This is an edited version of a speech by News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson in London on Friday titled Big Digital: After the Awakening, the Reckoning:

I COME from a journalistic background. Dog Bites Man is never a story. Man Bites Dog is certainly a story. Bytes Dog Man — that is THE story.

Almost 12 years ago as editor of The Times I gave evidence to a House of Lords committee:

'The problem that we have as a society is that there is a significant number of people who have grown up in a different information environment … surrounded by much more information, but whose provenance is not clear … The rumours will be believed, the fiction will be thought of as fact and the political agendas, among other agendas, will be influenced by interest groups who are coming from some quite strange trajectory to issues based on collective understanding that is founded on falsity.'