Beckie Shuker, Campaign and Communications Manager at the Public Interest News Foundation, breaks down the government's new proposals that could give local news a fairer chance online.
How often are you searching for local info, just to find a three-year-old Reddit post from Missouri at the top of your feed? For lots of us, the answer is more often than we would like. Which begs the question, who gets to decide what we see online?
Most of us now get our information via a big tech platform - Google search, BlueSky, TikTok, YouTube, Meta - and where that story pops up in your social media feed, search results, our YouTube recommendation is entirely in the hands of increasingly opaque algorithms.
The problem is that those algorithms aren't primarily designed to provide trustworthy information, they're designed to keep us scrolling. That’s why we’re pleased to see the government finally taking steps to regulate the online environment with a new proposal on media prominence.
What is prominence?
Media prominence is about whether professional, reliable news gets a fair shot at being seen. As it stands, tech platforms decide what we do and don’t see, increasingly personalising results so that no two people will get the same information on any given day. Prominence regulations would require platforms, including search engines and social media, to make sure that trustworthy, public interest news is made more visible.
Prominence isn't a new idea; linear TV has worked this way for years. It’s definitely not hard to work out when and where the 10 o’clock News will be! The government's proposal asks if the online world could benefit from a similar framework.
We called for something similar - a must-carry provision - in our paper last year, calling for backstop options to support the Competition and Markets Authority’s work to rebalance the platform-publisher relationship. This new proposal comes to us as a green paper from the Department for Media, Culture and Sport as part of a raft of policy ideas to improve the UK’s information environment.
Why do we need prominence?
A handful of unelected, unaccountable platforms have become the main gateway by which people find information and this system is stoking tension and division by allowing misinformation to run rampant. Platforms have even shown that they're willing to switch off the taps when it suits them - Facebook banned news outright in Canada, at a time when wildfires were devastating the country, rather than pay publishers their fair share. Elsewhere, platforms have suppressed stories CEOs personally disagree with, in relation to LGBTQ+ rights, abortion access and pro-Palestinian content.
When professional journalism disappears from these platforms, mis- and disinformation are allowed to flourish in its place and local communities already hit by the decimation of local news pay the price.
How is safety guaranteed?
Requiring platforms to prioritise certain content would constitute an interference with their Article 10 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. However, that right also places a duty on governments to protect a plural, healthy media landscape, recognising that legitimate interventions are essential to tackle the imbalance in power between platforms and publishers.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some incredibly important questions to answer in order to get the new regime right. In our response to the green paper consultation, we set out the key ways in which the legislation can make sure that a prominence regime is proportionate. Read the full (draft) paper, or get the summary below.
Eligibility calls for independent regulation: a prominence regime will require an objective measure of quality in news provision - both to ensure that the legislation is workable and that content made visible is of a high standard that audiences can trust. We propose independent regulation (by IPSO or Impress) as a basic criterion for eligibility.
A co-regulatory body making the decisions: it may sound bureaucratic, but no single body - be that government, big tech, or news corporations themselves - should have the power to unilaterally decide which outlets should be given prominence. We propose that an independent body, made up of media professionals and civil society, should be empowered to interpret the legislation, decide who gets prominence, and hear appeals from anyone that’s missed off the list. This group would also designate which platforms fall under the remit of the legislation and monitor the outcomes, i.e., how well the regime is meeting its target of fostering a healthier information ecosystem.
Outcomes-based measures for platforms: the ways in which each platform will display prominent news will look very different depending on their infrastructure and audience. We can also heavily bet that even by the time this legislation gets to be debated in Parliament, platforms will have gone through major changes! Thus, platforms should decide for themselves how best to display media prominently, monitored by the co-regulatory body.
Opt-out for users: we’ve addressed proportionality for platforms and the news industry - for users, the best way to protect their rights is to allow them to opt-out if they so choose. Some people simply don’t want to encounter the news online, and that’s ok.
What’s next?
Clearly, these are some huge questions, constituting an entirely new way of regulating our online world. It’s well worth taking the time to get the details right, especially given the UK is leading the way on this. Meaningful consultation is needed to make sure a new prominence regime works for everyone: news publishers, platforms, and most importantly the public.
We're excited by the challenge. A healthy democracy depends on people being able to find reliable information about the places they live. Right now, that's left to the commercial interests of a very small number of very powerful organisations. We think this is the perfect opportunity to take that power back.
Got ideas about the prominence proposals? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Contact us with your ideas and make sure you respond to the government consultation (deadline 31st August!).
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