What about the Green Paper on the media?

Introduction

Ian Murray, Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts, who issued the Paper

In June, the Government issued a Green Paper called a new strategic direction for UK media. The paper is a consultative document, in response to which CAMPAIN has written the letter below. You too may comment on it as an individual (see our suggestions below on how to comment). But first, more about the Green Paper.

It starts by referring to technologically driven changes in the market and audience context in which TV operates. Today’s audiences have access to a near infinite amount of content, and are shifting away from traditional live TV, particularly in the case of younger viewers. It cites platforms like YouTube increasingly hosting high-quality, TV-like programmes. Migration to such platforms in turn puts significant financial strain on what the Green Paper defines as domestic public service media (PSM) providers, i.e. the BBC, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, Scottish News (STV), and Welsh Language TV (S4C).

So, what is Government proposing to do about this? It wants to bring forward the transition from traditional (DTT or Freeview) broadcast platforms to internet-delivered viewing (IPTV), it wants to promote media literacy among viewers, so they can better tell the difference between news and polemic, and misleading or false content. The latter is to be achieved under recommendations from Ofcom, and is supposed to complement the role of the education system.

However, what caught the attention of several parties, including CAMPAIN, was Government plans for a prominence regime for what the Green Paper calls trustworthy news. The Government would:

explore legislative options to require social media to make news content from PSM providers, and potentially also national and local news publishers, prominent and easily discoverable. This is crucial for countering misinformation, especially during times of social unrest or crisis.

The Green Paper expressed much concern about the way the explosion in social media has created a news environment, involving algorithmic amplification of a vast number individually curated feeds, and where divisive and inaccurate narratives are more likely to survive, undermining social cohesion.

Critical voices

The paper brought forth critiques or words of warning from various media entities, including the News Media Association, the Independent Media Association (IMA) and the Press Recognition Panel (PRP). The PRP was established during the last decade as part of the Leveson reforms to press regulation, but these have only been implemented partially with major newspapers remaining outside this system. While welcoming the Government’s objective of improving the visibility of trusted public-interest journalism, their general sentiment was one of distrust – for example the IMA thought that the proposal risked being undermined by relying on a deeply flawed definition of ‘trusted news providers’. The PRP said that if social cohesion is a policy objective, any intervention that stops at the gates of Fleet Street (that successfully resisted Leveson regulatory proposals) is unlikely to succeed.

Richard Sanders (of Double Down News) and Owen Jones are both critically dependent on YouTube to distribute their videos, and are more overtly critical. For Sanders it is an absurd simplification to describe PSM as ‘the cornerstone of trusted news’ - - - Government finds the diversity and unmanageability of the current media landscape to be threatening, and is therefore seeking to strangle outlets like Double Down News that hold the Government and the powerful to account. Jones says that for large broadcasters with multiple sources of funding and distribution, YouTube reach is useful. For many independent publishers, it is existential. 

The idea of Government being able to turn down (or silence) social media at times of social unrest or crisis is spine-chilling. As Jones puts it: Imagine a government leading the country into a catastrophic war and activating a system that privileges officially recognised broadcasters over independent anti-war voices.

Notwithstanding these players’ concerns, CAMPAIN starts from the presumption that Government has issued this Green Paper in good faith, and wishes to elicit and act upon frank feedback. After all, the Green Paper acknowledges that the Government has not yet determined the criteria for identifying a trustworthy news provider. Hence, we have analysed at length the Government’s proposals for a prominence regime, and submitted our views in the letter to Ian Murray, Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts in the letter below.

It is our main finding that the shortcomings in existing regulatory systems of both mainstream newspapers (under IPSO) and of broadcasters/PSMs (under Ofcom) are so serious that they render the concept of trustworthy news provider practicably inoperable under present circumstances.

Our key recommendation to Government: don’t consider a prominence regime until media regulation has been thoroughly reformed

Without adequate safeguards, a prominence regime could make accurate and important journalism from independent sources harder to find while reinforcing the position of already dominant and increasingly discredited legacy media organisations. There needs to be a robust regulatory framework whose rules are strictly evidence driven, without which a prominence regime is a house built on sand. 

