The Cairncross Review into the future of the UK news industry has delivered its final report, with recommendations on how to safeguard the future sustainability of the UK press.
Online platforms should have a 'news quality obligation' to improve trust in news they host, overseen by a regulator
Government should explore direct funding for local news and new tax reliefs to
support public interest journalism
A new Institute for Public Interest News should focus on the future of local and regional press and oversee a new innovation fund
The independent review , undertaken by Frances Cairncross, was tasked by the Prime Minister in 2018 with investigating the sustainability of the production and distribution of high-quality journalism. It comes as significant changes
to technology and consumer behaviour are posing problems for high-quality journalism, both in the UK and globally.
Cairncross was advised by a panel from the local and national press, digital and physical publishers and
advertising. Her recommendations include measures to tackle the uneven balance of power between news publishers and the online platforms that distribute their content, and to address the growing risks to the future provision of public-interest news.
It also concludes that intervention may be needed to improve people's ability to assess the quality of online news, and to measure their engagement with public interest news. The key recommendations are:
New codes of conduct to rebalance the relationship between publishers and online platforms;
The Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the online advertising market to ensure fair
competition;
Online platforms' efforts to improve their users' news experience should be placed under regulatory supervision;
Ofcom should explore the market impact of BBC News, and whether its
inappropriately steps into areas better served by commercial news providers;
The BBC should do more to help local publishers and think further about how its news provision can act as a complement to commercial news;
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A new independent Institute should be created to ensure the future provision of public interest news;
A new Innovation Fund should be launched, aiming to improve the supply of public interest news;
New forms of tax reliefs to encourage payments for online news content and support local and investigative journalism;
Expanding financial support for local news by extending the BBC's Local Democracy
Reporting Service;
Developing a media literacy strategy alongside Ofcom, industry and stakeholders.
The Government will now consider all of the recommendations in more detail. To inform this, the Culture Secretary will write immediately to the Competition and Markets Authority, Ofcom and the Chair of the Charity Commission to open
discussions about how best to take forward the recommendations which fall within their remits. The Government will respond fully to the report later this year.
DCMS Secretary of State Jeremy Wright said:
A healthy democracy needs high quality journalism to thrive and this report sets out the challenges to putting our news media on a stronger and more sustainable footing, in the face of changing technology and rising disinformation.
There are some things we can take action on immediately while others will need further careful consideration with stakeholders on the best way forward.
A Mediatique report Overview of recent market dynamics in the UK
press, April 2018 commissioned by DCMS as the part of the Cairncross Review found:
Print advertising revenues have dropped by more than two-thirds in the ten years to 2017;
Print circulation of national papers fell from 11.5 million daily copies in 2008 to 5.8 million in 2018 and for
local papers from 63.4 million weekly in 2007 to 31.4 million weekly in 2017;
Sales of both national and local printed papers fell by roughly half between 2007 and 2017, and are still declining;
The number of full-time frontline journalists in the UK has dropped from an estimated 23,000 in 2007, to just 17,000 today, and the numbers are still declining.
A report Online Advertising in the UK by Plum Consulting, commissioned by DCMS as the part of the Cairncross Review (and available as an annex to the Review) found:
UK internet advertising expenditure increased from £3.5 billion in 2008 to £11.5 billion in 2017, a compound annual growth rate of 14%.
Publishers rely on display advertising for their revenue online -
which in the last decade has transformed into a complex, automated system known as programmatic advertising.
An estimated average of £0.62 of every £1 spent on programmatic advertising goes to the publisher - though this can
range from £0.43 to £0.72. *Collectively, Facebook and Google were estimated to have accounted for over half (54%) of all UK online advertising revenues in 2017.
The major online platforms collect multiple first-party
datasets from large numbers of logged-in users. They generally, they do not share data with third-parties, including publishers.
Dame Frances Cairncross is a former economic journalist, author and academic administrator. She is currently Chair of the Court of Heriot-Watt University and a Trustee at the Natural History Museum. Dame Frances was Rector of Exeter
College, Oxford University; a senior editor on The Economist; and principal economic columnist for the Guardian. In 2014 she was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to education. She is the author of a number of books, including "The
Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution is Changing our Lives" and "Costing the Earth: The Challenge for Governments, the Opportunities for Business". Dame Frances is married to financial journalist Hamish McRae.
The BBC comments on some of the ideas not included in the report's recommendations
See article from bbc.co.uk
The
report falls short of requiring Facebook, Google and other tech giants to pay for the news they distribute via their platforms. Caurncross told the BBC's media editor Amol Rajan that "draconian and risky" measures could result in firms such as
Google withdrawing their news services altogether.:
There are a number of ways we have suggested technology companies could behave differently and could be made to behave differently. But they are mostly ways that
don't immediately involve legislation."
Frances Cairncross earned widespread respect as a journalist for her hard-headed and pragmatic approach to economics. That pragmatism is the very reason the government commissioned her to
look at the future of high-quality news - and also the reason many in local and regional media will be disappointed by her recommendations.
What is most notable about her review is what it doesn't do.
- It doesn't suggest all social media should be regulated in the UK
- It doesn't suggest social media companies pay for the privilege of using news content
- It doesn't suggest social media companies be treated as publishers, with legal
liability for all that appears on their platform
This is because the practicalities of doing these things are difficult, and experience shows that the likes of Google will simply pull out of markets that don't suit them.
Ultimately, as this report acknowledges, when it comes to news,
convenience is king. The speed, versatility and zero cost of so much news now means that, even if it is of poor quality, a generation of consumers has fallen out of the habit of paying for news. But quality costs. If quality news has a future, consumers
will have to pay. That's the main lesson of this report.
