Spotlight 08 Informed


Government shuns public interest news project


report in February 2019, NUJ reps were invited to a round table discussion of its recommendations with the then digital minster, Margot James. It took a year for the government to


respond to the review’s conclusions, published on 27 January 2020. Te union’s reaction was deep disappointment, particularly the rejection of the proposed Institute for Public Interest News to protect the sort of journalism essential for a functioning democracy in the wake of the market’s failure to do so. Michelle Stanistreet said: “Te response fails to address the need to bolster diverse and sustainable journalism in the UK… this ‘more of the same’ approach is simply not going to cut it.” Te government had put in train a


Has this once-in-a- generation chance to save the UK press been a wasted opportunity? Frances Rafferty assesses the Cairncross Review


Te NUJ warmly welcomed the news in 2018 that the government had at last agreed to investigate the sustainability of the UK press. Te review, set up by Teresa May and headed by former journalist, Dame Frances Cairncross, aimed to protect the future of high-quality journalism. However it did not start auspiciously. Te union was not consulted, was not invited to join the review’s advisory panel, and the quotes accompanying the announcement were from the newspaper publishers’ lobby the News Media Association. However, aſter having long called for


for such a review, the NUJ decided to take it seriously, despite the snubs. In the event, Michelle Stanistreet met Dame Frances, the union provided an extensive submission to the consultation and fed further information to the review’s secretariat throughout the process. Following the publication of the


review of the digital advertising market (due in July) by the Competition and Markets Authority and Ofcom was asked to explore the market impact of BBC News. A £2m Future News Fund was set up to encourage innovative news models (see p7). Dame Frances’s report set out an


overview of challenges facing high-quality journalism and recommendations to help secure its future. It is a masterly marshalling of the evidence, research, and accounts of major media players. It detailed the changes brought by the internet, the way people access news, the rise of news aggregators, the decline of journalist numbers from 23,000 in 2007, to 17,000, with job losses swiſtly continuing, and the domination of platforms such as Facebook and Google which have sucked the lifeblood of advertising revenue from newspapers. Tese factors all made a robust case


for intervention, the report said, noting research showed that a reduction in public-interest reporting led to reduced


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