This framework needs to be sufficiently robust and well-grounded to withstand and challenge political pressures, especially when the authorities have recourse to security to justify their actions. Loaded terms like terrorism and antisemitism can too easily be used to shut out fundamental issues of debate and at best muddy the waters.

We therefore recommend: 

• a thorough review of the effectiveness and independence of Ofcom's regulation of news and current-affairs broadcasting, followed by robust corrective action;

• bringing all major national publishers inside the Royal Charter recognition system, under the Press Recognition Panel (PRP);

• ensuring that regulators are empowered and encouraged to prevent the problem of censorship by silence, i.e. studiously ignoring significant evidence or informed dissent in the name of editorial discretion (we provide many examples of this in the paper below);

• a thorough examination of news coming from social media, covering among other things the measures that tech platforms already use to bias news coverage.

If such a framework can be formulated and embedded we feel there may be a case for tackling the more daunting task of regulating social media and ensuring content providers do not restrict legitimate users from access to their platforms. It should incorporate:

• transparent, politically independent criteria for any future designation of a trustworthy news provider, together with an independent appeals mechanism.

• strong safeguards ensuring that smaller independent publishers are not disadvantaged by prominence requirements, and

• protection for legitimate foreign news providers, individual journalists, academics and specialist commentators.   

We hope the Government will take these considerations into account before deciding whether, and in what form, a news-prominence regime should proceed.

You too can comment on the Green Paper, before the end of August

If you wish to comment, please go to this document, scroll down to where it says respond online, and then click.

You will find the consultation is split into eight sections, but you only need to answer those with which you feel comfortable. To me the most important were:

• no 2 on the prominence of news on social media;

• no 5 on the future of TV regulation, and;

• no 6 on the prominence of public service media in the ‘platform age’.

Some aspects of the consultation are not very user friendly – you can’t go back between sections and correct answers. Most of the questions are of the multiple-choice kind and do not allow you to express nuance or why you think this or that. Some are arguably of the leading kind, prompting you to accept the Government’s framing.  If you feel unsure, don’t think you must provide definite answers.

However, you can express yourselves clearly in response to an open-ended question in Section 2 which asks you what are your overall views on the future of television and media in the UK, related to the topics presented in this Green Paper? 

There is another open-ended question in Section 5:  Is there any information or comment you would like to provide in relation to the future of TV regulation?

I would advise you to say all you can in response to the Section 2 question, and leave the Section 5 question for complementary information. You may cite CAMPAIN’s response or other documents cited here. Good luck!

Ian Murray

Minister for Culture, Media and Sport

100 Parliament Street, London SW1A 2BQ

12 August 2026

Dear Ian Murray

Response to Watch this Space: a new strategic direction for UK media

I am writing on behalf of CAMPAIN Ltd., a non-partisan civil society organisation, in response to the Government's consultation on the Green Paper on this topic.

We have examined the online consultation form but concluded that our concerns are more clearly expressed in a short statement. We therefore concentrate principally on two connected matters: the proposed prominence regime for trustworthy news and the adequacy of the present system of media regulation.

CAMPAIN stands for Campaign against Misrepresentation in Public Affairs, Information and the News, so these issues lie at the heart of our concerns.

We share the Green Paper's concern about the damage caused by misinformation, disinformation and algorithmic amplification on social media. The misinformation circulated following the Southport murders, and interventions by Elon Musk in British political debate, illustrate the scale of the problem. Similar problems arise in public discussion of war, the environment, minorities, immigration and Brexit. For example, in a situation where about 60% of Britons aged 18-34 get most of their news from social media[i], there is reason to fear that climate-sceptical material diminishes the public’s resolve to act on climate change.

Much of CAMPAIN's own work has concentrated on the reporting of Israel, Palestine and the wider Middle East. We regard this as something of a canary in the coal mine for the health of our news media. If British media cannot report adequately the historical circumstances surrounding prolonged dispossession, ethnic cleansing, the gravest of war crimes and repeated regional conflicts — including Britain's own historical and contemporary responsibilities for what is happening — there is little reason to assume that comparable failures of omission, framing and political pressure cannot occur in other fields.

Our principal request is therefore that the Government should not rush to introduce the prominence measures contemplated in Chapter 2. It should instead use the consultation to examine carefully how “trustworthy” news is to be defined and how plurality and editorial independence can be protected.

