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When the government's Media Green Paper dropped on 23 June, the framing felt genuinely promising. Social media is now the primary news source for three quarters of 16 to 24 year olds, according to Ofcom. Algorithms are shaping what people read without any of the editorial accountability that broadcasting rules require. Ministers want to require platforms to push regulated, trustworthy journalism higher in people's feeds. Hard to argue with any of that.
Then you read which publishers actually qualify.
The prominence measures being consulted on apply to six designated public service media providers, the BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, S4C and Channel 5. That is the entire list. The policy's working definition of "trusted news" is, in practice, "holds a legacy broadcast licence." If you produce fact checked, evidence based public interest journalism and you aren't one of those six organisations, you are not part of this conversation.
I want to be careful here, because this is worth saying precisely. A broadcast licence is not the same thing as an editorial standard. Ofcom's broadcast licensing regime was built around transmission infrastructure and the Communications Act 2003, it reflects the history of how television was distributed, not a judgment about the rigour of a newsroom. Ofcom has, separately, upheld complaints against licenced broadcasters for breaching its due impartiality rules. Holding a licence and meeting high editorial standards are related things, but they are not the same thing, and the Green Paper treats them as if they are.
Compare that with what IMPRESS regulation actually requires of its members. IMPRESS is the only press regulator recognised under the Royal Charter framework created after the Leveson Inquiry. Its members are subject to binding independent arbitration, a mandatory corrections policy, a published code of standards, and an independent complaints process. We applied for IMPRESS membership because we wanted an external check on our work, not as a marketing exercise, but because accountability only means something if it has teeth. That regulatory framework doesn't appear anywhere in the Green Paper's definition of who counts as a trusted news source.
The paper does acknowledge this gap, in a way. It floats the possibility of extending PSM designation to "other broadcasters and YouTube channels" in future. But it sets no criteria. There is no mention of editorial standards, regulatory oversight, complaints mechanisms, or corrections policies as potential qualifying factors. The implication seems to be that future expansion would follow the same broadcast licensing logic, which helps creators with transmission infrastructure, not publishers built for the web.
This matters beyond the specific question of who benefits from a prominence algorithm. The stated purpose of the Green Paper is to tackle misinformation and strengthen the information environment. If the mechanism for doing that is to boost a fixed list of legacy broadcasters regardless of current editorial practice, while ignoring independent publishers regulated to demonstrably high standards, the policy isn't really addressing the problem it describes. It's protecting existing incumbents and calling that "trustworthiness."
I run a small, independent platform. We publish evidence based explainers on UK policy, source everything to government documents and primary data, operate under IMPRESS's full standards framework, and maintain a public corrections policy. None of that is recognised by the Green Paper's framework. A YouTube channel that achieves PSM designation in a future review might be. That inversion is worth the government thinking about before it finalises its approach.
The consultation is open until 31 August 2026. The questions it poses are genuinely important ones. But the answers need to grapple with what "trusted" actually means in a media landscape that has moved well beyond six television channels otherwise the policy will entrench the past rather than improve the present.