Speeches by Hinds.

“Okay. Martin, do you agree with that?”

“You would expect that to be included?”

“Do you not think that a line must be drawn? They are going to do it for the public service broadcasters—that is now a given—so the question is whether what we used to call the print media, and other news sources, are in or out alongside them. If they are out, that does not seem like a particularly fair competition for …”

“Okay. Martin, do you agree with that?”

“To summarise, you want it to be as soon as possible—”

“On the pros and cons, can you mention more of the cons?”

“Sorry, my facial expression was not saying that I thought that was impossible. Most people are online, including old people.”

“And 2034 is the earliest mooted date.”

“Possibly the biggest implication in last week’s Green Paper relates to prominence. Stephen, who would you expect to get prominence in this regime?”

“I am asking you. The Green Paper sets out something that says public service media is a yes, and I think it also says “potentially” a range of trusted news sources. That word “potentially” obviously does quite a lot of work, and the word “trusted” does a lot of work in that sentence. What would you expect to be include…”

“I think that is probably a given; we would expect the BBC, Channel 4 and ITN to be included. My question is: what do you expect to be included with them?”

“For what it is worth, I am very much in favour of this provision in the Green Paper. I think that it is a fundamental change that we need to make in the algorithmic serving up of content. But when you come up to reality, the difficulty is knowing exactly how you do it. Whether you or not agree with their definition, ha…”

“Let us just take it as read that it is hard. The Green Paper has only just come out, so it is not unreasonable to say, “We do not know yet.” In case there is a different answer to that, Martin or Magnus, is there anything you could do if you had that duty on media literacy?”

“During this inquiry I have asked a lot of people whether it is a stable equilibrium to have your own video-on-demand platforms, other video-on-demand platforms that carry some of your content but not all of it, and one massive platform called YouTube that carries absolutely everything from everyone. As you are strategy…”

“I love the idea that there is a tranche of elderly people who have been waiting for voice control to use digital television—maybe it is true.”

“They may well, but the organisations that all three of you represent use content that has come from someone’s camera phone in a breaking news situation, and that is part of the report. There is a whole sector on the internet of people who do exactly that. They call themselves citizen journalists.”

“I did not suggest that at all.”

“I accept that, and we will have to wait for your formal response. Would it be fair to infer from what you are saying that you are against the whole idea?”

“And 2034 is the earliest mooted date.”

“We had the Green Paper, “Watch this space”, last week, without a huge amount of fanfare, although it seems that it may be quite significant. On the technical stuff, and this 2034 or 2044 question about IPTV, what would be the pros and cons and commercial risks at either end of that scale?”