The problem which the Government seeks to address is real. But remedies that unintentionally reinforce existing concentrations of media power could be worse than the disease.

The prominence regime and media regulation

We share the concern expressed by the News Media Association:

“While we support the government's intentions in wanting to get people to access trusted news, the method they are proposing here risks obscuring the high-quality, agenda-setting journalism produced every day by the UK's independent news publishers and narrowing the range of trusted voices available to people across the country.”

The Association has also warned that introducing additional criteria determining which organisations or forms of journalism receive prominence could create “winners” and “losers” and further damage public trust.

We see a real danger that a prominence regime could confer substantial advantages on established broadcasters and large newspaper groups without first requiring those organisations to demonstrate compliance with strong, transparent and independently enforced standards. This is particularly relevant because public trust in legacy media is in sharp decline. A conversation between two seasoned MSM journalists (Richard Sanders and Sangita Myska) illustrates how this is happening[ii].

The Green Paper acknowledges that the Government has not yet determined the criteria for identifying a “trustworthy news provider”. It suggests that the definition of a “recognised news publisher” in the Online Safety Act 2023 might provide a starting point, while leaving open the possibility of additional requirements relating to transparency, complaints procedures and journalistic standards.

We welcome that openness, but believe that the Online Safety Act definition by itself would be inadequate.

That definition identifies broadcasters and UK-based news organisations meeting certain organisational, editorial, standards-code and complaints requirements. It does not, however, require a newspaper publisher to belong to a regulator independently recognised under the post-Leveson Royal Charter system.

Consequently, large publishers could potentially qualify for enhanced prominence while remaining within IPSO (which bears an uncanny resemblance to the failed Press Complaints Commission that existed before the phone hacking scandal erupted) or operating their own internal complaints arrangements.

This distinction matters.

IPSO regulates most major national newspaper titles but has not sought recognition by the independent Press Recognition Panel under the Royal Charter framework established following the Leveson Inquiry.

IMPRESS, by contrast, is recognised by the Press Recognition Panel and is periodically reassessed against the Royal Charter criteria for independent and effective press regulation.

It therefore seems anomalous that the Government should contemplate creating a new category of “trustworthy” news provider without first resolving the much older question of what constitutes genuinely independent and effective media regulation.

Public Service Media

Nor should designation as Public Service Media automatically be treated as proof that news reporting is consistently adequate.

The BBC and other public service broadcasters are subject to considerably stronger statutory requirements than newspapers, including regulation by Ofcom. Nevertheless, there have been serious and persistent complaints about omission, framing and accuracy.

These problems become particularly significant in contentious areas of foreign policy, including the Iraq War of 2003 and Israel/Palestine since October 2023, where media organisations operate amid intense political and lobbying pressure and may sometimes reproduce government assumptions rather than subjecting them to adequate scrutiny. Reports of the attack on Israel have often failed to reference the appalling historical context in which they occurred.

There is a substantial literature raising these questions. Examples include:

1. Nick Davies, formerly of The Guardian, in Flat Earth News, particularly his account of the Observer's reporting in the period leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq[iii] — events subsequently reflected in the film Official Secrets.
   

2. Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent, who has repeatedly criticised the Corporation's reporting of Israel and Palestine and drawn attention to the BBC's refusal to publish the report prepared for it by its former senior editorial adviser Malcolm Balen following his 2003 review of Middle East coverage.
   

3. The Glasgow Media Group's studies of television reporting of Israel and Palestine, including its analysis of coverage of the Second Intifada.
   

4. Reports by the Centre for Media Monitoring, including its studies of BBC and wider media coverage of Gaza and Israel and its reports alleging differing standards in the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian perspectives.
   

5. Peter Oborne's book Complicit: Britain's Role in the Destruction of Gaza. Oborne, a former chief political commentator at the Daily Telegraph and former columnist for The Spectator, argues that “with a handful of noteworthy exceptions established media repeated the falsehoods and fabrications spread by Israeli and British politicians.” They had failed to adequately scrutinise government policy and Israeli conduct during the Gaza conflict.
   

6. Investigative and analytical work produced by outlets including Al Jazeera — notably The Labour Files — Middle East Eye, Double Down News and Declassified UK.

