Media Literacy (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I am proud to be a member of the Communications and Digital Committee, which produced this report. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, for focusing and steering us towards the important conclusions we reached. Following the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, I will focus on the significance of trusted news sources and how digital users can use them to cut a path to truth through the jungle of misinformation on the internet. The spread of AI has created as many problems as solutions. It is a blight on our society. Anyone can create an AI deepfake image at home in a few seconds. This has meant that misinformation and disinformation are everywhere and growing by the second.

The problem has only been compounded by the use of AI systems as the main source of news for so many people. I have been worried by an impressive new study by European public service broadcasters, which found that there were issues with 45% of AI news summaries. For example, when using satirical source material, AI delivered it as the truth. It found the responses were often one-sided and did not provide the context for the user to understand the issue properly. Gemini even added words to direct quotes. The AI assistant struggled with fast-moving news stories and intricate timelines involving multiple actors. This report and many others highlight the unreliability of so many AI news sources. Now is the time to ensure that political energy is focused on promoting our trusted providers of information and directing users towards them.

I urge the Government to support the CMA’s strategic market status investigation into Google search. It is important that when an AI overview appears at the top of the search, it declares its sources of information and gives links to the websites that provided the trusted source of information. I also urge the Government to support the PSBs with magnified discoverability as they start to move into partnerships with video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok.

A week or so ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, said in Oral Questions that the Government are considering Ofcom’s recommendation for PSB material on video-sharing platforms to be given more prominence and fair terms; can the Minister build on this answer? I, too, am glad to see in today’s government report on media literacy that the Government want to place an obligation on the BBC to support media literacy nationwide. The corporation is at the forefront of this battle for truth. As the report points out, the BBC’s Bitesize assistant is an important aid for young people.

To build on this, there is an initiative called the Other Side of the Story to help develop young people’s critical skills, which is a partnership between BBC Education and BBC News. It helps people respond to misinformation and fake news, telling participants to double-check what they are reading, as fake news is often opinion dressed up as fact. The course warns that echo chambers which develop on social media are dangerous if users are searching for objective news. They are advised to break out of these echo chambers by looking at other people’s points of view and the opinions of those with whom they agree. However, action 4 in the Government’s report, to support BBC media literacy, will have no effect if it is yet another obligation to deliver services without funding that extra responsibility. Can the Minister reassure us that those media literacy duties will be fully funded by the Government?

Local media is another source of trusted news, recognised by action 3 of the Government’s report. The Communications and Digital Committee took interesting evidence from the Guardian Foundation. I am very persuaded by the effectiveness of its Media Literacy Ambassador programme; set up in 2023 by a group of colleges in Derby, it harnessed the power of peer pressure. Young people are trained up to be ambassadors in how to spot fake news and develop critical faculties and they train up their peers. Last year this meant nearly 1,500 young people trained up over 5,000 other students. Unfortunately, DSIT funded this excellent scheme for only 18 months, until the end of 2024, and now it has stopped. I therefore call on the Minister to re-establish support for such a powerful programme.

The Government have recognised in action 3 that involving students and local media in news stories relevant to their local area is an effective way of drawing people to an understanding of trusted sources. The problem is that, as many noble Lords know, there has been a collapse in local media. Can the Minister say whether extra funds will be available to support action 3 and bring the local media into the community?

I am glad the Government have finally recognised in today’s report the importance of media literacy for the future of our young people and our country. These are warm words indeed. I will be watching closely to see how these words are turned into actions.