on media Minister should force the polluter to pay, says Raymond Snoddy


Only tough action will keep local press afloat


T


he vagueness of culture secretary Jeremy Wright on possible help for local newspapers did not exactly go


down well at this year’s Society of Editors’ conference. There was a process to be observed. The Cairncross Review, chaired by Dame Frances Cairncross, was already under way. As a lawyer and former attorney general, Wright wanted to hear what the review into the “sustainability of high-quality journalism in the UK” had to say before drawing any conclusions. It was important, he argued, to ask not just the right questions but to ask them in the right order. Well, yes, that is indeed the rational approach, but such cool neutrality seems like cold comfort for journalists losing jobs now, and for newspapers moving ever closer to the edge. We have had royal commissions and


inquiries into the future of the press since the 1940s, many involving standards of behaviour and of regulation, but this one is different. The outcome could be an existential


matter for many newspapers. As the report on the state of the press, published before the Cairncross review results found, more than 300 local papers have closed in the past decade. In the same period – the 10 years to 2017 – the report found that the number of ‘frontline’ local journalists had fallen from 23,000 to 17,000 and the total will be less again following this year’s toll. The result is a rising number of


communities, courts and councils without adequate or even any journalistic coverage. As Press Gazette has highlighted, Long Eaton in


Derbyshire, a town of 45,000, has no dedicated local reporters on any platform. Half of London boroughs have just one reporter covering their affairs. We will never know whether the Grenfell tragedy could have been averted if earlier standards of newspaper staffing and coverage had prevailed. It is very late in the day to be having


a review into the ‘sustainability’ of high-quality journalism – certainly in the local and regional context. It will be scandalously late if the


“ 8For the latest updates from Raymond Snoddy on Twitter follow @raymondsnoddy ” theJournalist | 19


The scheme whereby Facebook would help fund the training of reporters appears to be little more than a fig leaf designed to head off stiffer regulation


government, in the midst of the Brexit maelstrom, fails to take immediate action – and the only action that will make a meaningful difference will involve money. A government decision to take back some of the £750 million a year hit the BBC will face from having to fund free licences for the over-75s from 2020 would help. In return, the BBC would use any savings to fund journalism – not just for the corporation but to extend the promising scheme that has already put 150 ‘local democracy reporters’ on the ground. You can tinker at the edges with a regime of tax breaks for newspapers, but something far more dramatic is now necessary. On the principle that the


polluter pays, the social media giants – which have done so much to undermine the economics of traditional publishing and share an aversion to fair rates of taxation – should be made to pay. The scheme revealed by the


Sunday Times whereby Facebook would help fund the training of reporters to get more out of social


media appears to be little more a fig leaf designed to head off stiffer regulation. The evidence suggests that, with the tech billionaires, voluntary doesn’t work. Damian Collins, who chairs the digital,


culture and media select committee, can attest to the repeated failure of Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg to come before his committee to give evidence. A tax on digital advertising would get


the attention of the likes of Zuckerberg with the proceeds going to a fund to pay for “sustainable quality journalism”. The online editions of print publishers would naturally be exempt. For Jeremy Wright, the time has come to get off the fence.


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