Media Reform Coalition

Media Reform coordinates the work of advocacy groups campaigning to protect the public interest in light of the Leveson Inquiry and Communications Review.

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A model motion for media reform

July 14, 2019 By Media Reform Coalition

This meeting/branch/conference/ believes that:

  • our current media suffer from concentration of media ownership, lack of accountability, lack of independence from government and from commercial pressures and do not adequately represent a diverse range of people and views;
  • a flourishing, diverse and accountable media is essential for a healthy, functioning democracy. Media plurality is not a luxury in the digital age but an essential feature of a media system in which vested interests should not be allowed to dominate;
  • the levels of concentration revealed in the Media Reform Coalition’s 2019 Media Ownership report ‘Who Owns the UK media’ show we need action that will challenge blockbuster media and tech companies and the influence that flows from their dominance of infrastructure, content and distribution;
  • we need independent media that are able to hold power to account and to serve their audiences and the public in general as opposed to shareholders, proprietors or politicians;
  • we need a rebooted system of regulation that gets to grips with the complexities of media ownership in the twenty-first century; one that encompasses top-down measures to check the dominance of individual or corporate interests as well as bottom-up measures to support genuinely independent and not-for-profit media on the ground;
  • we need a new system of regulation that addresses both the enduring (and in many ways intensifying) grip of legacy media on public debate as well as the control over news and information ‘flow’ wielded by tech giants. 

This meeting/branch/conference resolves to:

  • support the Media Reform Coalition’s ‘Media Manifesto 2019’ for a fair, free, accurate and representative media system that is capable of informing and nourishing the kind of inclusive public debate that is the lifeblood of functioning democracies;
  • [if relevant] raise these proposed reforms at our party conference and to encourage our political representatives to push for their inclusion in our party’s policy making debates and in future election manifestos;

Please get in touch – info@mediareform.org.uk – to invite the Media Reform Coalition to speak at a future meeting if clarification on the policies is needed / for further information about media reform.

A PDF version is available here.

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    Filed Under: Blog, Get Involved, Media Activist Toolkit, Media Democracy, Media Ownership, Media Ownership Reports, Press Ethics and Regulation, Resources

    WHY WE NEED MEDIA REFORM

    Britain has one of the most concentrated media environments in the world. Just three companies dominate 83% of national newspaper circulation; five companies account for 80% of national newspaper newsbrand reach; five companies command 80% of local newspaper titles; and two companies own nearly half of all commercial analogue radio stations..

    The phone hacking scandal and its aftermath demonstrated how that power has been used nationally, whilst at the local level community after community is losing the means to publicly hold power to account.

    Urgent reform is needed to reclaim the media in the interest of the public.

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    Goldsmiths, University of London
    Co-operatives UK
    New Internationalist
    BECTU
    Better Media
    visionOntv
    MediaWise
    LSE Media Policy Project
    NUJ - National Union of Journalists
    MeCCSA - Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association
    Real Media
    Avaaz
    Bournemouth University
    Unlock Democracy
    The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
    Community Media Association
    Open Society Foundations
    Compass
    AEJ - Association of European Journalists
    The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust

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