MPs this week called for restraints on technology platforms and greater regulatory control over online content, standards and the activities of social media giants like Facebook and Twitter.

In its long-awaited final report addressing so-called Fake News, the Commons’ committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport called for – among other things – a compulsory Code of Ethics for tech companies, overseen by an independent regulator. The committee chairman, Tory MP Damian Collins, said: “We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people. The age of inadequate self-regulation must come to an end. The rights of the citizen need to be established in statute, by requiring the tech companies to adhere to a code of conduct written into law by Parliament, and overseen by an independent regulator.”

The report took aim in particular at Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, saying that the billionaire founder of the tech giant had “shown contempt” for parliament by refusing invitations to give evidence, and accusing his company of behaving like a “digital gangster” while Facebook had “intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws.”

While warning of the effects on society and democracy of the relentless rise of “disinformation” including AI and vehicles of deception like deep fake videos, the report explores the circumstances of tech companies’ activities during the Brexit referendum in 2016, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, concluding that Britain’s electoral laws were “not fit for purpose” with regulations governing election activity “hopelessly out of date for the internet age.”

Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr wrote in The Guardian that “in terms of how lawmakers across the globe need to think about Silicon Valley, the report is a landmark. The first really comprehensive attempt of a major legislative body to peer into the dark heart of a dark economy of data manipulation and voter influence.” She concludes: “There are dozens of critical issues covered in the report’s 110 pages and scores of recommendations… But there’s only really one question: will the government act on this report or bury it?”

With debate intensifying over potential external meddling ahead of Australia’s elections this year, and the Singaporean parliament also considering ‘fake news’ legislation, the problem is obviously on a global scale and clearly isn’t going away anytime soon.

Feel the quality

The committee’s recommendations may be seen by some as heavy-handed or potentially ineffective in attempting to create a new state regulatory authority with broad powers to define what is “acceptable”. It also raises the contentious issue of shifting the legal position of tech companies from being platforms to being publishers and as such having responsibility for the content they circulate.

The committee concluded that social media users should be able to “distinguish between quality journalism and stories coming from organisations that have been linked to disinformation or are regarded as being unreliable sources” – but of course such a stance only serves to revive the ongoing debate about how we define “quality” journalism.

The report comes on the heels of the Cairncross Review of the state of Britain’s media and its potential for an economically “sustainable future” which attempts to address that quality conundrum, one of its proposals being that “public interest journalism” should be overseen in the long-term by a new, publicly-funded Institute for Public Interest News rather than by commercial publishers.

Culture secretary Jeremy Wright said: “We mustn’t find in ten years’ time that trustworthy news sources have disappeared with our democracy damaged as a result. So we will carefully consider the Review’s recommendations, looking at ways to preserve and nurture quality local reporting and to support the transition of the industry from print to digital…

“I believe wholeheartedly that journalism should be accessible to as many people as possible and that the press industry can overcome its challenges. But everyone needs to play their part in ensuring the press has a sustainable future. And that includes local people supporting their local paper too.”

Emily Bell, formerly of The Guardian, now an academic at Columbia University in New York, writes that, as far as Cairncross addresses the need for government to do more in terms of tax incentives and direct support for public interest news, one of the key parts of the report “is an acknowledgment that Facebook, Google, and the shift of distribution and advertising revenues to large technology platforms have damaged some parts of journalism to a point where the market cannot repair them. This might seem obvious, but in America in particular we will be waiting a very long time before a government policy paper talks about market failure in such bald terms.”

She continues: “The assumption in the US that news will eventually find a market model that does work has been one of the most consistent and damaging misconceptions advanced over the past twenty years. Chasing such a market—one that gatekeepers have rendered structurally impossible—has distracted resources, policies, and attention from finding a non-market solution to mitigating the worst of our local news failures.

“Journalism owes the Cairncross Review at least a thank you for naming the disease. All governments – and journalists – must understand how to arbitrate between the necessity of reporters and the intolerant super structure of alien social platforms. And soon.”

Meanwhile in Trumpworld…

The President once again took to Twitter to brand the press the “enemy of the people” just a few scant days after a BBC cameraman was physically attacked at a Trump rally in El Paso, Texas by a man swearing at media crews.

While reporting by both the Washington Post and the New York Times stepped up domestic pressure on the administration this week, and with Russia’s Vladimir Putin even warning the US of potential missile attacks, President Trump naturally again found time to slam the press on Wednesday.

*Update: On Wednesday evening, AG Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, responded to President Trump’s twitter outburst, saying the phrase “enemy of the people” is “not just false, it’s dangerous.”

“It has an ugly history of being wielded by dictators and tyrants who sought to control public information. And it is particularly reckless coming from someone whose office gives him broad powers to fight or imprison the nation’s enemies,” Sulzberger wrote.

It probably was no coincidence also that Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas was this week echoing a favourite line of the president’s about “opening up the libel laws…”

Meanwhile, the perilous economic state of some US newspapers, which has contributed to recent rounds of job cuts, was again in the spotlight on Wednesday with Gannett’s latest financial results set to be an indicator of the short-to-medium term future facing the industry.

As for potential solutions, Apple’s latest plan to introduce a micropayment platform for content – referred to as “Netflix for News”– appears to have raised the ire of publishers over its proposals for how revenue is shared. Chaim Gartenberg writes at The Verge: “Apple is apparently running into issues with publishers over how much of that money (rumored to be $10 per month per subscriber) will make its way back to the creators of the content. According to the WSJ, Apple is proposing deals in which it would keep half that revenue for itself, while the other half would be divvied up based on how much time users spend reading each publisher’s content.”

But despite appearances, all might not be doom and gloom for journalism in the US. It was announced on Tuesday that the Knight Foundation is to commit some $300million over the next five years to “rebuilding local news ecosystems.” Meanwhile, Craig Newmark, traditionally viewed as a villain by some in the industry after the contribution his Craigslist made to the changing market in local advertising, announced he would donate a total of $15million for academic work on journalism ethics.

“A trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy,” he said.

 

Incidentally, BBC broadcaster Stephen Nolan will be giving a speech on “Enhancing the Democratic Debate in the Era of Fake News” at QUB next Tuesday evening. You can get tickets here.