The Committee recommends that the Government should lead a new plan to fund journalism, to support innovation and pluralism in an industry facing “an existential threat”. The Committee also urges the Government to “stop dragging its feet” over plans for a new regulator for the “dysfunctional” online advertising market in a bid to help hard-hit media outlets. Digital platforms, such as Facebook and Google, are “part of a bigger problem” for news publishers with a “fundamental imbalance of power” between them, the report finds.

The Committee want the proposed Digital Markets Unit (DMU) (see item below) to be set up urgently to regulate online platforms that have “strategic market status”, and a new code of conduct.

The report finds that news publishers rely increasingly on crucial online revenue, but Facebook and Google profit from adverts alongside news organisations’ content, which neither pays for the right to carry at present. The DMU could also require Google, for example, to give data to rival search engines and require social media companies to let their users see posts on other platforms, the Committee suggests.

The report also says that the Government should introduce a compulsory news bargaining code, similar to an Australian model which Facebook and Google have strongly opposed, in its Online Harms Bill, to force platforms to pay publishers for the right to use content.

Lord Gilbert of Panteg, Chair of the Committee, noted that online advertising is crucial to news publishers’ success, but said that there is “a fundamental imbalance of power between them and platforms such as Facebook and Google whose overwhelming market dominance means they dictate the terms on which they use publishers’ content, including whether and how much they pay for it. Publishers need platforms far more than the platforms need them and are disadvantaged by a dysfunctional online advertising market”.

Lord Gilbert said that it is “essential that the Government acts swiftly to remedy this” and that it should set up the Digital Markets Unit “as a matter of urgency”.

Other recommendations include:

• Ofcom should have the power to regulate public service broadcasters’ online news;
• Ofcom should have the power to ensure that public service broadcasters monitor the accuracy and impartiality of their journalists’ public social media posts and take appropriate action where necessary; and
• the BBC news website and app should include a new aggregator section linking to stories on smaller and local news organisations’ websites. The Committee heard concerns that these organisations could be a victim of the BBC’s success.

To read the Committee’s press release in full and for a link to the report, click here.