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This is the media show from BBC Radio 4.

in a moment the executive chairman of Sky News group David Rhodes on his plans for Sky News

and on his years as a senior TV news, exec in New York

if you look at the front page of the Financial Times the headline reads open AI and meta.

poised for artificial intelligence leap

with bots that reason

bots that reason is definitely a phrased that requires some explanation.

We'll talk to me to merge yet who wrote the story and who's looking closely at how AI

Is changing how Media is made and madam meter?

It's your job to report on AI for the for the ft.

I wonder what you see as the

the primary challenges of getting across the concepts that are within it

to your readers and

and and what a viewers.

I think the big challenges the complexity of the technology and how much people kind of believe they already know about it so kind of

making sure that we're breaking down these misconceptions about the fact that it's going to be you know the next Terminator that's going to destroy us all.

Or that it's going to save everything and solve every problem.

You know it isn't these two very kind of clear binaries there's all of the nuance in between.

And it's bringing that across.

I think that is the hardest challenge and you'll see that from all the comments under that story like 400 of them well.

We're going to get into how best to explain artificial intelligence with your help with the help of David Rhodes from Sky News too.

And a little later and we're also be focusing on Donald Trump's social Media platform truth social.

And Billy boozer is the former chief product officer of Truth social and he is with us.

Billy welcome to the media show I wanted to ask because we won't be speaking to you for a bit, but I really want to ask at the top when you met Donald Trump

a Mara Lago

what did he ask you to build?

I want it to build something that continued to help us voice get distributed and and and it was paramount to him that we built something that allowed everyone to have free speech so

His Focus was always free speech.

Fantastic we'll be hearing a lot more about that later.

Yep, we'll speak to Billy in a little while, but let's start off with David Rhodes whose here in the media show studio hi David thanks for coming in now.

Thanks.

Thank you guys for having me and like I'm used to being on your side of the table or at least.

Working with the people on your side of the tables is going to be.

New for me actually answering questions and is it something you're looking forward to we're going to say bit nervous.

Yes ask me afterwards, but let's see all right.

Well.

Your job title now is executive chairman for the Sky News group, but you've been.

president of CBS news in the US who are the youngest person to ever take such a senior job in US TV news

before that you ahead of us television at Bloomberg you've also been advised president of news.

For Fox News so you've held some big gigs.

In the US too and I and I wonder how you compare.

being an exact within

the UK media with being a news exec in New York

it's coming up on four years living here in the UK

It's journalism culture, that's second to not and

when you are an institution like institution like Sky News you get to do things.

cover things that

in a lot of other organizations, I've been involved with you'd have to.

Find a small place to fit that story.

but here the audience proposition the audience expectation is of much more of that sort of coverage so

something like the Alexei navalny death comes along and a lot of places in America you'd be

trying to find 75 seconds.

In a program where you can.

Address that here that's special coverage there's an audience expectation we're going to spend a lot of time on it.

We had a sky a lot of resource out in the field on it and we saw a real audience impact from responding to it.

And what actually is your job? It's

exactly the chair and what does that actually mean for your Sky in charge of all hair and makeup?

you could have come in a bit earlier that and helped me with my most definitely I walked in not that's but

now what it means is we have a group that spans about a 700 person.

newsroom in the English language with

Bureaus around the world we have an Italian language service that's actually where I was this morning.

with about 200 based in Milan but also obviously in Rome we have joint Ventures

and we plug into a larger family of news operations of the comcast company which is our parent.

which includes

NBC cmbc MSNBC telemundo local television stations

but are you getting involved in what the lead story is or how much time the lead story would

be on air force or your you're not dealing with that kind of thing at all.

You can't do these jobs without spending some time in the editorial and my whole career is bras.

We've talked about is coming up through an editorial operation working on a assignment desk.

sending crews' out editing

I mean that being said we've got a really capable team we have excellent executive editor here in the UK Jonathan Levy

he and I were.

Together at a lord's committee last week about some of the kinds of issues.

We're talking about today.

so

I try to let people do their job produce programmes on all platforms.

go out every day and cover stories and call it like they see it and then just support that offering so it actually reaches an audience and

as a commercial future and what time does your first phone call start in terms of work phone call.

Are you want to zoom as 7 saying? This is this should be the top story or these are the great stories or I think I have to people's probably.

Great disruption I I make the first phone call of generally and what time is that? You one of those three mm people?

Those bosses I've had them.

Yeah, if you had those and

Not good, you don't want someone calling it 3:00 a.m.

Or even four or five but that to be fair wasn't in the media that was before you know it's worse if they don't call okay.

That's way work.

That's how you trolled them anyway by telling them that like I've worked for a lot of.

really impactful and incredible bosses

you know what you want and I think this is actually true about the whole profession.

I mean the worst thing is if they haven't seen the show like what do you mean? You haven't seen the show like I've you know listen to it.

Of course you of course you want people.

you

Want me to call you.

Absolutely you do I hope.

And before we get into the strategic challenges for Sky News which I know you're grappling with in your in your current role as our all leaders are big news organizations.

We also want to understand your experiences and in America as a

as a as a leader within a number of new gyms because I'm sure they inform what you're doing in.

sky so let's go back quite a few years to

When you were vice president of news for fox, how did you get that gig?

