Whittingdale: Aggregators Need to Give Something Back to Local News Media

Former Culture Secretary John Whittingdale MP has spoken of the harm to local and regional news media caused by the failure of digital ecosystem to appropriately reward the content creators for their contribution.

In his lecture ‘The Future of the Press’ on Tuesday, part of the 2017 series of Speaker’s Lectures, Mr Whittingdale spoke of the need to ensure local news media outlets were appropriately rewarded for their investment in content to avoid damaging democracy.

Google and Facebook needed to give something back to prevent local news coverage being eroded, Mr Whittingdale added.

The News Media Association has been raising the issue of the need to ensure news media publishers are appropriately rewarded for their investment in journalism in meetings with Government, regulators and Google and Facebook in recent months.

A study by the NMA of NewsWhip data published earlier this month found that 47 per cent of all engagements with UK websites on social media over the past year sourced content from UK news brands, demonstrating that the news media industry’s investment in agenda-setting journalism adds a highly significant amount of value to social networks.