The House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee has published its report on the future of news.

The Report follows the launch of an inquiry earlier this year which sought to investigate a wide range of matters such as impartiality, trust, and the impact of tech platforms and generative AI on news business models.

Whilst the Chair of the Committee, Baroness Stowell, is keen to stress that “it’s important not to be too doom and gloom about the future” and that the narrative about the future of news being one of managed decline needs to change, the report itself does paint a rather gloomy picture about the state of the industry. The Committee warns of a risk of a two-tier media environment developing wherein “a growing proportion of society will have limited engagement with professionally produced news”, made worse by the impact of generative AI tools which can “create engaging news summaries and provide tech firms with unprecedented influence over the type of news we see”. Added to this, the Report points out that “the economics of mass market journalism are worsening, trust is low, and a growing number of people actively avoid mainstream reporting”.

In a stark warning, the Committee states that failing to tackle these challenges could lead to “the UK’s news environment fracturing irreparably along social, regional and economic lines within the next 5–10 years” and, should this happen, “the implications for our society and democracy would be grim”, warning that “the period of having informed citizens with a shared understanding of facts is not inevitable and may not endure”.

Notwithstanding the above, the Report is not, as Baroness Stowell points out, all doom and gloom. It is also full of recommendations for the Government about how to address these matters, whilst recognising that governmental intervention – however well-meaning – is not always appropriate in this area and therefore a careful balance must be struck: “too much government engagement risks market distortions and cronyism, while too little risks accepting inexorable decline”. It also states that many measures should work with, rather than against, public demand and/or market forces, and that the Government should “focus on sector-wide structural changes which drive innovation while maintaining media independence”.

The Committee focuses on six areas in particular, and makes recommendations in relation to each:

1. Financial Health

The Report notes that “the financial outlook for news is challenging”, particular for local news. Among other things, it recommends that the Government should review the impacts of business rates relief on local newspaper offices and launch consultations both on tax breaks for hiring local journalists and allowing local authorities “greater flexibility in determining the most effective use of public notice advertising spend”. The Committee also recommends the establishment of a ‘Future News innovation catalyst scheme’ – funded by the Government, but delivered independently –  to encourage media organisations to “innovate and take more risks to transition to long-term sustainable business models”.

2. Tech Platforms

The report considers the impacts of tech platforms on the news industry, noting the views of some that tech firms should pay publishers directly for news content appearing on their platforms. However, the Committee does not endorse this position, pointing to experiences in California, Australia and Canada which suggest that such an approach is by no means straightforward.

The Committee does, however, endorse the views of those in the industry who have called for boosting the online prominence of quality news journalism. Whilst it does not recommend direct Government intervention, it encourages tech platforms to “give more prominence to recognised news publishers (as defined in the Online Safety Act 2023), for example through better visual cues or adjusting prominence on user feeds”. It also encourages Ofcom to take steps to engage with tech platforms to address the blocking of legitimate and Ofcom-compliant news content, as well as to investigate recommender algorithms in order to increase transparency over tech platforms’ algorithms.

3. Generative AI

The Committee talks of a ‘new frontier’ of GenAI which both exacerbates existing challenges for the news industry associated with tech platforms and also brings entirely new ones such as AI-assisted journalists, hallucinations, and biases. Given the rapid pace of these technological developments, the Committee expresses disappointment that online news intermediaries are not within the scope of the media ownership rules (on which we have commented here) and urges the Government and Ofcom to correct this, calling the current position “oddly short sighted given the rapid advances in tech firms’ ability to produce news summaries”.

The Report also dedicates considerable time to discussing the ongoing debate about how to address the use of copyright-protected works (such as news content) to train GenAI models. It recognises the delicate balance between the UK remaining competitive in AI development and protecting intellectual property rights, but argues that “the complexity of the issues…should not become an excuse for inertia”. Welcoming the Government’s plans to make progress on this issue, the Committee “caution[s] strongly against adopting a flawed opt- out regime comparable to the version operating in the EU”. Instead, it argues that “much better means for ensuring technical viability, transparency, consent and enforcement are needed for a new text and data mining regime to work to UK advantage”. For example, it states that any proposal for a new text and data mining regime must: (1) include transparency mechanisms so that rightsholders can check whether their data has been used; (2) offer robust technical enforceability and meaningful sanctions for non-compliance; and (3) include requirements for ‘web crawlers’ to identify their purpose.

The Committee urges the Government to dedicate “significant technical, policy and political resource to address these challenges at pace” and calls on the Competition and Markets Authority to “investigate and address tech firms leveraging dominance in one domain, notably internet search, to secure anti-competitive advantages in obtaining data for generative AI training”.

4. Serving Audiences

The Report stresses the fact that the broadcasting market will only thrive if there is healthy competition. However, it makes plain that new entrants to the market must “comply with the spirit of the rules, not stretch them to breaking point” and cites examples of where Ofcom’s approach to impartiality has been called into question. The Committee states that it was “reassured that Ofcom is aware of the challenges and the need to avoid the impression that political sensitives have influenced the regulatory environment”, adding that “more transparency in future would help, particularly around the thresholds at which alternative interpretations of the rules might apply”.

5. Misinformation and Disinformation

The Committee comments on concerns among some of ‘mission creep’ of organisations and measures designed to counter misinformation and disinformation, resulting in a chilling effect on freedom of expression and affecting the income of publishers. For example, some publishers spoke of a fall in advertising revenue after receiving a poor rating from the Global Disinformation Index (“GDI”). In turn, the GDI argued that “publishers have no automatic right to expect advertisers’ money” and that advertisers “aren’t compelled to buy ads alongside content they feel might harm their brand”.

In light of the “complex questions” raised by the rise of brand safety organisations such as the GDI, the Committee recommends that the Government’s online advertising taskforce should review the work of such organisations and their impact on news publisher revenue.

More generally, the Committee states that it welcomes efforts to “improve trust in the information environment” but cautions against strategies that “raise questions about potential overreach and free speech sensitivities and… risk creating strategic dependencies on overseas tech firms to address highly sensitive societal challenges”.

6. SLAPPs

Finally, the Committee laments that the Government is failing to prioritise anti-SLAPP legislation which, it says, has “serious potential consequences for press freedom and the future of the news industry”. The Report notes that viable legislative options and precedents exist and that a public consultation has already been conducted. However, the Committee states that what is missing now is political will. It therefore calls on the Government to publish draft legislative proposals before the 2025 summer recess.

The Report also comments on the work of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”) in this area, applauding the progress made but arguing that future reviews of SLAPP activity should not exclude law firms subject to ongoing investigations, and that the current fining limit of £25,000 should be raised to £250 million. It also recommends that the Government should review whether the SRA has the necessary inspection powers to enable “more targeted assessments” and that the SRA’s remit should be extended to cover activities directly commissioned by solicitors, thereby preventing “lawyers from outsourcing harassment to third parties without scrutiny”.

To read the Report in full, click here.