I got that gig in.

I got that gig because I worked my way up from running the autocue.

honestly

I started working there in 1996 at the beginning of this career and

basically they hired.

700 people about the size of the

newsroom we now have working English at Sky and

we're doing that over the space of about three months so not to.

diminish my

credentials for that opportunity, but I mean basically if you can get in the door.

They were hiring a lot of people in really short Spanish time and you sort of work your way up that was my entry level opportunity.

and when you were at Fox

You presumably were aware that it was becoming quite a divisive presence within the the American media well.

I left in 2008.

I worked for news corp a second time when I first moved to this country.

at that time to speck out what later became talked TV

and then I left the company a second time about three years ago when I went to work.

at Sky on the business side

Did you know we put model when you back in those box days?

Was he present at Fox were you were you at what point did you encounter him?

You know it's interesting when you talk about somebody who actually you know has seen the program engages with it has an opinion.

I mean he is one of those people and I think that he

he's interested to know what's going on.

He's interested in what you've heard what you're reporting.

What's going to be in the programme what's going to be in the paper?

You know in those early years that first time working at the company.

I really had no interaction with them because I was at a relatively speaking at a line level.

You know this second time around I mean he's now he just turned 93 last month so.

he was and it was also kovid and I was relocating from the United States

but he was still very interested in the work that we were doing and I just mainly found him to be you know an engaged proprietor.

I mean maybe that.

maybe that falls short- of the mark of

all the

stories that people expect but he was just

interested in engaged

and I'll folks at the time that you work there will often hear from people who've worked within Fox News saying there's a division between the opinion programs that are on in primetime in the evening and the broader.

the broader news operation and

critics of fox would reject that that distinction when you were there, did you feel it?

I you know I left in 2008 about 10 days after the

after the Presidential elections so and it's been a lot of road since then I guess it's fair to say.

They have an entirely different prime Time line-up and it's different kind of Media environment.

I mean that's part of.

Where we are today, I mean consider for instance.

Sky at that time was a listed company in this country which was

controlled by the Murdoch operation

sky today is a wholly on subsidiary of

Comcast NBC universal and as our we as the Sky News operation so that's changed.

And then just the media landscape of course is changed cable.

news in the United States

Was in an extraordinary growth phase.

from about 2000 until 2007

but peak cable as far as household distribution in the United States was sort of mid 2007 now.

It's going to have a long.

tail

but when you think about that.

you know there haven't been net new homes into which those networks like Fox News

Go

Since that time and here we are in 2024.

It's a very different very much more digital.

Very much more technologically informed Media diet.

But when you look at vogs now, do you buy into the argument that there is a dividing line between news?

And opinion and what was it like that then I think that.

A channel like that and many of these channels.

They're effectively programed by their audience.

I mean you can see in real time what people respond to.

and so

I think it's only natural it's interesting because the rest of the conversation they were going to be talking about.

artificial intelligence and how out things are algorithmically determined

but this is one way in which things sort of haven't changed I mean producers.

You can't help it.

You look at what you did the day before.

You have some data about how the audience did or didn't respond to it.

While you're programming it you have a little bit of a sense of whether it's going to work or it's not.

You know I don't think.

that's

that's one thing that whether there is or isn't there was or wasn't a divide between news current affairs opinion etc.

I think.

I think all media products.

Whether it's fox or Bloomberg or CBS or Sky or I'm probably leaving out a couple of other places that I've worked.

They all work off of one thing which is what's the audience expectation if you meet that expectation or exceed it.

it works

and if you fail to meet it, it doesn't work and you can modify that the audience is expectation of you over time.

But fundamentally you can't change what people expect from your organisation you have to you have to hit that every day.

It's interesting you mentioning the

the ratings that come in from the from the night before I was telling Katie as we were getting ready to come into the studio that

I can remember talking to some one person who worked within us cable news in the early part of the of the noughties saying.

That everyone knew down to the minute when the ratings were going to arrive in the afternoon and the whole day kind of revolved around it and they would break down each item and that work that didn't work.

To a degree that sounded like it went beyond.

everyone cares about the ratings in the UK too of course, but this sounded like it was on a

another level

but

think about where we are now where you walk around any Newsroom like The Newsroom here at the BBC

you know it's fair to say our Newsroom at Sky you know we have up.

The you know doing day streams the real time data the you know click rate.

You know the performance of different.

items of text I mean now you're

You're sort of buried in this.

So yes, you used to get.

time was you got sort of an average minute audience against linear television and you kind of checked your decisions against that in a commercial context now or you getting

you know 54 flavours of that.

and I'm interested in you know you're

assessment at the difference is between the US

experience the US Media experience that you had in the UK major experience when you went to CBS in 2011.

I'm always because I love the morning.

I know that wasn't CBS but you know in terms of how for example.

you know

certain anchors you know American anchors have a certain reputation.

and

did you

did you observe anything there?

Well, okay first.

the you know what what do you mean it on the in terms of is the show right well kind of

you know look and the power that anchors have I mean to anchors.

hear

in Britain have less power than

American anchors, how does it work?

Look one thing we've tried to do.