One need not accept every conclusion reached by these writers and organisations to recognise that the cumulative criticism deserves serious examination.

A public service media system which has a deaf ear to sustained, evidenced criticism risks failing the people it exists to serve. The same concern must apply to Ofcom if its regulatory framework proves unable adequately to address systemic questions of omission and framing.

"Censorship by silence”

One of the most serious forms of media failure is what CAMPAIN has described as “censorship by silence”: not explicit prohibition, but the failure to report, discuss or investigate material which is plainly relevant to important public controversies. We have examined this phenomenon separately in relation to the BBC[iv].

We can cite a series of other illustrations:

1. With the notable exception of Channel 4 News, the principal public service broadcasters appear to have given little attention to Peter Oborne's Complicit. It is unacceptable for them to simply ignore a book from such an authoritative figure, who holds the British Government and the media to account for complicity with the destruction of Gaza.
   

2. Greg Philo and his co-authors' Bad News for Labour (2019) challenged aspects of the evidential basis of John Ware's controversial BBC Panorama programme concerning allegations of antisemitism within the Labour Party. Whatever view is taken of that dispute, the existence of critiques of this kind warranted serious journalistic examination.
   

3. Paul Holden’s Fraud, considered the definitive account of how Labour Together, a shady outfit set up by Morgan McSweeney and backed by predominantly pro-Israel donors to oust Jeremy Corbyn, though mentioned on Channel 4 News, attracted not a single review in the mainstream media. Yet its revelations of smears and dirty tricks led to the resignation of Starmer’s head of communications, Josh Simons. Linked to this, mainstream media has by and large failed to shine a critical light on the creeping authoritarianism of both Conservative and Labour governments, evident in: (i) a raft of legislation seeking to criminalise and/or minimise protest, by expanding the definition of terrorism (notably in the proscription of Palestine Action) and other means; (ii) the harassing of lawyers and journalists who seek to scrutinise the actions of the British Government, and; (iii) moves to end the cornerstone legal principle of the right to trial by jury. While there have been journalistic pieces about these actions, there has been a lack of scrutiny of the underlying authoritariamism.
   

4. In general, the broadcast media gives very little airtime to alternative voices in their talk shows. Internationally recognised Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim, both based in Britain and both strongly critical of Israeli government policy and conventional accounts of Israel's history are rarely heard or seen on the airwaves. Yet they provide perspectives which audiences should at least have an opportunity to hear and assess.
   

5. BBC and Sky News review national newspapers on a daily basis but confine their attention to mainstream titles creating an echo chamber for the political establishment’s views and ignoring alternative views expressed by smaller independent media. This is a bizarre situation, because they are in effect discriminating against many smaller publishers regulated by the more rigorous and genuinely independent IMPRESS regime established under the post-Leveson Royal Charter system, in favour of larger publishers that are subject to IPSO’s more lax standards.
   

6. Broadcasters fail to represent the diversity of Jewish opinion but consistently provide a platform for “the Jewish Establishment” that unconditionally supports a foreign power (Israel). This includes but is not limited to: Chief Rabbi Mirvis of United Synagogues; the Jewish Board of Deputies (BoD), and the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism. Statistical evidence shows that by 2024 and 2025, non- and anti-Zionists accounted for a large minority of UK Jews (25-28%), and that anti-Zionism was growing very rapidly among those under 40 years of age[v].  Their opposing views should be much more widely reported.
   

Editorial freedom necessarily includes the right to choose what not to cover but not to studiously ignore significant evidence or informed dissent in the name of editorial discretion — particularly in organisations claiming to provide a comprehensive public service.

Ofcom should be held to account for allowing this situation to persist among PSMs. It should also be held to account for authorising GB News that, even by the poor performance of mainstream PSMs, abjectly fails to be accurate and impartial and has become the de facto voice of a political party (Reform)[vi].

The position of independent media

Independent publishers increasingly depend upon platforms such as YouTube for distribution, audiences and income.

Any prominence regime which systematically places the BBC, ITV, Sky News or major newspaper groups above smaller publishers in search results, recommendations or feeds could materially reduce the visibility, audiences and therefore revenue of independent journalism.

The same problem could affect respected foreign-based news organisations. They may fall outside a UK definition of recognised news publisher or beyond the jurisdiction of UK regulators while nevertheless producing important, carefully researched journalism relevant to British audiences.

