Last week, Caitlyn Jenner and a robot called Sophia talked about what it means to be human and a woman. Yet, while the 60,000-strong audience they addressed at a tech-friendly Web Summit in Lisbon appeared cutting edge, their industry is in danger of inheriting elements of the old industries they consider part of a dinosaur age.
Sexism and homophobia in Hollywood, the media and politics has been exposed by recent scandals. Yet these issues blight the far younger tech industry.
It is normally newspapers that are compared to the extinct monsters of the past by Silicon Valley types. One hundred and 98 local newspapers have closed in Britain alone in little over a decade. But thriving industries have been shown to have Jurassic-era values. Harvey Weinstein is alleged to have hired spies and tried to prevent women speaking out, according to the New Yorker; and young men kept quiet about Kevin Spacey as the world gushed over the great actor’s portrayals of evil.
Hugely profitable media organisations, too, have been rocked by sex scandals in which powerful men acted with impunity. Disgraced Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly had a clause in his contract that meant he could not be fired over harassment allegations unless they were proven in court. Settlements were allegedly reached with at least six women, including one for $32m (£24m), yet Fox still offered the host of its top-rated show a four-year deal worth $100m earlier this year. Money doesn’t just talk, it silences too. Yet the cable news business is predicted to go the way of other legacy media outlets as consumer behaviour shifts and eyeballs and money move online.
So what of the brave new world of Silicon Valley web giants? At last week’s Web Summit gathering, small cards spread around massive venues asked respondents to answer the question: “How sexist is the industry?” Even before the answers are in, the signs are not good.
Since revelations from a former Uber employee about sexual harassment led to the resignation in June of Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, many women throughout the industry have come forward to talk of men refusing to hire or invest in them without sexual favours.
One young entrepreneur, Sarah Kunst, told of being sent a Facebook message after one job interview that read: “I was getting confused figuring out whether to hire you or hit on you.” She never got the job.
Few women do. Technology is an industry overwhelmingly run by white middle-class men. The percentage of women in computing professions was 26% in 2016, according to the National Centre for Women and Information Technology. The figures for women in senior leadership teams are far lower, as are those for African American and Hispanic men. Female entrepreneurs received $1.5bn in funding last year compared with $58bn for men, according to the database company PitchBook.
It isn’t all about the figures, of course. Technology has given women and some men the tools to report abuse using the #metoo hashtag, but other signs of support are less obviously in place.
There are some examples of good practice, often following bad. When Blake Irving joined GoDaddy as chief executive five years ago, it was infamous for sexist ads that presented women as the “sexy” side of the business and men as the “brains”. GoDaddy became well known; the outrageous ads worked. Yet Irving decided to change workplace practices as well as the ad agency. After insisting all managers review every member of their team for promotion, even those who don’t ask, the number of women promoted jumped 30% in a year.
There has been a backlash. This summer Google employee James Damore reopened the old chestnut of genetic differences for the female failure to “get” technology – ignoring decades of success for women in computing . His 10-page memo got him sacked but also gained him many admirers for somehow speaking out against the so-called politically correct establishment.
The establishment, of course, seems happy to accept the old biological tosh that “men will be men”. That view is only challenged when high-profile figures receive the sort of publicity that has been making headlines. Even then, women calling out abuse online continue to be confronted by critics who condemn them as snowflakes for moaning. This is like the female dodo telling her daughter that all’s fine because she’s survived so far. The dinosaur of old media may yet survive and evolve into something better, for there is much good in the old as well as bad; but let’s hope what comes next isn’t, in the context of gender equality, even worse. A culture of male dominance within the technology industry should be the first artefact heading for the museum.
Will broadcast news be biggest casualty of 21st Century Fox sale?
News that Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox entertained a possible sale to Disney rekindles the old question: what happens when the 86-year-old steps aside?
By even countenancing a sale, James Murdoch, the Fox chief executive and the magnate’s youngest son, appeared to be admitting that a company valued at $50bn just wasn’t big enough to compete in a new world of global media powerhouses in which huge, dull telecommunications groups such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast hoover up as much content as they can. Still, the Murdochs as sellers of large profitable businesses would mark a new departure.
Rumours immediately started that James, with his support for the environment and embarrassment over PR headaches like the aforementioned O’Reilly, was no chip off the old block. But why would James, and his older brother Lachlan, want to be left with the scandal-hit bits of the business they like the least – the Fox cable network and newspapers?
The Murdochs apparently rejected an outright sale because of the price, but what if talks led to some sort of joint-venture that would leave the Murdoch family trust with a stake in an even bigger media group? The young Murdochs, beneficiaries and guardians of the trust, would become richer as a result of any such deal.
As these giant media companies consolidate, the biggest casualty could be broadcast news. Good but not a must-have, even the best news channel could be sacrificed to make more money.
At the same time, Sky threatened to close Sky News if its $11bn bid fails to get regulatory agreement because of concerns over competition. Offering quality round-the-clock journalism, the channel is thought to lose more than £40m a year. And unlike the Murdoch newspapers, its political clout is negligible – the result of the impartiality rules that govern British broadcasting. By contrast, Fox News and CNN, also subject to a regulatory tussle as part of a takeover, make an estimated $1bn.
When the news first emerged, the threat to Sky seemed an idle one. But it was James Murdoch, not his father, who once said: “The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.”
May takes time out to toast Dacre’s silver anniversary
There have been five prime ministers since 1992, when Paul Dacre became editor of the Daily Mail. In that time it has increasingly been hard to tell which office wields most power. But since 2010, with the Conservative leader lacking a majority and the Mail emboldened by the success of its beloved Brexit referendum, the power balance has been clearer.
Not only was Dacre privately dined by No 10 during Theresa May’s first six months in office, but last week, amid the scandal and chaos surrounding the departure of two cabinet ministers, the prime minister took time out to attend a gala dinner in Stationers’ Hall to celebrate the Mail man’s silver anniversary. After a quarter of a century and two major heart operations, all bets are off on whether Dacre will outlast the prime minister. Of course he will.