Now is actually emphasize.

A little bit more the talent contribution and we've done that not because we're trying to in some way americanized.

The offering at Sky News what does it mean emphasize all the talent contribution well what it means is people watch people?

and

part of the value proposition of okay what you know something has happened.

I want to go see what credible.

voices

are going to have when they're covering it.

So like if I think about you know the political news report here.

Beth Rigby is our political editor she's RTS

Political journalist of the year this year we're very proud of that we built.

a political program around Sophie Ridge

Who now is on in prime time at 7 p.m.

Each evening?

doing

a report in an election year we think that's important.

We've got bets got a new podcast with Jess Phillips and Ruth Davidson

I enjoy it very much electoral dysfunction.

Shameless plug yeah big dog try that Sam Coates deputy political editor.

He has a new podcast this is the other thing nobody has just one show anymore everybody has a variety of different.

Products but you have to have I guess what I mean.

in terms of emphasizing that you

you have to have people who are credible to the audience who can bring them.

In this case the political news report.

Otherwise, it doesn't work.

I guess I wanted to get into what it was like in America

back then and CBS heyday and and also the fact that quite rightly.

presenters anchors

in the UK aren't the boss.

They're never the boss the Editors of the boss, but I've spoken to plenty of news anchors over the years in the US who have

various roles as executive producer or other job titles which gives them a type of power that

that news presenters in the UK don't have risers it sounds like you're it's not a complete by the I think about relocating absolutely not one of these I don't want to be embassy or we could you could always make up and then right but that is a difference though right in the that some news anchors will have significant built-in.

Authority or power if you like in a way that doesn't happen here but in the way in a way you should because you know maybe speaking against my own interest here, but you're who people are listening to on this programme people are listening to this programme.

Because Katie Ross you're here.

You're presenting this and we're going to have an interesting discussion.

But they're not listening to it because I'm the executive in charge of this or anything else like that part of our job here is to resource things.

And send you out so that we can.

You know gain an audience?

convey news

make it interesting.

Let's talk about your shift from the US to the UK you got a call from either from was it from Rupert Murdoch or someone on behalf of Rupert Murdoch saying hey how about it?

This is the one where I initially moved here yeah, yes.

I went to see him.

I was in Los Angeles and I was doing some work for the la Times which at the time had a relatively new owner.

He's now still the owner but not so new and

now I went to the I went to the studio a lot and he told me about his ambitions to get back into the TV business here after he had sold.

The company I'm now working for to comcast.

And he being we've been out.

Just be clear yeah, and it sounded interesting to me and and that was it.

I am what was he saying and that point about what he wanted to create?

I think it was more.

You know look it.

It'd have to ask him about what he wanted to accomplish with the product because I left and you know they went ahead and did it and

There's been a lot of time since then it's been a couple of years.

But look I mean, I think he missed being involved in this segment of the business and look I understand why it's it was very I think there's I think there's a really robust.

television news sector here and

he found himself outside of that looking in after the sale and for people who not understanding essentially what you're saying is.

this was when reaper was creating Talk TV

but I think when you

were approached it wasn't in that.

Format or is that right?

it was to

Explorer

what the opportunities were here and look as has been I think reported.

we did a bit of an exploration and

we concluded that actually.

Conventional traditional television was probably not commercially viable.

I think that's the language that we used.

eventually that was

briefed out to the press around the time that I left for Sky

and they proved to be.

the case David

I mean.

Look that was 2021 or so that I think we said that so look but there's actually you said well.

They created which has talked TV you were you were suggesting that wasn't going to work and it looks like we'll it hasn't.

well

What hasn't worked being on television and that's not to say the television isn't gonna have a very long tail like I think.

When when Sky News started?

In 35 years ago.

it was

new and novel and had never been tried before doing a 24-hour rolling News Channel in this country.

And that was a Challenger to the BBC now.

That's completely established.

but there's various other things that we or anybody else in the second segment do that our new and challenging and that's

an audio

we're putting like 40% more resource against digital product this year.

It's sod.

It's fast channels.

It's a variety of acronyms that hopefully you're

audience

isn't intimate link intimately familiar with but it will not be it's anywhere.

I mean.

I'm not sure I am it.

It's any number of other things it's not just this one channel anymore.

and after your

second stint with

Rupert Murdoch and as as has been documented you you laughed and you.

Suggested that the Talk TV plan may not be commercially viable.

You land the job as executive chairman of the Sky News group and you.

Arrived and presumably one of the first things that you have to do is analyse the situation that sky uses in within the broader.

news ecosystem, I wonder

what your conclusions were about what was going for Sky but also equally what?

What needed to change it's a great brand?

And what I think it has going for it is a real ability to be agile.

It's always been an innovator.

and

to

and it's a great privilege.

Just as a manager to be involved in something that does that kind of quality coverage.

so

for instance Stuart Ramsey goes to Haiti in recent weeks interviews barbecue.

Who's the gang leader that's rolled up all the other gangs?

in the absence of any real civil authority

and we entered into that story on journalistic merit.

and we did so partly too because

steward had

relationships they're built on that.

He'd been to Haiti a year before and identified this guy.

