Media Plurality: Communications Committee Report

Lord St John of Bletso Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord St John of Bletso (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, for his able stewardship of this topical inquiry. Clearly, we have seen a huge transformation in the media and communications landscape as a result of digital technologies, online journalism and social media, with an influx of new entrants to the news market. Increasingly, the younger generation get their news from Twitter, Vox and BuzzFeed. As a result, the levels of choice and media plurality have never been greater. We are also fortunate to have a public service broadcasting system that guarantees the provision of well resourced, independent and impartial news from the BBC and other commercial PSBs.

As several noble Lords have mentioned, plurality policy needs to encompass both local and regional media. I support the recommendation that policymakers should adopt a balanced approach, taking care not to penalise success nor harm innovation while acting to address plurality concerns. I also support the call by ITV that the UK needs a new and more equitable regime governing the basis on which PSB content providers commercialise their content on pay-TV platforms. Finally, I also support the recommendation that Ofcom undertakes a statutory periodic review of plurality every four to five years. There needs to be a clear demarcation line between plurality and competition policy. Measuring media plurality cannot be confined to any single measure, but should reflect a collection of measures. I shall end with the words that we used at the start of this report:

“Media plurality is not a goal in itself but a means to an end”.