Channel 4 presenter uses MacTaggart lecture to warn that the media lack diversity and are far removed from ordinary people

The veteran journalist Jon Snow said reporting on the deadly Grenfell Tower fire made him feel “on the wrong side” of Britain’s social divide and warned that he and others in the media had become too far removed from ordinary people’s lives.



The Channel 4 news presenter used a keynote speech at the Edinburgh television festival to say the episode made him conclude that there was a lack of diversity across the media, which should have been more aware about the dangers of the high-rise block.

The Grenfell episode demonstrated, Snow said, that the media was “comfortably with the elite, with little awareness, contact or connection with those not of the elite” and that the fire had shown this lack of connection was “dangerous”.



Media organisations reported after the fire that a blog written by residents had warned that Grenfell Tower was susceptible to fire and complained that the council was not taking action. When Snow visited the area around the tower in west London, in the immediate aftermath of the fire, he was surrounded by angry locals who complained that no media had shown interest before.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jon Snow confronted by angry residents while reporting at Grenfell tower. Photograph: Victoria Cook

Giving the MacTaggart lecture on Wednesday, the journalist said: “Amid the demonstrations around the tower after the fire there were cries of: ‘Where were you? Why didn’t you come here before?’

“Why didn’t any of us see the Grenfell action blog? Why didn’t we know? Why didn’t we have contact? Why didn’t we enable the residents of Grenfell Tower – and indeed the other hundreds of towers like it around Britain – to find pathways to talk to us and for us to expose their story?

“In that moment I felt both disconnected and frustrated. I felt on the wrong side of the terrible divide that exists in present-day society and in which we are all in this hall major players. We can accuse the political classes for their failures, and we do. But we are guilty of them ourselves.



“We are too far removed from those who lived their lives in Grenfell and who, across the country, now live on amid the combustible cladding, the lack of sprinklers, the absence of centralised fire alarms and more, revealed by the Grenfell Tower fire.”



The newsreader and journalist said he has been left “haunted” by the fire and also revealed that he knew one of the victims – 12-year-old Firdaws Hashim, who had won a school public debating competition of which he was a judge just weeks before the disaster.

Victoria Cook (@victoriacook) Huge hostility to the media at #Grenfelltower - @jonsnowC4 is being mobbed. pic.twitter.com/6Tiv2mSXrw

Snow, 69, joined ITN in 1976 and has presented Channel 4 News since 1989. He said news providers had to become more diverse in order to more accurately reflect the population.



“Britain is not alone in this – our organic links within our own society are badly broken,” he said. “In part because the echelons from which our media is drawn do not for the most part fully reflect the population amongst whom we live and to whom we seek to transmit information and ideas.

“Grenfell speaks to us all about our own lack of diversity, and capacity to reach into the swaths of western society with whom we have no connection.

“We the media report the lack of diversity in other walks of life – but our own record is nothing like good enough. The Sutton Trust has revealed that just under 80% of top editors were educated at private or grammar schools. Compare that with the 88% of the British public now at comprehensives.



“We have to widen both our contact with, and awareness of, those who live outside and beyond our elite. Our elite is narrow and deep, but the throng of those who have borne the brunt of austerity and not shared in the lives we have experienced is wide and even deeper.”



Snow was in the news himself in June when he faced calls to resign after claims that he chanted: “Fuck the Tories” at Glastonbury. The newsreader joked about the incident in the lecture, saying: “Oh, Glastonbury. Like they say about the 60s, if you remember it, you just weren’t there.”

He also launched a fierce attack on Facebook in the lecture, warning that the rise of digital media “has filled neither the void left by the decimation of the local newspaper industry nor connected us any more effectively with ‘the left behind’, the disadvantaged, the excluded”.

Snow added: “Many news organisations, including my own, have asked too few questions about the apparent miracle of Facebook’s reach.

“For us at Channel 4 News it has been invaluable in helping us to deliver our remit – to reach young viewers, to innovate and to get attention for some of the world’s most important stories.

“But the other side of the issue – the dark, cancerous side – Facebook enabled the story ‘Pope endorses Trump for president’ to engage more than a million people during the US elections.

“That same algorithm that prioritised many amazing reports of ours also prioritised fakery on a massive scale. Facebook has a moral duty to prioritise veracity over virality. It is fundamental to our democracy. Facebook’s lack of activity in this regard could prove a vast threat to democracy.

“Facebook’s principles are seldom explained in detail and can change overnight at [co-founder Mark] Zuckerberg’s whim.”

In a separate session, Damian Collins, the MP who chairs the parliamentary culture, media and sport select committee, said there was a “very legitimate” case for punishing online organisations that do not remove fake stories.



“There is a responsibility there for companies like Google and Facebook,” he said. “We have to think about what should the sanctions be against a company that knowingly allows and maybe even profits from the distribution of fake news.”

In his lecture Snow also issued a warning regarding a new espionage bill that could threaten anyone publishing or broadcasting leaked government information, including economic and financial data, with up to 14 years in jail. He said the bill would lead to journalists and their sources being treated like spies and may have an impact on reporting on Britain’s deal to leave the EU.



“No wonder in recent years that the World Press Freedom Index has found UK journalists are now less free to hold power to account than those working in South Africa, Chile, or Ghana,” Collins said.