A regime intended to combat misinformation should not inadvertently make legitimate alternative journalism harder to find.

Individual journalists and expert commentators

There is a related problem with relying too heavily upon the Online Safety Act definition of a recognised news publisher.

The statutory definition is designed around news organisations. Among other requirements, news-related material must be produced by different persons and subject to editorial control. It therefore does not readily accommodate important journalism, analysis or commentary produced by individuals.

Many individual online commentators are unreliable, and some disseminate misinformation. But organisational size is not a measure of intellectual or journalistic quality.

For example, John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, has become an influential commentator on international affairs through lectures, interviews and online material. Likewise, Jeffrey Sachs, the world-renowned development economist and professor at Columbia University and Chris Hedges, the veteran former New York Times foreign correspondent, even the US Twitch streamer and influencer, Hasan Piker who commands a following of 20 million and recently was denied entry to the country over a hotly disputed charge of antisemitism, deserve to be heard. Their arguments are controversial and should be open to criticism, but it would plainly be undesirable for a prominence regime automatically to make such expert independent voices harder to discover simply because they do not operate through an approved news organisation.

Conclusion

For these reasons, we regard the Green Paper's proposals concerning news prominence as potentially valuable but also potentially very dangerous.

Without adequate safeguards, a prominence regime could make accurate and important journalism from independent sources harder to find while reinforcing the position of already dominant and increasingly discredited legacy media organisations. There needs to be a robust regulatory framework whose rules are strictly evidence driven, without which a prominence regime is a house built on sand. 

This framework needs to be sufficiently robust and well-grounded to withstand and challenge political pressures, especially when the authorities have recourse to “security” to justify their actions. Loaded terms like “terrorism” and “antisemitism” can too easily be used to shut out fundamental issues of debate and at best muddy the waters.

We therefore recommend: 

• a thorough review of the effectiveness and independence of Ofcom's regulation of news and current-affairs broadcasting, followed by robust corrective action;

• bringing all major national publishers inside the Royal Charter recognition system;

• ensuring that regulators are empowered and encouraged to prevent the above-mentioned problem of “censorship by silence”, and;

• a thorough examination of news coming from social media, covering among other things the measures that tech platforms are already taking to bias news coverage.

If such a framework can be formulated and embedded there may be a case for tackling the more daunting task of regulating social media and ensuring content providers do not restrict legitimate users from access to their platforms. It should incorporate:

• transparent, politically independent criteria for any future designation of a “trustworthy news provider”, together with an independent appeals mechanism.

• strong safeguards ensuring that smaller independent publishers are not disadvantaged by prominence requirements, and

• protection for legitimate foreign news providers, individual journalists, academics and specialist commentators.   

A healthy information environment requires much more than suppressing obvious misinformation. It also requires genuine plurality, the exposure of uncomfortable evidence, effective mechanisms for correcting error, and the continuing ability of journalists — prominent and less well-known — to challenge governments and other powerful institutions.

We hope the Government will take these considerations into account before deciding whether, and in what form, a news-prominence regime should proceed.

We look forward to your response.

Kind regards,

Jonathan Coulter, Secretary

for the CAMPAIN Committee

Email: admin@campain.org

Mob: 07843 383259

..........................................................................................................................................................

[i] An IPSOS poll published in October 2025 noted a significant shift in how young Britons aged 16 to 34 consume information. 56% of men and 60% of women in this age group said they got most of their information about current events from social media. This is followed by YouTube (16% men and 9% women) and television (14% men and 15% women).  See https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/young-britons-trust-social-media-news-source-despite-misinformation-fears 

[ii]  See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am0vtQu7SrgSee

[iii] See Davies, N. (2008), Flat Earth News, London: Chatto & Windus, Chapter 9, “The Blinded Observer”.

[iv] See https://www.campain.org/post/how-the-bbc-stonewalled-campain-s-complaint.

[v]  See https://www.jpr.org.uk/reports/two-years-after-october-7-attacks-british-jewish-views-antisemitism-israel-and-jewish-life, p19-21.

[vi] See this report of March 2026 by Alan Rusbridger: https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/alan-rusbridger-screen-scandal-how-gb-news-gets-away-with-it/