The Communications and Digital Committee of the House of Lords has published a report on media literacy, calling for a levy on technology companies to fund media literacy efforts.

The report does not mince its words, both in terms of setting out the scale and significance of the problems faced by the country, and on the inability of existing plans to address them. It talks of social cohesion and democracy itself being threatened by inadequate media literacy – pointing to a rise in misinformation and disinformation at the same time as the UK’s place in international standings on media literary falls – while claiming that “the Government and Ofcom have failed to meet the mounting scale of the challenge”.

After making the clear case for urgent action to be taken, the report turns to the Government’s existing media literary strategy, and finds it wanting. According to the Committee, the strategy suffers from being “held back by an approach that favours small-scale, short-term initiatives”, exacerbated further by fragmentation and a lack of cross-departmental coordination. As for Ofcom’s role, it argues that it is “not the appropriate body to coordinate or deliver a nationwide media literacy programme. Only the Government can do this. To date, the Government has failed to fill this leadership vacuum”.

The solution, according to the Committee, is for the Government to nominate a specific, senior minister to “take responsibility for media literacy across government departments and to establish clearer lines of accountability on this issue to Parliament”. At the same time, it calls for technology and media companies to do more and casts doubt on their implementation of Ofcom’s media literacy by design principles, not least because they are voluntary and poorly scrutinised. Instead, the Committee recommends that Ofcom must set out minimum standards for media literacy by design and that it must be “sufficiently empowered to take robust action to engage platforms in media literary and hold them to account”.

In order for Ofcom to carry out this work, the report recommends that the Government should develop “mechanisms, including a levy on platforms, to secure long-term, stable funding from industry for independent media literacy initiatives”. No great detail is provided as to the level and operation of such a levy, but the message of the Committee is clear: that it rejects “an approach to long-term funding that relies on the goodwill of the technology companies” and that “the funding for large scale media literacy programmes should substantially come from the technology sector”.

To read the report in full, click here