Media Plurality: Communications Committee Report

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I refer noble Lords to my interests in the register. I wish to raise two points relating to children and young people, and why the metrics of the framework that Ofcom is commissioned to design should explicitly consider young people.

First, the young, by virtue of their age, have a more limited life experience from which to critically appraise information. This leaves them more vulnerable than their adult counterparts to the possible harms of a restricted or lop-sided diet of news and current affairs. In December 2010, Her Majesty’s Government undertook to look at all new Bills and policies in the light of the UNCRC, and I argue that media plurality policy falls well within the rights described in the charter.

Additionally, the framework should also take into account how young people consume news and current affairs. Ofcom’s 2014 figures show a rapid increase in the amount of information the young access online. As many noble Lords will be aware, the commercial internet is constructed primarily on an advertising model that sets algorithms largely based on what a user previously viewed and on what their social networks previously “liked”.

This personalisation has benefits of filtering searches and newsfeeds so if you prefer jazz to rock, or fast foods to wholefoods, you will be offered choices that fit closer to your desires. However it has an insidious effect on news. This mechanism—known variously as the filter bubble, echo chamber or personalisation—is a structural obstacle to media plurality.

One of the great wonders of the web is the extraordinary range of information and opinion it delivers; how it does so, however, is not neutral. Can the Minister therefore confirm that Her Majesty’s Government, in light of previous undertakings, will ask Ofcom to explicitly take into account the availability, consumption and impact of news and current affairs on children and young people when designing the measurement framework and, in doing so, that the personalisation of their media online and the proportion of their news and current affairs consumed online will be taken into account?