The Government’s Latest Censorship Initiative is its Most Sinister Yet

Over the last few months, free speech activists have been perturbed by proposals to age-gate social media for under-16s. Meantime, whilst all eyes were looking elsewhere, the Government has just slipped out a new raft of proposals which would profoundly reshape the online media landscape in the UK. In my view, whereas the impact of the proposed social media restrictions for kids on the free speech rights of adults has been overstated, this new initiative poses a far greater and invidious threat to our freedom of speech and access to information.

The proposals are contained in a Green Paper, published this week, called ‘Watch This Space’. Described by Ian Murray, the Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Art, as setting out a “new strategic direction” for the Government’s media policy, the new measures would require social media companies to prioritise content from ‘traditional’ so-called public service broadcasters – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and so on – over that of independent media outlets. This would therefore (although this is not spelt out expressly in the paper) de-prioritise, i.e., suppress, content from independent content creators. The effect would be to rewire the algorithms according to which content is delivered to our social media feeds. It would take us from content driven by preference and audience demand towards a system structurally hardwired and legally obliged to direct us to traditional media brands – the very titles that such a large proportion of the public have turned away from.

Given that some 70% of all UK news content is now read digitally, the impact of these measures on the online public square and on the ability of UK audiences to access information sources of their choosing can hardly be overstated.

Like many of the censorious measures we have experienced during this last half decade, the proposals are predicated on a need to ‘protect audiences from harm’.  This is based on a series of assumptions — that the UK online media environment has become fragmented, that ‘divisive and inaccurate’ narratives are more likely to thrive, that misinformation runs rampant — which sound just about plausible, until one reads the kicker. Which is that, according to this Green Paper, because of these trends, it is only “content from public service broadcasters [that] can be relied on to be trustworthy”.

A more desperately, perhaps deliberately, flawed non-sequitur it is hard to imagine.

For whilst the breakdown in trust in UK news is undeniable, competing interpretations exist to explain this. The Green Paper pins blame on “untrustworthy news”, which is code for non-traditional, i.e., independent media outlets which – by implication – favour clicks over accuracy and as a result are cast as purveyors of online misinformation.

By contrast, according to the Government script, traditional broadcasters are “high quality”, “trustworthy” and, curiously, key to “driving growth and inward investment”. As such, we are told that they “adhere to strict standards around harmful content, impartiality and protecting younger audiences” and as a result can apparently be trusted to “provide[s] the shared understanding and facts needed for people to trust one another”.

That this is plainly, indeed laughably, untrue is a fact that is witnessed by millions of us on an almost daily basis.

From the transgender debate, where audiences were asked to believe the biological impossibility of a man being a woman, to climate catastrophism, where the doggedly one-sided narrative pursued by legacy news outlets is again in evidence during the heatwave this week, to, of course, Covid, where the failings of legacy media, print and broadcast were so serious and had such severe and in some cases fatal consequences that some (this author included) consider the ‘public service’ outlets that peddled false and dangerously misleading propaganda complicit in criminal conduct.  Which is, of course, precisely the kind of dissident, controversial opinion that you can expect never to read again if these proposals crystallise into legislation.

Conversely, it has certainly been my experience that, with one or two notable exceptions, the journalists and organisations holding power to account over the last half decade have been those outside of traditional media. Indeed, sites like our own Daily Sceptic exist precisely to fill the constitutional check that historically we were led to believe our Fourth Estate would always provide.

And, the implications of the proposals extend beyond ‘just’ speech. By embedding structural preference to traditional media channels it could hand those organisations power to quash uncomfortable narratives, events and, indeed, even people. Public protests, contrary public health views, an anti-Establishment politician or political party? All could be de facto excluded not just from traditional media, but from the public square entirely. As Dr Clare Craig commented on X yesterday: “The media is meant to hold the State to account. … Any media that the state wants to promote is not doing its job properly.”

The irony is that by embedding bias in favour of the very same political and media establishment that so many are now railing against, the proposals would fuel the very distrust and division for which it purports to solve. Truth, even when suppressed by the might of the state, has a tendency to seep out. When it does we can expect the cynicism and discontent of the public to be even greater than it already is now.

Perhaps none of this should surprise us. After all, ’saving’ democracy to destroy democracy is a well-worn trick of any totalitarian playbook. And whilst the proposals fall short of full totalitarian control of information in the sense of the state exercising a monopoly hold on the distribution and creation of propaganda, they are most certainly quasi-totalitarian in both their mindset and their intended consequences. Indeed, that much is in plain sight: a paper entitled ‘Watch THIS Space’ (my caps) is making no bones of the fact that it would deliberately narrow the range of information that the public can readily access.

I initially thought it curious that these proposals, certainly compared to the furore over the kids social media proposals, received so little attention. Arguably there is no greater threat to our democracy, since if we get this wrong, our ability to complain about, protest against and even know what is wrong with our country will fall with it. But then again, why would traditional media want to make a fuss about an intervention which will operate decisively in their favour? In this regard it is notable that although in its current guise the Green Paper purports only to apply to broadcast media, it states that it may also, potentially, apply to print press.

If there is good news, it is that this is as yet just a Green Paper, so in the very early stages of a policy initiation, and that there is (yet another) consultation on the proposal.  It is open now, and the link is here.  If you care about British democracy and about your freedom to discover sites like the Daily Sceptic, please take the time to let this Government know what you think of these plans.

Molly Kingsley is founder of UsForThem and co-host of the Broken Custodians podcast.