Government must act to protect trusted journalism

A scandal exposed, a failure revealed, a decision brought into the open that someone would rather have kept private. Behind each is work we rarely see.

We read the story, take it in and move on. In short, we take journalism for granted.

Someone had to find that story, check it, check it again, and then tell it. That takes skill, experience and painstaking work, sometimes over hours, sometimes over days, weeks, months or years. The published story is the bit we all see, and if we want that to continue, we must protect the people and the industry that makes it possible.

This year’s Journalism Matters campaign is a chance for us to reflect carefully on what journalism does for all of us, and what we would lose if we didn’t have it.

In an article launching this year’s campaign, Prime Minister Andy Burnham cites the enormous benefits that independent journalism delivers for our society and the critical importance of local news media to the devolution agenda. He is absolutely right to do so.

Journalism is part of the national infrastructure we all rely on, and the benefits it delivers go far beyond the stories themselves. A global report published by UNESCO earlier this year found a raft of economic and security benefits connected to journalism in countries with an ecosystem which supports an independent free press.

So how do we make sure more journalism can happen? It’s clear that there is plenty the government can do to strengthen the conditions that the industry operates in and it must use this opportunity to affect real change.

This should start with digital markets, and creating an ecosystem which can support and maintain a plural and diverse range of media outlets. This increases user choice and allows publishers that invest in reporting to get a fair return for their work.

Meta, always ready and willing to play the role of the tech giant bully, recently launched an assault on journalism with its attempt to force publishers and other businesses to hand over all their content to train its AI products.

It was a move right out of the tech platform playbook - bury the crucial detail in a ton of paperwork and then feign disbelief and surprise at the horrified reaction from the business community. This can’t continue and, if the government supports journalism in the way the Prime Minister has outlined, it must back the Competition and Markets Authority to the hilt. The CMA is tasked with

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making the tech platforms play fair, and to do this job effectively it needs full-throated political support. Nothing else will do.

But getting the platforms to play fair is just the start. Government must also make sure that its own policies support journalism, not undermine it.

The news prominence regime, as proposed in the Media Green Paper, will have a damaging and distortive effect on the news media landscape if implemented in its current form. Inevitably, local news will be hit particularly hard and the lack of clarity on how platform compliance will be enforced does little to boost our confidence that the policy won’t deliver myriad dangerous, unintended consequences.

Ministers must also ensure that the BBC Charter Renewal results in a BBC which partners with the commercial sector rather than competing aggressively against it.

And, at a local level, transparency must be maintained as power is shifted out of Westminster to the regions, including by keeping public notices in highly trusted local news media.

As the noise around us gets louder and more complex, we still need people intent on establishing the truth. The real, actual truth. This is what journalism does, and this is why bold government support for the industry should be non-negotiable.

Without it, we’ll lose our ability to understand the world around us and be consigned to a world where decisions that happen behind closed doors never see the light of day and stories that change lives are never told.

That is not an acceptable future for a modern day democracy such as ours.