Algorithms, institutions and influence: Paul Marshall’s media bias diagnosis

Paul Marshall, the co-founder of hedge fund Marshall Wace and investor in GB News, UnHerd and The Spectator, used a speech at Oxford University on Tuesday to warn against the rise of what he termed the "censorship industrial complex". The lecture, titled A Fatal Conceit — reflections of an accidental media owner, was delivered under the auspices of the Pharos Foundation.

The speech set out a broad critique of media and information gatekeeping in the UK and beyond, targeting both Silicon Valley platforms and the BBC. Marshall, who has emerged as one of Britain’s most prominent right-leaning media proprietors, argued that a combination of opaque algorithms, government pressure, and self-reinforcing institutional structures was distorting public discourse.

Marshall described his own encounter with platform suppression, recounting how an UnHerd interview with former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption, which challenged lockdown orthodoxy, was abruptly throttled by YouTube after gaining more than 250,000 views in 24 hours. He said the platform had "intentionally 'reduced'" the visibility of the video and the entire channel following governmental pressure during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"The technical term for this is 'algorithmic visibility demotion'," he said. "It is more frequently known as shadow banning. Welcome to the world of American big tech."

The problem, in Marshall's view, extends beyond social media. He cited the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British organisation that received Foreign Office funding, as penalising UnHerd for publishing gender-critical articles. This, he claimed, led to a significant loss of advertising revenue. The episode, he argued, illustrated how disinformation watchdogs often operated with a "near-explicit left-wing agenda".

He also criticised the BBC for what he called its outsized influence on the UK media landscape, describing it as a "giant toad" that squats in the centre of British broadcasting. He proposed that the corporation be broken up or sold, arguing that as long as it remains a state-backed entity, it will continue to act as "the propaganda arm of the state".

Marshall extended his critique to Barb, the UK’s television ratings body, which he said operated with a lack of transparency and reliability. He likened its ownership structure—a consortium including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky—to allowing Premier League clubs to control VAR.

His broader point was that the UK media market remains hostile to challengers, both structurally and ideologically. "Free speech platforms like X, BlueSky or Meta should be required to publish all the algorithms which they use to analyse or influence user preferences," he said, aligning himself with Elon Musk's push for open-source transparency.

A BBC spokesperson responded that the broadcaster remains the UK’s most used and trusted news source, used by 95 per cent of UK adults each month. Barb defended its data collection methods as robust and representative.

Marshall’s critics have questioned the concentration of media power in the hands of wealthy investors. His acquisition of The Spectator in 2023 prompted the resignation of Andrew Neil, who had previously warned against hedge funds owning news titles.

Yet Marshall positions himself not as a would-be mogul, but as a reluctant entrant to a rigged game. Tuesday’s speech made clear that he sees Britain's media dysfunction not merely as a commercial challenge, but as a civic one.