Ivan: 0:04

Hello and welcome to this extended edition of the Bench Report, where we discuss recent debates from the benches of the UK Parliament. A new topic every episode. You're listening to Amy and Ivan. Today we are getting straight into a really critical discussion that happened recently in Westminster, one focused entirely on the future of local media here in the UK. Our mission today is to um really get to grips with what's pushing local journalism to the brink and to understand what solutions are actually on the table.

Amy: 0:35

And the urgency was clear from the get-go. There was this one statistic that honestly, it's quite chilling. Since 2005, nearly 300 local papers have shut down.

Ivan: 0:44

300.

Amy: 0:45

That's a third of the entire sector gone in less than 20 years. It's left something like 5.4 million people living in what they call news deserts.

Ivan: 0:52

And a news desert, that just means whole communities without any real dedicated local reporting.

Amy: 0:56

Exactly. And that's not just about losing the paper, it's a huge blow to community cohesion, to democracy itself.

Ivan: 1:03

You could really feel that personal connection in the debate. MPs were telling these great stories about papers that have, you know, been the lifeblood of their communities for generations.

Amy: 1:13

We heard about the Newtownards Chronicle, which started way back in 1873.

Ivan: 1:17

Still going strong today, thankfully. Yeah. And the Bromley News Shopper, which has been around since 1965.

Amy: 1:23

And these places are so important because they provide that um that really local level of accountability that you just don't get from national news.

Ivan: 1:31

We're talking about the things that actually matter day to day, a new shop opening, a controversial planning application.

Amy: 1:38

We're holding the council to account over, you know, a badly designed roundabout, things that seem small but really aren't.

Ivan: 1:45

And as the members described it, this isn't just about local color. It's the official record of a community's life.

Amy: 1:51

That's it. It keeps politicians honest. It's been called the uh cornerstone of democratic accountability time and time again. And we can't forget, it's the main training round for the next generation of journalists. If you lose the local newsrooms, you lose that entire talent pipeline.

Ivan: 2:06

Okay, so let's get into the financial collapse. The debate made it very clear that this is at its heart a crisis of money. The old business model, you know, ads paying for print, for delivery, for salaries, it just can't work in the digital age.

Amy: 2:20

Not anymore. And that financial pressure has led to this intense consolidation across the industry. So now just three big companies, NewsQuest, National World, and REACH, they own 51% of all local papers.

Ivan: 2:35

More than half the market in just three pairs of hands.

Amy: 2:37

And it's even more extreme in radio. Two players, Bauer and Global, they control two-thirds of DIB and 60% of analog radio.

Ivan: 2:45

So why does that concentration of ownership matter so much to the listener? I mean, if the paper's name is still on the front, isn't the reporting the same?

Amy: 2:52

Not at all, unfortunately. When you get that kind of monopoly, profit margins are everything. It leads directly to what's called centralized programming.

Ivan: 2:59

Meaning one story gets recycled across dozens of papers with very little actual local input.

Amy: 3:06

Precisely. Or radio news bulletins become automated. The local journalist is gone, even if the station's name is still there. The whole thing gets hollowed out.

Ivan: 3:15

And the debate pointed the finger for this economic train squarely at the big tech platforms.

Amy: 3:21

Oh, absolutely. Facebook, Google. They completely changed the advertising game. They essentially hoovered up billions in revenue that used to fund journalism. They get to commercialize the content, but they don't have to bear any of the cost of actually producing it.

Ivan: 3:36

And now there's a new thread, one that feels even more, well, existential, artificial intelligence.

Amy: 3:43

This is the real game changer. AI is capable of scraping the entire internet for content written by real journalists, feeding it into its models, and then it pumps out its own version.

Ivan: 3:53

Synthetic local news.

Amy: 3:54

Unchecked, unverified information that looks plausible but undermines the professionals. It's a huge threat to trust.

Ivan: 4:00

And it's a codal paradox, isn't it? AI needs high-quality reporting to learn from. But its own output then drains the traffic and the ad revenue away from the very people who create that reporting.

Amy: 4:11

And it creates this homogenized, centralized copy that just imitates a local voice instead of actually reflecting a real community.

Ivan: 4:21

So this brings us to two really crucial financial battlegrounds that lawmakers focused on. Two things that could be make or break for local papers right now.

Amy: 4:30

The first is public notices. Now this sounds a bit procedural, a bit dry.

Ivan: 4:34

But it's incredibly important. We're talking about those statutory notices you see in the paper for things like planning applications, new alcohol licenses, road closures.

Amy: 4:43

They provide a modest but absolutely vital stream of revenue. But there's a new bill, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which, well, it could get rid of the requirement to publish them in papers at all.

Ivan: 4:55

Just putting them online instead.

