UK Journalism (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Faulks Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I join with others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, and his committee on this excellent report. As well as the report, I also had the pleasure of reading much of the evidence that was given to the committee, which added a great deal of texture to the comments the report contained. Apart from as a consumer of journalism and a legislator, I hardly need to declare my interest as the chairman of IPSO, which has been much maligned already in this debate. It is of course tempting to enter a sturdy defence of IPSO into this debate, but I do not want to divert from the real issue, which is the future of journalism. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to convince the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Lipsey, of the virtues of IPSO in the “last-chance saloon”.

I think and trust that newspapers in the United Kingdom are better than they were when Leveson looked at the standards of the press. IPSO regulates 90% of national newspapers by circulation and almost all local newspapers. We have had 100,000 complaints in the last seven years. I do not consider that to indicate a failure by journalists or editors; most of the complaints are outside our jurisdiction or do not violate the editors’ code. Rather, I would hope that this is an indication that consumers value regulation.

The product that a reader of conventional newspapers has is regulated and curated by editors, but newspapers, and thus journalists, are now painting on a much-reduced canvas. Most people consume their news via social media—an area untouched by Leveson. There is no regulation and the curation of content is largely by algorithm. The absurdities that can result from algorithms was well illustrated by Peter Wright, in his evidence to this committee, and by the noble Lord, Lord Hague, in his article in the Times yesterday. Do noble Lords think that algorithms have much to do with the search for truth in a democratic society, or are they designed for the benefit of advertisers?

The online safety Bill is full of good intentions. I endorse the recommendation that it should include a mandatory bargaining code, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, gave. It is pioneering legislation, and all parliamentarians should give it support. Whether it will deal with the alarming practices employed by, for example, Facebook, described by Frances Haugen in her evidence to Congress is, however, rather doubtful.

Diminishing circulation and advertising revenue have represented a major threat to newspapers, and thus to journalists. Covid has of course accelerated this trend, although, in my view, journalists have done well in the course of Covid, and IPSO intends this autumn to publish a paper describing the journalistic response to the pandemic.

In addition to the danger so well described in this report, I reiterate the problems that face local newspapers, for all the problems of access to news described by the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey. Nine hundred local media titles written by quality journalists find their way to 40.6 million consumers via print and digital channels, but the BBC—much unfairly maligned, I hasten to add—is the largest online publisher, driving away some commercial news producers. Owen Meredith, the chief executive of the NMA, put it rather crudely, perhaps, but forcefully in an article in the Times the other day headlined “Local media need protection from the predatory BBC”.

This report makes a number of truly excellent suggestions. The future of journalism is of concern to all of us. I congratulate the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, I very much congratulate the Minister on his appointment and I look forward to working with him and the committee in helping maintain the high standards of journalism that we have come to expect and will very much need in future.