And I think it's important to note that I thought all right we're doing this just on journalistic merit and it's an important story and we're proud of it.

but it actually found an audience principally on YouTube and among younger people and ex UK where it's

2 3 million hits

our Italian service did a similar conversation with him.

That's had 400,000 on Instagram

So you find your audience in places? You didn't necessarily expect it or certainly didn't expect to find it before.

I think we're the only people in Yemen right now with Alex Crawford there.

so

the opportunity to do that kind of quality coverage and find that there's a commercial opportunity revolving around it.

You don't get to do that.

Just about any place.

And everybody just a reminder for people listening.

You're the executive chairman at Sky News group.

I guess

sky was always seen as the outsider.

But you know 35 years on you're no longer the new arrival.

you are

part of the mainstream Media

we're part of the mainstream Media actually I was

at this Lord's committee that I mentioned with Johnathan they said I was part of the establishment and I thought of that fail.

Well.

I thought I told I told the I

found I don't know I'm that American

I'm in the House of Lords and I'm the establishment that was kind of that was kind of great to hear but cool ironic yeah in America look I think.

We are established.

certainly in some aspects

the linear channel is that aspect and it'll be around for a long time but in a lot of the places that we're competing now.

We're Challenger brand all over again so in all those audio products like.

There's huge opportunity there.

but is the but there's there's opportunity of

distribution making journalism and getting it to people in different ways, but what about

the the opportunity of the bottom line here because you as I understand it have.

Some guaranteed income from comcast from when sky was bought.

bye

comcast but that doesn't go on forever it goes to is it 2028.

How do you think Sky News confront itself beyond that how are you going to make money from all of these hits that you're describing on different social platforms?

Well first of all.

How you just talked about those hits so when?

We were just a linear channel.

you would approach somebody and say you know Katie how about

two oclock, could you do the two oclock and then you would

do a television program and that's our arrangement and then we would look at those ratings that Ross mentioned we used to obsess over.

now

you know if we go to someone like.

you know when we brought yalda came in the conversation there is

Do a nightly program about world affairs on television.

do a podcast once a week which she's going to start doing as early as next month with co-hosted with Richard Engel from NBC News

do

For call them specials a year that'll be longer form and more documentary and style where we do sort of a film.

This is the way the world works now is you don't have one job like come here and you'll have six jobs.

And that's how it works out commercially because that news report is.

Sold in all those different aspects but making news is very costly the things you were talking about earlier was Stuart Ramsay or indeed.

What yalda will be doing it is expensive we all know news cost money and

you know are their conversations being had posted about what happens post 2028 in terms of perhaps not being able to provide Sky News well, you've got to.

You've got to take into account the scope of this company and that's why I think it's actually.

the best ownership that we could have at this moment in time so

We're not by far the only news operation that they have between the alphabet soup of other.

Brands around the world that I mentioned.

and they've got the wherewithal to support all of that Enterprise and see a commercial opportunity in doing it because

they've certainly found that commercial opportunity in.

NBC and CNBC in telemundo and MSNBC and Sky and TG24 and so on so

this guy news will make it past the 40 absolutely and

you got to also think about the cost of providing that coverage.

in a positive way, and I'll explain that just as a manager but that's its own kind of

barrier to entry not many people

Can do what we do so when our people go out?

in you know whether it's

Yemen or it's Haiti or by the way it could be you know.

we're

pretty robust coverage all around the up and down the

country and the nations and regions here in the UK

It's costly to provide that not many other people can we find ourselves competing often against you here at the BBC

and maybe a handful of others and that's about it.

It's pretty lonely out there.

Well, one of your competitors.

at least in the UK on Trust TV is GB news which of course you'll be

Well aware of how do you assess of comms reading of the impartiality?

regulations with reference to GB news

I mean first I think they're doing something different than we do.

And they say that themselves.

I think they are trying to program for an audience.

And we're programming something very different than them.

on

off look we're a regulation taker not a regulation maker.

So it's really in the government's.

gift to Deeside

and ultimately in the public's gift as far as they select the government what kind of regulation do we want?

But it's not just what regulation you want.

It's whether that regulation or how that regulation is implemented you mentioned so if you ridges programme at 7 p.m.

As you'll be well aware.

She's up against Nigel Farage on on GB news and he

sometimes rates

above her

that's a direct competition with you and what GB news can do not just in that hour, but more broadly is decided by how these regulations are implemented do you?

Are you satisfied with how often comes going about it?

well first

I think actually since you mentioned so fee and Nigel

they're actually probably the best example of how.

these two channels are providing something very different so

Is it a binary choice between people of one to the other I mean I think if you're watching.

Farage you're watching them.

for

him

if you're watching Sophie you're watching for a really comprehensive political report I think the two.

are

you know to the degree that they're talking about British politics they suppose that there.

Similar products, but they're really have a very different thing that they're setting out each day to achieve.

As far as the regulatory regime around that.

You've got to just it in this way.

The journalism business is like any other business what you need are.

Clear rules that are consistently applied and as long as the rules are clear and they're consistently applied of everybody's happy.

Or if they're not happy.

they can

pick a different government get a different.

Regulatory regime and off we go.

But those are the two things that we need as a business.

Okay, there are lots of questions at the moment around.

