Labour Government Refuses Petition to Fund Local News Companies from a new Social Media Levy on Technology Media Billionaires

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And Backs The Media Billionaires Who Are Destroying British Democracy!!

The Labour government today issued its response to the 16,000 signature petition calling for a Media Sovereignty Act.

The Media Sovereignty Act’s five measures

  1. Ban foreign media ownership.
  2. Ban the concentration of UK national media ownership by one person or corporation.
  3. Fund independent and local media with a Social Media Levy.
  4. Require national media to be under the remit of the statutory regulator.
  5. Require “dark-money funded think-tanks” that are covered by the media to declare donations in real time.

The government rejected all five measures in the proposed Act.

  1. It rejected any restrictions on foreign billionaires buying up all of the UK’s media.
  2. It refused to back reform of the current massive concentration of UK media ownership in a tiny group of largely offshore-based media billionaires.
  3. It refused to back a Social Media Levy, as they have in Australia. This would recoup some of the £10s of billions being siphoned abroad from UK news producers’ former advertising revenues by the three US social media tech corporations and use the proceeds to fund UK local and independent media.
  4. It backed the current ludicrous system whereby these foreign media billionaires “self-regulate” their UK media corporations, rather than requiring them to join the post-Levinson press regulator Impress.
  5. It rejected the proposal to ban foreign oil corporations and billionaires from secretly funding dark-money-funded UK think-tanks that corrupt the UK government’s policy-making process.

The Media Sovereignty Act Campaign Director, Donnachadh McCarthy, said, 

“It has been one of Britain’s worst-kept secrets that the Labour and Tory Parties place the wishes of the UK’s media billionaires over the wishes of the people.

But it is hugely important that our petition has finally forced the Labour government to admit as much.”

Co-Director Caspar Hughes said,

“You cannot have a free and fair democracy if almost all our media is dominated by the tiny 0.01%. The social media billionaires have sucked £millions out of local UK news advertising revenues.

We need a free and fair press in the UK, free from billionaire capture. 

For that, we need to restore the funding that our local news companies have lost. Without their scrutiny of local government, real local democracy perishes.”

He added, 

“ This extraordinary admission by the Labour government that they are on the side of the media billionaires trashing our democracy spurs us to move forward with the campaign.

We will press on to get the 100,000 signatures that will finally trigger a parliamentary debate on the biggest political issue of our time.

We will now take the campaign out to the country, asking local newspapers, local radio stations, trade unions, NGO’s, student unions, branches of political parties, etc., to endorse this crucial campaign to rescue our broken local democracy from the media billionaires destroying it.“

Press Contact:
Donnachadh McCarthy 
T: 07947 884299 
E: dmc@mediasovereignty.org

Notes to Editors:

  1. The full draft of the Media Sovereignty Act is here.
  2. The full government response can be found underneath the ‘Petition progress’ section of the Parliament petition webpage. 
  3. There is an excellent summary of the chilling concentration of UK media ownership, online and legacy, in this article by Josiah Mortimer in Byline Times.

Key Points:

  • Just two foreign-based media billionaires own over 70% of the UK newspapers sold each day. (Rupert Murdoch and Jonathan Harmsworth).
  • Combined, Reach Media, Murdoch, and Harmsworth hold a 40% share of the top 50 online UK newsbrands.
  • Seven of the top fifteen online news platforms in the UK are owned by three US-based media billionaires.
  • Two US companies now capture 66% of all UK advertising spend.
  • Google, Meta and Amazon siphon off £31 BILLION from UKadvertising / year, leading to 1,000s of redundancies for UK journalists.
  • Just two corporations control over 66% of UK commercial radio stations.
  • The Sun, Times, Sunday Times, Talk Radio and Times Radio are owned by US-based billionaire Murdoch.
  • The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Metro, and The i are owned by France-based Jonathan Harmsworth.
  • The Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Politico are owned by the German billionaire Freide Springer.
  • GB News is owned by British billionaire Paul Marshall and the Cyprus-based Prosperity Institute (previously Legatum), of which Paul Marshall is also a shareholder.
  • The Spectator is owned by Paul Marshall.
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