Report: regulator may oversee UK online content
A state regulator “may be needed to assess the quality of online news” in the United Kingdom, according to a government-ordered review.
The finding was among conclusions reached by senior journalist and academic Frances Cairncross, who was asked by Prime Minister Theresa May to study the future of the UK news industry and the sustainability of high-quality journalism.
Cairncross said tech giants should have a “news quality obligation” and that content they carry ought to be overseen by a regulator. She said companies, including Google and Facebook, should try to improve the level of trust users have in their content.
“While each platform should devise solutions which best fit the needs of their particular users, their efforts should be placed under regulatory scrutiny,” the report said. “This task is too important to leave entirely to the judgment of commercial entities.”
The Cairncross Review suggested sites be set up to help users identify fake news and “nudge people toward reading news of high quality”.
And the wide-ranging report also called for tax breaks for “public interest” journalism, and taxpayer funding for providers of public-interest local news covering untrendy but important areas, such as local courts and municipal councils. Cairncross said a new Institute for Public Interest News could manage the funding and direct it toward “those parts of the industry it deemed most worthy of support”.
The UK’s culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, said the government is likely to act on some recommendations immediately.
But Cairncross report did not ask for all social media platforms to be regulated in the UK, nor demand social media companies pay to reuse news content. And it did not call for social media companies to be treated as publishers, something that would have introduced a legal liability over content they carry.
The report found tech giants were absorbing most online advertising revenue, making it hard for traditional publishers such as newspapers to compete.
The suggested changes are intended to improve the quality of news coverage and reduce the impact of false stories that appear online, the report said.
“If it becomes clear that efforts have not increased the reach of high-quality news, or had a measurable impact on the quality of people’s engagement with online news, it may be necessary to impose stricter provisions,” the report added.
“A healthy democracy needs high-quality journalism to thrive and this report sets out the challenges to putting our news media on a stronger and more sustainable footing, in the face of changing technology and rising disinformation,” he said.