UK Journalism (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the Minister on his new appointment. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, because we are basically saying the same thing. There is much to be welcomed in this report and I had the privilege to sit on the committee in the early stages of its deliberations. It is a worthy successor to previous reports by the committee, which have illuminated the media landscape and made some excellent recommendations to the Government.

This latest report on the future of journalism in our country brings together two essential points. It describes in detail the multiple changes, online and in print, which journalism has gone through in the past 20 years, yet it also emphasises that, despite all the turbulence, journalism should remain underpinned by the same enduring principles of an open and democratic society. Of those principles, none is more important to the future of journalism than freedom of expression. Without it, healthy journalism cannot flourish, and without healthy journalism there cannot be a healthy democracy.

I am therefore pleased to learn that the committee intends to tackle freedom of expression online in a future report, but nowhere in this report does it define what it means by “freedom of expression”. Indeed, the phrase, enshrining one of the most cherished freedoms, merits only one mention. This is a grave omission. It sits very awkwardly with the Nobel Peace Prize given last week to two journalists for their courage in defending freedom of expression in the Philippines and in Russia.

We mock and condemn the People’s Republic of China for promoting President Xi’s thought as the only acceptable way of thinking, but how is this different from those in our country who, in strident pursuit of the culture wars, would ban certain words and people from public discourse, who would censor history and dismiss scientific objectivity as the work of so-called “white privilege”? If journalism worthy of the name is to have any future at all, these forces cannot be allowed to prevail.

Nowadays, it is virtually impossible for journalists to avoid stepping on one of the many landmines laid by the monstrous regiment of culture warriors. Only last week, the Times reported the concerns of Tim Davie and of Michael Jermey, the director of ITV news and current affairs. Each referred to the culture wars and how they were making life incredibly difficult for impartial TV journalism.

It is a supreme irony that, as the demand for diversity gathers unstoppable momentum, plurality of speech and thought suffers from the onslaught of bigoted ideologues. This is the road to perdition—a road that led, in the last century, to dictatorships in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and that is already leading, in this century, to the dumbing down of British education, the rejection of common sense and the creation of a British version of President Xi’s thought—all in brutal violation of our traditions, culture and history.

In its latest report, the committee is very good at shining a light on the trees of journalism—too good, because it has obscured the wood. Improvements in training and media literacy are all very well and worthy in themselves, but what purpose do they serve? What values inspire them? If the answer is not to strengthen freedom of expression, this report and others like it are not worth it.

Online Harms Legislation

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

The noble Baroness puts her finger on an important point. The task of defining vulnerability will be a key element in our work between now and the spring. Forgive me if my answer is brief but it is a complex and important area.

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, have Her Majesty’s Government taken into account what other countries are doing to tackle online harms?

[Baroness Barran]

We are liaising on developments in the EU and globally but, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, we will not let that slow us down.