Amy: 4:56

Which lawmakers see as a direct attack on the public's right to know?

Ivan: 5:00

But hold on, hasn't the government argued that this is just about modernization? That putting notices online saves taxpayer money and makes them more accessible?

Amy: 5:08

They have, but that argument completely ignores the reality of digital exclusion. MPs made this point very forcefully. Especially in rural communities, lots of people, often older people or those on low incomes, they rely on the physical paper. They might not have reliable broadband.

Ivan: 5:25

So for them, taking the notices out of the paper means they might never see them.

Amy: 5:29

Exactly. It removes revenue from the paper and it shuts those people out of the civic conversation entirely. It's a real threat.

Ivan: 5:36

Which leads to the second major point: government advertising.

Amy: 5:44

There's this huge disconnect. We know from polling that 80% of UK adults trust their local media.

Ivan: 5:51

An incredibly high number.

Amy: 5:52

And yet government advertising campaigns are still, quote, heavily skewed towards social platforms, the very places that are often rife with misinformation.

Ivan: 6:01

So the solution seems obvious. If the government shifted more of its ad spend to local publishers, it would solve two problems at once.

Amy: 6:08

It's a no-brainer, really. You leverage that high public trust to get your message out more effectively, and you simultaneously prop up a vital part of our democracy. It's a win-win.

Ivan: 6:18

Now, we can't talk about local media in the UK without addressing the uh the elephant in the room, the BBC.

Amy: 6:27

A very challenging tension, this one. On the one hand, you have the BBC's local democracy reporting service. It's funded by the license fee, and it's produced over half a million stories that local papers can use, which is a good thing. But on the other hand, on the other, the BBC's huge, free online news presence is seen by many as directly competing with and frankly killing local papers.

Ivan: 6:50

Because if you're a small local paper trying to charge even 50p for your online articles, and the BBC is offering a massive, professionally produced alternative for free right next to it.

Amy: 7:00

The market is completely skewed. It's not a level playing field. That's why the upcoming BBC charter renewal is seen as such a critical moment to try and reset that relationship.

Ivan: 7:10

So beyond the BBC, what were the big systemic reforms being discussed?

Amy: 7:14

A lot of it followed the plan laid out by the National Union of Journalists, the NUJ. They've got a comprehensive plan that falls into about three main areas. First is regulation. There's a big push for new ownership rules to stop these huge monopolies forming. For instance, a cap, maybe 25%, on how much of the media market any single company can own.

Ivan: 7:34

To stop that hollowing out effect we talked about earlier.

Amy: 7:36

Precisely, to restore local control. The second area is finance, and this is the big one. The proposal is for a tax on techs, specifically a 6% windfall tax on the UK profits of the global tech giants.

Ivan: 7:50

And that money would then be ring-fenced.

Amy: 7:52

Yes. To be reinvested directly back into local journalism. Now, opponents will say it's punitive or could stifle innovation, but proponents argue the cost of doing nothing is far, far greater.

Ivan: 8:04

And how would that money be distributed?

Amy: 8:06

That's the third part. Structure. The idea is to set up an independent journalism foundation. It would take that tax revenue and invest it in new models, cooperatives, community-owned papers, and support public interest reporting where it's struggling to survive commercially.

Ivan: 8:20

It's important to say the UK wouldn't be going it alone here. Other countries have already acted.

Amy: 8:25

They really have. Australia was mentioned a lot. Their news media bargaining code basically forces platforms like Google and Facebook to negotiate payments to publishers for using their content.

Ivan: 8:36

And has it worked?

Amy: 8:37

It's resulted in a flow of nearly 250 million Australian dollars a year back into journalism. It proves that this kind of intervention can work. The EU has a similar copyright directive, too.

Ivan: 8:48

So it makes the UK look like a bit of an outlier for not having done something similar already.

Amy: 8:53

It does. The clear message from this debate was that we can't just hope for the best. Local news is essential, and the government has to act now on all these fronts: public notices, AI, the BBC, and this market failure with the tech giants.

Ivan: 9:05

So the final thought is that when local media collapses, it's not just a business that's failing.

Amy: 9:10

No. Civic engagement drops, scrutiny of local power disappears, and it creates a vacuum that, as we know, gets filled very quickly by misinformation and disinformation.

Ivan: 9:21

And that is the crucial issue for you, the listener. If the people who actually live in a place, the ones who know the community, are replaced by AI, generating this homogenized, centralized copy that only imitates a local voice, what's the true cost to our democratic culture when communities lose their independent, trustworthy storytellers?

Amy: 9:43

It really is the highest possible stake for the future of our information landscape.

Ivan: 9:47

As always, find us on social media at bench report UK. Get in touch with any topic important to you. Remember, politics is everyone's business. Take care.