You know elections how we're all going to cover them.

including of course American election we're going to be talking about truth social and Donald Trump later but

I wanted for you at Sky you know how will you be advising your colleagues?

to cover Trump

well

first

we see an enormous amount of interest in the UK and in the other markets where

our content reaches in the US election

so this certainly interest in the UK election and we think we have.

That whole political team to cover that here.

But equally, I think the US election is going to be a big night for us.

We have a really robust Washington Bureau and we plug into all of the data and analysis that comes out.

Will you be sharing is speech is for example or do you have a different approach to covering Donald Trump that you may do to covering other American politics and I think everyone's having conversations aren't there about whether to all nations are whether to take him live and then put someone to do the analysis afterwards or whether you know some American networks they've already decided.

They're not going to ever show trump making speeches live media have made mistakes covering.

all politicians but Media have made mistakes covering Donald Trump really back to

The beginning I mean really to before him coming down the ESC what kind of mistakes.

you know

in terms of

in terms of just thinking about

the approach that

media we're taking I give an example.

Uh from actually the CBS experience like if people remember the charlottesville episode in 2017 is the first year of Trump's presidency.

There's this fascist rally in charlottesville there's

a

rally against the rally it becomes violent

I mean it was a really painful episode.

and

famously

he had trouble addressing it.

He said trump said it was because

he was waiting to get all the facts.

There was criticism that he delayed his response.

Then there was a response to that later in which he says look you have to look at what was happening there and there was blame.

on both sides

some AIDS like Harry Cohn

suggested that they later left the administration over those comments.

But a couple of other things happened after that the first was.

Media did make mistakes in terms of how.

That those remarks were covered.

for instance

there were accounts that said that he said.

the sides were equally to blame and he didn't say they were equally to blame and you just leave a hint of that kind of

controversy

and

that's enough for people to drive a truck through and just say look this is the bias that we've been talking about all along he didn't say that.

That was a mistake.

But equally in the reason why that event sticks with me.

Is at CBS we pulled it?

And it was only by about 10 points was like a 5545 that people felt that he was in the wrong.

even though

the events had been really hard to watch are sort of torch wielding nioh not seasonal all this stuff.

and

you know when you unpack it though, why do people feel that way and you saw in the surveys people saying you know I disagree with them.

I don't like what he had to say on that day, but I hate the media so much and he is in opposition to you guys.

And so I'm with him.

And see you've got it.

I think as a

as a profession take account of how did you get to a place where there's at least?

you know

some aspect of 45% of the American people that could actually think that the media is that dishonest that they?

would not be willing to

you know

have expressed a certain opinion on that that's like something people should take stock of.

Well listening to his talk.

David has been mad at merger from the Financial Times who we heard from a little bit earlier and we all here because we're going to talk about artificial intelligence and David I know you've

you're looking at this every Newsroom is is looking at this but let's start off with the lead story.

on the front page of the ft today which

is all about.

Open AI and organisation and meta for people who haven't seen it.

Tell us what the story is.

So this is based on having spoken to two leaders from the two companies and the past week.

both of whom sort of tantalisingly dropped hints about the next models the next AI

software that's going to be rolled out.

For most of us today, you know our first introduction directly to AI systems was probably chat to you may be darling.

If you were if you were kind of playing around a lot.

And it might be lots of people listening who's never tried any of it yeah, but I mean I think chachi BT was really the first time the people were able to interact with an AI system, but even before that you know if you have recommended.

ads and posts on social media if you've chosen something to watch on Netflix if you've ordered an uber you are interacting with AI systems so

Chachi BTW was not at all the first time, but it is the first kind of interface where we can literally communicate.

With AI generated text.

but this year we're looking at the next kind of wave of more sophisticated AI Technologies

which will again be able to Converse back and forth but also kind of

summarise information create videos code you know doing things that we

believed to be you know human domain.

creativity and you know kind of

qualities for decades

and the kind of really interesting thing from what what I wrote about this morning.

Was that these the scientists and ceos and so on believe that the next models will be able to reason.

will be able to plan and this is really what the word means in English they'll be able to kind of

look forward to how to perform an action and be able to figure out.

What are the steps? They need to take in order to achieve that?

So just makes them a lot more.

able to do tasks

also mostly essentially is that making?

The more human, I mean I know Elon Musk on Monday predicted the AI will overtake human intelligence in the next year.

He previously said that wouldn't happen until 2029.

Yeah, I'm not sure how much store I put by his comments okay.

He's not right.

We've got a bit of we've got a bit of leeway, but what would that mean for the media your story if it's true.

That you know they're going to be able to reason.

What does it mean for newsrooms and the media so it doesn't mean they're going to be human in any way, but what it does mean is that these companies are trying to develop AI assistance.

so think of it as

just your own individual assistant or agent it might have a name you know today.

We have things like Alexa

that we kind of you know recognise by name.

And that will be how you interface with.

The internet so today you kind of go to maybe Google is the front page of the internet for you alright or Twitter or X or matter whatever tiktok.

And that's where you kind of look through where you want to go or it might be the ft.com home page or you know a TV channel.

But what they want to do is create everyone should have their own personal AI assistant which will decide for you.

where to go what to read what you need to do next

journalists will have that newsrooms will have that what would it mean for the media well?

