Media Sovereignty Act Campaign

This is patently untrue. The current media mergers regime allows foreign governments to own up to 15% of each UK national newspaper corporation.

This is patently untrue. The current media mergers regime allows foreign governments to own up to 15% of each UK national newspaper corporation.

This allows Murdoch / Mail and other foreign and domestic billionaire media owners to “self-regulate,” as they refused to join the post-Leveson regulator Impress.

As stated above, the UK government bizarrely allows foreign governments to own up to 15% of each UK national newspaper corporation. This surrender of media sovereignty deeply undermines UK democracy.

This is a rejection of the Media Sovereignty Act’s proposal to ban foreign billionaire ownership of UK media.

This means the Labour Government believes ALL remaining UK media not in control of foreign media billionaires can be bought and captured by them, leaving the UK with zero media sovereignty.

The “protections” they refer to are the 15% ownership limit on UK media corporations by foreign governments.

The Media Sovereignty Act, however, states that the UK government should rule out any foreign government having a stake in UK national media corporations, due to the unique role the government rightly states that they play in our democracy.

True. BUT the idea that the Labour government thinks the current billionaire-owned Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sun, GB News, etc., provide news that is “accurate” and “supports social cohesion” is insulting to the British people.

The government recognises the death throes of local news provision, but the idea that a paltry £6 million for two years will solve the problem again insults the public.

The three US tech billionaires (Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos) are siphoning off over £31 BILLION per year from UK advertising [Source], bankrupting UK news outlets and throwing 1,000s of British journalists out of work.

One of the US social media billionaires (Elon Musk) has sworn to destroy the UK state by backing a far-right, deeply racist fringe Restore Party [Source].

The rejection of the Media Sovereignty Act’s proposed Social Media Levy imposed on tech billionaires means the Labour government is happy to allow the three far-right US tech billionaires to continue destroying UK news provision, as it drains it of almost all new advertising revenues.

The existing Digital Services Tax (DST) is a 2 per cent tax that ensures providers of search engines, social media platforms, and online marketplaces pay UK tax on digital services that reflect the value they derive from UK user-related activities.

DST was introduced as an interim solution to the challenges posed by the digitalisation of the economy to the international corporate tax framework.

This minor tax provides zero funding for local and national UK news outlets that are going bankrupt due to US tech billionaires siphoning off advertising revenues.

Without local news provision, British local democracy ceases to have any local accountability and local voters are deprived of the political information needed to make informed choices when they elect local councils. 

This means the Labour government rejects the Media Sovereignty Act measure requiring billionaire-owned newspapers to join the post-Leveson press regulator Impress.

De facto, this means that the Labour government supports the freedom of foreign billionaires to come into the UK, buy our national media and then “self-regulate”!!

We fully agree.

But the idea that the UK Labour government claims to believe that the far-right billionaire-owned media provides “accurate and trustworthy information” is shocking, and we believe it is yet another blatant untruth in its response to the Media Sovereignty Act.

To protect this freedom, the Government does not intervene in or oversee the work of the press or the independent press regulators.

As the UK does not have a media free from far-right billionaire capture, that freedom does not exist.

We agree that the press regulator should be independent of the government.

However, the government should support the Media Sovereignty Act’s requirement that foreign media billionaires be part of the post-Leveson independent regulator Impress, which is independent of media owners and editors.

Without this, the entire purpose of the Leveson report has been destroyed by successful lobbying pressure on the Labour and Tory governments by the billionaire media.

Of course, the government wants the media to operate within the law, which is the point of having laws!

BUT the idea that the billionaire captured Sun, Mail and Telegraph propaganda machines for a hard-right billionaire agenda, represents “press freedom” and “uphold high professional and ethical standards” is ludicrous.

The idea that the Labour government claims that the billionaires’ “self-regulation” does this at present, whilst they refuse to join the post-Leveson independent regulator Impress, is again ridiculous.

This is the Labour government rejecting the requirement in the Media Sovereignty Act for dark-money-funded think-tanks to declare their secret billionaire, oil corporation and other rich donors in real time.

This allows the continued perversion of our politics and media by the flood of foreign billionaire dark-money into UK think-tank propaganda.

This propaganda is then covered in our media, without the think-tanks’ sponsors being known, as they seek to manipulate UK government policy.

Electoral law already covers think-tanks that donate or spend during regulated election periods.
This general election expenditure is a tiny proportion of the secret £millions pouring into dark-money think-tanks that pervert government policymaking on behalf of the global billionaire elite.

The key point is all secret donors should be made known to the public, whose government they are trying to influence.

As the report excludes examination of the foreign media billionaire’s financial interference in our democracy, it excludes by far the most powerful and financially the largest foreign interference in UK democracy.

The financial value of the free political propaganda pouring out of the UK’s media 24/7 backing a far-right take-over of the UK government is in the order of £100s of millions in value.

It dwarfs direct party-political donations by the billionaire elite, yet has no restrictions whatsoever.

The Labour government’s refusal to ban the foreign media billionaires’ hijacking our media to promote hard-right politics is an existential threat to our remaining damaged democracy.