sat me down said you have to have a twitter because the company i d been at
she s nodding, and she said earlier it definitely was. pat on the back. i think the media needs to be in listening mode. and i think the media is in listening mode when it comes to areas like this. there was obviously the controversy earlier this year when the society of editors put out a statement about racism that did not meet the wide approval of the industry. it resulted in the president of the society leaving his position. so i think there is an acceptance that there is an issue and we need to be listening and we need to be engaging. ok, well, ian, thank you very much, and let s turn to the other big media story this week. isobel asher hamilton, senior tech reporter at insider you know, this story, one of silicon valley s most important figures has resigned. just tell us who is jack dorsey for those who don t know. jack dorsey is the founder of twitter. he founded it back in 2006, and he was ceo for two years before he got ousted, which i imagine he didn t enjoy. however, he r
he kind of chugged along as chair and i think exec chair for a bit as well, and then, in 2015, he did recapture the throne. he became ceo again. and, yeah, he s now announced he s resigning, and he s not really given a clear statement about where he s going, so there s a little bit of mystery around that. but, yes, he s very well known because i suppose he s one of these, like, founder ceos and also he sjust a very strange man. with his fasting, diet, his beard and all that. yeah, so i suppose he s one of these tech ceos that attained celebrity status, sort of like mark zuckerberg of facebook, now meta, orjeff bezos of amazon. just remind listeners you bring in meta how big twitter is today in comparison? in comparison with meta or facebook as we know it, or tiktok. oh, small. twitter s got about, i think,
because one newspaper group even announced they ve had to disable reader comments altogether on their coverage of the tragedy in the english channel. so, does trolling mean the end of the reporter reader relationship as we know it? let me introduce you to today s guests because we re also looking at the news that the founder of twitter, jack dorsey, is stepping away from the company. isobel asher hamilton is senior tech reporter at insider, and john thornhill is innovation editor and tech columnist at the financial times. we re also going to be considering a new report into how newspapers cover islam. rizwana hamid is director of the centre for media monitoring, a project of the muslim council of britain. and we ll be talking to her later, too. but we ll start the programme with that question i posed at the top, the role that reader comments play injournalism. ian carter is editorial director at iliffe media, and, ian, before we get into your experiences last week, tell us more about t
of criticism for a long time. it hasn t performed very well, unlike facebook or meta - or google and youtube. it has really been an also ran when it comes to advertisingl on social media. and so there s been a lot of activist investors - who wanted to get rid of dorsey. - and dorsey also has a second job. - he s the chief executive - of square, which is a payments processing company, which is worth a lot more money than twitter, and he has a bigger stake in that. than he does - in twitter as well. so i think- it was all lining up. it s been a long time that - shareholders have been wanting to push him out. but it sounds like the new boss is arriving into a very different atmosphere. you know, here in britain, this online harms bill going through, but you know there s other things going on around the world. you know, how much appetite do you think there is now to rein in the tech giants? well, i think there s an enormously growing pressure to reign in the tech companies. i was at a