Everybody who reads us and watches what you make and listens to us.

We'll have that and help it will be the interface and the mediator.

That chooses what we want what we read what we can see.

You know but but more than that too.

You know if I want to get from A to B how do I get there if I want to?

A recommendation for a restaurant, can you book it? So it just becomes kind of a way in which we will talk to the internet.

more widely

because it will be able to kind of plan what we need next.

So I think it will kind of

be our part of the thing that filters are digital diet which includes all of the news that we consume.

David Rosen sky your listening intently to all of this.

How does AI fit into your plans for?

how the sky Newsroom would

be operating in the coming years and we're optimistic about it.

It's

so much of the coverage.

Not yours because the book is actually as much as I've got familiar with it in the last three hours really got a lot to grab on to.

But so much of the coverage has been about it's it's all the zombie apocalypse and I think that just leaves out a lot of really extraordinary possibilities that come from it.

so as

Well, first of all it should.

AI should help solve a bit of a productivity crisis.

Across the economy and the media is not.

You know not out of balance for that but when I mean that.

in terms of a Newsroom

what AI fundamentally does

In the near term is it?

Intensely values information that has yet to be revealed.

and it devalues information that's

Known and sort of in the public domain and maybe needs to be organised.

Well, so what I'm saying is it values journalism like if I can report something that hasn't yet to be reported?

That's becomes very valuable because the AI may not be able to tell you that.

And so what we see in our own Newsroom is that things.

that already have pretty much been bid away to

search

well, they're just all those trends of sort of accelerated, so that's like.

you know

just you know what's the temperature going to be what's the stock price? That's that sort of thing but as far as being able to tell you that.

you know

two people familiar with someone's plans say that they have decided to do something it can't tell you that and that's fundamentally the

the service that we provide imagine from the ft.

well

I do feel optimistic that will be a place for for quality journalism, but I think the big current challenge that everybody who runs.

Large media organizations needs to be thinking about is.

Is this the next Wave of disintermediation so we've already had social media? I was going to say what does that mean? Yeah well.

it means that big tech companies become the

you know the platform through which we consume the news so the word again.

This didn't know this information because of that intermediation this intermediation okay.

Yeah, well, it's you know we used to kind of distribute news through newspapers and and that was the big course.

But then you have Facebook or meta and all of the kind of social media platforms which and the internet itself which made it extremely cheap.

To put something on line and reach billions of people at once.

But then you know they also become the pipes on which we are now Reliant you know most of.

Our you know online media organizations are dependent on these or you know these big tech companies.

For their views, you know you need to go via Google to be found.

And with AI you know that risk becomes even more extreme because not only are they responsible for showing your website to your viewers.

And they may also provide the answer.

And that's what they're all working on at the moment right generative AI is essentially.

Sort of question answer summarisation systems or what it's saying is.

Ask me a question.

I'll tell you the answer and that's kind of the point of

us

and one of the reasons we've asked you on and David just a alluded to it.

Is that you have a new book out called code dependent and it looks at how AI risks exacerbating existing inequalities and Society and I wonder if I could ask you that.

From the point of view of news and from journalism, because all ready and I'm sure Sky is.

Very focused on this there is a risk with news that it's super serves some sections of society and other sections of society largely.

Don't assess the news that's being produced.

Is there a risk that we could end up with that being exacerbated?

as AI becomes

more instrumental in both the creation of content and the distribution of it.

Yeah, I think.

That one of the patterns I saw again and again across my book and I travelled to 9 countries because I wanted to go out of the sort of bubble of Silicon Valley to look at really how AI is impacting.

People and industries in Argentina and Kenya and India and I saw it with Healthcare with public services with work.

You're seeing a concentration of power more than we've seen before and it's a very small handful of tech companies that are.

A massing that data that knowledge and and now these kind of algorithms that they running.

and with the news business you know you can you already seen you know local news media kind of

dwindling when when we had social media and even recently with the la Times Washington Post we've seen

you know Major kind of

dwindling of of journalists their and the concern is that that kind of deep inequality is going to grow David do you think AI is going to put Janice out of jobs?

No, I mean some of some of what happened in news organizations with was there are some which navigated the technological moment that came just before this and there's others that just didn't do a particularly good job of that and so

I think if you look at him you mentioned a couple of

Us newspapers you know some had a value proposition where they could charge for it and they have a more robust news.

Report than they ever have before.

And others just weren't offering anything particularly unique or different or keeping up with the change.

the pace of change in their own community

to where people were willing to pay for it look.

there are

a lot of built-in biases algorithmic biases

to be aware of

and then you have to consider I think that and this would be maybe controversial, but some of those aren't necessarily a negative I mean we've been here sort of speaking up for British journalism.

For its value system as far as you know going out doing eyewitness reporting like we do.

I mean the fact is that you know the majority of the internet is written in English

many of the sort of first principles of what these language models are learning off of is.

English language and in some cases journalistic content so

there's kind of a built-in advantage here for people who are involved in the kind of activity we do in terms of the rule writing of this whole system that we're in.

David Wright's executive chairman of Sky News grape, thank you very much for being out all very eliminating.

