Speeches by Hinds.

“What is the balance between the pros and the cons?”

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

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

“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…”

“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?”

“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…”

“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.”

“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?”

“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?”

“I do not want to try our Chair’s patience too much, but another thing in the Green Paper is the possibility that PSB and PSM providers might have some enhanced duty to promote media literacy. What would that look like in practice?”

“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?”

“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?”

“Do you have one platform for the world, and TV companies just produce and provide bits of content? Or do we somehow regain brand loyalty, and everybody has their own following? Or is there one public service platform that is distinguished from American and other entirely commercial offerings?”

“You would expect that to be included?”

“I think 1695 was when we last had licensing of the press to define a “news source”, so it is a very difficult question. Magnus or Martin, can either of you take up the challenge of defining what should make the cut? To keep life a little simpler, let’s just talk about news for the moment, rather than content in general…”

“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…”

“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…”

“You have just drawn a line, because you said that citizen journalists are not the same thing as professional journalists. You are not going to find anybody around this table arguing with you about that, but that draws a line, right? How would you define that in regulation?”

“I will pick up on that and ask this question to Theo specifically. Public service broadcasters are a given for this prominence regime. Your members, rightly, might find it unthinkable that the BBC and Channel 4 could be given prominence but not The Telegraph and The Guardian—I do not know if they are your members, but …”