Media Literacy (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Keeley on the comprehensive way that she introduced our committee’s report on media literacy, of which committee I am lucky to be a member. I also welcome the Government’s media literacy action plan that was published today. The committee’s report covers considerable ground but, in my time today, I want to focus on media literacy in schools. In doing so, I must remind the Committee of my interests, especially chairing the board of trustees at E-ACT and my work with Pearson Education.

Last year, I carried out research into how we might teach media literacy to young people. As part of that work, I met a Cambridge professor who described the rise of disinformation as a war between autocracy and democracy. This may sound dramatic, but it captures why I have devoted considerable time to this issue. There has always been the disinformation of propaganda and the misinformation of gossip and tittle-tattle, but what we face now is fundamentally different. These age-old problems are massively amplified by AI creating credible fake content. We saw Cambridge Analytica’s interference in the Brexit referendum. We see foreign interference in elections through disinformation bots on social media. Technology has transformed the scale and sophistication of the threat to our democracy.

In my research, I also met the Guardian Foundation, the Financial Times, the Economist, the BBC and others. Collectively, they offer a considerable body of support material for teachers but with piecemeal take-up while we await the proper place in the curriculum for media literacy. I have also spoken to examination boards and, crucially, to young people. What has emerged is growing awareness of the importance of doing more on media literacy, now reflected in the curriculum and assessment review’s commitment to strengthen media literacy in English, citizenship and PSHE. This is welcome, but I dread a knowledge-rich approach that simply teaches young people about how the media works without the practical experience of creating media content and developing genuine critical thinking. The disinformation we face, particularly AI-generated content, requires much better critical thinking skills, yet our current system of teaching to the test with its high-stakes accountability actively works against developing thinking skills. We teach model answers to predicted questions and mark schemes, but not how to think independently and critically. We must free teachers across all subjects to teach thinking, not just to drill test responses.

I also urge the DfE to explore using project-based qualifications to teach media literacy effectively. The FPQ, HPQ and EPQ offer a ready-made framework. Why not incentivise young people to learn about the media by creating journalistic content across the media types and assessing it using these existing qualifications with their accompanying UCAS credits? This combines practical creation with critical thinking in an authentic context. I hope the new curriculum finds space for this approach, especially at key stages 3 and 4 when young people are most actively engaging with social media and most vulnerable to misinformation and AI hallucination.

Media literacy is a democratic necessity. If citizens cannot evaluate information critically, the foundations of informed debate and democratic decision-making are weakened. The Government’s action plan today is welcome, but on education we cannot wait until 2028 for curriculum implementation. We must make progress now in anticipation of lowering the voting age to 16 and as AI becomes embedded in our lives. The committee has done a good report that has elicited a good plan from the Government, but we now need implementation at pace and at a scale that this democratic emergency demands.