I know you've got to rush madam Media you're going to stick with us, please because

I do want to talk about something else which is on Monday Donald Trump posted a video about abortion laws in the US and he did so on his social Media platform truth social.

He posts their regularly we wanted to have a look at treat social in detail and we'll do so with the help of one of the people who set it up but first.

Let's look at what it is.

We've got Joe's Joshua taco.

Who's a professor of politics that New York University

and co-director of the university center for social media and politics Joshua

Thank you so much for being.

Well almost with us with us down the line and for someone who hasn't heard of it before.

Just explain what is truth social?

Thanks Katie thanks for having me here.

I'm truth social is one of a number of new platforms that have emerged in the US that have tried to cater to different audiences through social falls into the category of what we would call Twitter Clones it kind of looks like Twitter it has the same basic affordances as Twitter

but as Billy explained in the beginning.

It was primarily directed at an audience of people who were supporters of President Trump and who were interested in continuing discussions.

That the organisers of Truth social thought were not being able to to have on these mainstream platforms, so there are a bunch of these platforms.

There's a lot of them that have that have sprung up that are sort of smaller kind of niche platforms that go after particular target audiences.

But use a similar setup.

So one of the big mainstream platform.

and hi Josh it's Ross here people may be

aware that trump trump trump trump Trumps truth social has been in the news and awful lot because it's recently gone public in the last couple of weeks and for a while at least it had an incredibly high valuation of it.

They're in the region of 11 billion dollars just explain what's happened there.

Right, so true social like a lot of these new platforms struggled to attract many users and there are reasons why they're sort of structural reasons why it's very hard.

To break into these kind of to break into these information ecosystems.

All these social media platforms follow something called network effects they get their value from the number of people who use them.

And when you're not introducing a kind of new feature and especially if you're targeting a particular niche audience it becomes hard.

To break in and and build up a large user base so like a lot of these other platforms it attracted some users but it was quite a small portion of the information ecosystem.

But what makes it different though?

Is that it has attracted it?

completed a merger

with a company that was set up only for the purpose of completing a merger we have a company like truth social and to bring an injection of capital into it.

And following this merger.

Suddenly the valuation of true social when skyrocketed.

And the question that everyone's been asking is why did this happen?

And so on the one hand you might expect the financial basic financials of the market or doing it because people see promising it as developing future economic value.

But the other explanation for it is that it's become a meme stock.

It's become a way essentially for people to bet on former President Trump

the ticker symbol appropriately enough is now called djt.

That's a ticker symbol that pulls up for this new company.

and as you mentioned the point that out yeah exactly his initials and so

and as you pointed out the price of it's skyrocketed, but I've been pulling it up over the course of as we're talking here today.

It's down another 4% today.

And where is it? It peaked around $80 a share it's now down to about 36 dollars a share so there's a huge question about whether there's a financial viable model here okay.

Just to go forward other than this process of being a meme stock okay.

Well, I would like Joshua to bring in Billy boozer.

Who was a chief who was chief product officer at truth social at back almost from the very beginning Billy welcome.

To the media show and I just want to know when.

Did you first hear about it?

Truth social and how did you end up getting involved?

So I actually had a good friend that was being brought into the project because of his expertise in a specific technology.

and

they they had some expectations that this this application would scale extremely quickly and they were right.

And because of that the technology that we based.

True social almost called mastodon, which was a open source social network.

and that mastodon instance was also based on another technology called Ruby on Rails that has the ability to scale but is more difficult to scale than other Technologies

and so they brought in an expert which was a good friend of mine.

He called me and said hey I've got an opportunity.

Would you be interested in coming in?

And showed up and there's four people there five people there I thinking about and hacking on.

What it would look like to create a social network for a you know a US President that is probably the most controversial US President and US history?

And so and so I I was like this is the craziest thing that you could ever be a part of and there's no way to not say yes to it.

as well as I had a lot of inclination towards free speech and had a lot of friends that were being deep platformed or fired from their jobs in the US because of their christian values and so

just decided that this was the right opportunity to address a problem that we were seeing in our country where.

Free speech was being limited and also the media was not necessarily distributing information.

That seemed to accurate to the real world picture that we were seeing every day.

And how much interaction did you have with djt?

Donald Trump I mean

well, I I got to go down to Moral Lago and present the application to him for the first time ever we had like special devices that we would give him so that he could have the application and engage with it.

He actually gave me the key to the White House retrospectively.

I'm fairly certain that it it does not unlock the door there you haven't tried but

yeah, I have not had no.

I think it's not a good idea.

no, no no, I do not think so either but I I got the opportunity to meet with him and one of the things that was really interesting about President Trump is is that

he's this is I think what engines him with the conservative right which is.

He seems like in everyday person when you're sitting down in front of them having conversations with them.

We've all met.

You know highly influential people throughout our lives and at times those people seem to talk through you not to you and President Trump was not like that.

He's one of those people that actually will sit down and look you in the eye and have a conversation with you.

now a lot of those conversations devolve into having conversations about President Trump

but that's primarily because there's a lot of gravity there, so he'll talk to you but if primarily about himself but but I wonder if when you were talking to him.

Could he use what you were building?

