The Commission comments
Changes in the UK media system have resulted in an information crisis, with a growing number of leaders in health, defence and politics concerned about system resilience and the new difficulty of achieving informed debate. This report argues that the information crisis is manifested in ‘five giant evils’ among the UK public – confusion, cynicism, fragmentation, irresponsibility and apathy.
While the media, platforms and public authorities are responding, there are challenges of coordination, a lack of research and information in policy-making, and the potential for conflicts of interest and disputes over media freedom, which are hindering necessary reforms.
Policy-makers and the public are in the dark: the extent of the problem and whether current policy is addressing it are not clearly understood, and the problems created by a complex media system are ongoing.
This report recommends actions aimed at addressing systemic problems and at creating conditions that will help to sustain democratic processes of deliberation and consensus building in the UK. Whether our longer-term recommendations will need to be implemented will depend on progress in the short term.
Immediate Actions
Establish an Independent Platform Agency
The UK and devolved governments should introduce a new levy on UK online platforms’ revenue, a proportion of which should be ring-fenced to fund a new Independent Platform Agency (IPA). The IPA should be structurally independent of Government but report to Parliament. Its purpose, initially, will not be direct regulation, but rather an ‘observatory and policy advice’ function that will establish a permanent institutional presence to encourage the various initiatives attempting to address problems of information reliability.
The IPA should be established by legislation and have the following duties:
- Report on trends in news and information sharing according to a methodological framework subject to public consultation. This should include real data on the most shared and read stories, broken down by demographic group.
- Report on the effectiveness of self-regulation of the largest news-carrying social and search platforms. This should include reports on trust marks, credibility signalling, filtering and takedown.
- Mobilise and coordinate all relevant actors to ensure an inclusive and sustained programme in media literacy for both children and adults, and conduct evaluations of initiatives. The IPA should work with Ofcom to ensure sufficient evidence on the public’s critical news and information literacy.
- Report annually to Parliament on the performance of platforms’ self-regulation and the longterm needs for possible regulatory action.
- Provide reports on request to other agencies such as the Electoral Commission, Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office, to support the performance of their duties, according to agreed criteria.
- Work closely with Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority to monitor the level of market dominance and the impact of platforms on media plurality and quality.
In order to fulfil these duties, the IPA will need the following powers:
- Powers to request data from all the major platforms (determined by a UK advertising revenue threshold) on the top most shared news and information stories, referrals, news-sharing trends and case studies of particular stories. The types of data should be determined on the basis of public consultation on monitoring methodologies and according to a shared template that applies across different companies above the threshold. These data will be held by the IPA within a tight confidentiality regime to protect privacy and commercial sensitivities.
- Powers to impose fines on platforms if they fail to provide data, and to request additional data when a court order is granted.
- The IPA’s independence from government should be established in law and protected financially and through security of tenure of its governing Board.
The IPA should have close links with civil society and be transparent about how it interprets and performs its remit.
In addition to this new institution, we make further recommendations:
In the short-term:
- News media should continue their important work to develop quality and innovative revenue and distribution models. They should also continue to work with civil society and the platforms on signalling the credibility of content.
- Platforms should develop annual plans and transparent open mission statements on how they plan to tackle misinformation. They should work with civil society and news providers to develop trust marking.
- Government should mobilise an urgent, integrated, new programme in media literacy. This could also be funded by the digital platform levy and should include digital media literacy training for politicians.
- Parliament should bring forward legislation to introduce a statutory code on political advertising as recommended by the Information Commissioner.
In the medium-term (3 years):
- Standard setting for social media platforms. Until now, standards have been set by platforms themselves. If this fails to improve the UK information environment, the IPA should set these in collaboration with civil society, Parliament and the public.
- The news industry should develop a News Innovation Centre to support journalism innovation and quality news, funded by the levy on digital platform revenue.
In the longer-term (5 years):
- The IPA should provide a permanent forum for monitoring and review of platform behaviours, reporting to Parliament on an annual basis.
- The IPA should be asked to conduct annual reviews of ‘the state of disinformation’ that should include policy recommendations to a parliamentary committee. These should encompass positive interventions such as the funding of journalism.
Possible long term policy actions:
In the longer term it might be necessary to subject platforms to much more stringent regulation, including making them liable for content they host, obliging them to unbundle or separate internal divisions, or even breaking up their business units or introducing a more comprehensive system of tax incentives. In time, it is possible that the IPA will develop beyond a ‘monitoring and information’ function into a regulatory function, but it is also possible that regulatory needs can be met by a combination of existing bodies, as advised by the IPA.
The recommendations in this report are aimed at ensuring that the interests of citizens – understood as all of those residing in the UK – are protected alongside the interests of other stakeholders as the media system develops. This is essential if the information crisis is to be tackled successfully and democratic deliberation sustained.