Because they actually saw a guy famously.

He's not that.

keen on using computers is

He that's correct.

I mean he's not he's not necessarily a technologists and I mean honestly that was one of the bigger.

You know outcomes that came out of building through social was we ran into a lot of political people and people that were very interested in that political spectrum and so few of them understood technology in itself.

I mean like we were talking earlier about artificial intelligence & the breakdown between what Society realises or expects.

out of these technologies and and

and how they can communicate them so for instance in the AI world they talked about tokens a lot and things like that and and and and and in those aren't terms that the average person understands and so the same goes for politicians the vast majority of them have no understanding about technology whatsoever and because of that.

It's actually one of the things that concerns me the most because that technology is actually what is this intermediate Society in itself if you look at it?

From a non 1 to 5 Year perspective, but a 20 year perspective.

You'll see that technology is shaping the entirety of society so if our politicians don't understand to technology.

They won't understand the direction of society moving forward.

I met a metre from the Financial Times listening to this I guess that very complicated word.

You used is a bit like London buses you wait for your entire Media show career for them to come along and then they come along twice in one times.

You've got to say again.

Everybody knows what that means now.

Essentially just getting in the way and taking the place of something else, but I think it's interesting that you say you know he doesn't like technology doesn't like using it but wanted to build a social Media platform.

That's kind of powered.

buy algorithms

and I'm just kind of wondering you know how does somebody who doesn't like technology or people users who don't like it.

You know why Why Build a tech platform at all.

Why not just and that well, let's try and understand the impact that this platform has had we've talked about its value, but let's understand.

It's impact as well.

Yini shang.

Is assistant professor at the Department of communication at the university?

Of buffalo and you know you've done some of the first academic research on truth social tell us what you've been.

looking into

thank you for the question and thank you for having me well like our study really looks at the political implication of Truth social.

And we did so by comparing Trump's ability to to drive news attention using truth social.

Um during the 2012 a 2022 us mid-term elections.

Vs.

His ability to do so was Twitter during the 2016 primary elections in the US

so

as we all know during the 2016 election cycle trump was very good at using Twitter

to promote his preferred messages and to attack his opponents.

And he merged triumphantly out of that cycle and I think that cycle also like cemented his status as a Twitter salon, and in that sense after trump was the platformed by Twitter and after he created.

And launched that his new platform.

We were curious to see if

he was able to do the same thing with true social as he was able to do so was Twitter back in 2016.

And did he could he does he get the same?

Impact with the news media and with everything through.

Trump social as it trump social truth social and you're going to do that.

I have trees everywhere ex.

Well, the answer is I would say more complex than we expect we expected to be well.

I would say there are two sites.

Well the first the the successful side is that we'll true social was almost as effective as Twitter in terms of driving news attention to trump and his social media activity during the 2016 election during the 2022 election Cycles but truth social was not that effective compared to Twitter and the sense that well like in during the 2022 mid-term election cycle journalists.

Stopped directly embedding his tooth social posts or his truth.

in in the news stories on their website

and the number of such stories actually is orders of magnitude smaller than the number of stories.

Embedding his tweets.

back in 2016

well, Yeti we appreciate your helping in helping us understand the impact of

Of these posts on truth social and Billy boosie, you helped create this product, but you don't.

Work for truth social anymore, how come and how was the process of leaving?

trump world

you know I

I believe that a lot of these social networks.

Have gone through an iteration where they've realised and I think Elon was the one that really pointed this out really well with within x is that.

They've gone through this iteration where advertising has been the primary mechanism of monetization.

and now we're seeing that there are other opportunities and other options to

create monetization and create value for your underlying users.

and so I was kind of

For my entire career of I've been an anti-advertising person I believe that it is a mechanism of control for a platform.

And put the platform and it's creators in an adversarial relationship based on.

algorithms and based on

their need to create more impressions for their underlying advertisers and so

you know we buy for a cat in leadership for based on that idea of just not having advertising as the predicate for how we were going to make.

money with that service

And so I just decided it was not the right place to be because I didn't feel like that and itself.

Would allow for a true free speech network?

But just and then just quickly Billy I'm wondering trump doesn't have a reputation of going is separate ways with people.

Always amicably did did you manage to exit without a fallout?

Well, I understand like the day-to-day operations had nothing to do with President Trump the day-to-day operations of that business had to do with technologists building technology for the purpose of free speech.

while he was cosigning and

you know putting his likeness on the line for that service.

It wasn't like you know day-to-day operations was going through alright.

And so you know it really it wasn't a a split on that because I mean even though I'm not there now.

I would support President Trump going into the next election and primarily because of my values.

And even though I didn't really make a ton of money off of it.

well, we appreciate you coming on to talk to us about your experience of working with Donald Trump and helping set up truth, so sure that was bitty boozer former chief product officer with through social Joshua Tucker as well from the new from New York University

and you need Yang from the University of buffalo, and I'd also of course like to thank my dimitar marja from the ft.

David Rose The executive chairman at Sky News group now.

I'm off next week because you're going to be holding the fort.

Thank you that I will be here but now I'm with neither of us will be here for now because that is it goodbye.

I'm Helena Bonham Carter & for BBC Radio 4

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