Keir Starmer has said media outlets should have control over – and be paid for – their work as artificial intelligence technology transforms the economy and the UK.
Calling journalism the “lifeblood of democracy”, the prime minister vowed to “champion press freedoms” and ensure that “the growing power of digital technology does not begin to chip away” at the ability of journalists and publishers to uphold democratic values.
In an article launching the News Media Association’s Journalism Matters campaign, Starmer said AI, the creative industries and the media were central to the government’s mission on economic growth, and it was working with both sectors to “balance” its industrial policy.
“We recognise the basic principle that publishers should have control over and seek payment for their work, including when thinking about the role of AI,” Starmer said. This was “essential for a vibrant media landscape, in which the sector’s provision of trustworthy information is more vital than ever”.
The apparent reassurance from the prime minister comes as the Observer revealed that ministers face a backlash over plans that would allow artificial intelligence companies to scrape content from publishers and artists. The BBC is among the organisations opposing a plan that would allow tech companies to train artificial intelligence models using online content by default, unless publishers and other content creators specifically opt out.
The government wants to attract investment from tech firms and has announced more than £25bn of investment in UK datacentres. But last month Google warned that Britain risked being left behind unless it built more datacentres and let tech firms use copyrighted work in their AI models, which publishers say is “akin to requiring homeowners to post notices on the outside of their homes asking burglars not to rob them”.
Starmer argued that the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, which will empower the UK’s competition watchdog to tackle the “excessive dominance” of a small number of tech firms over consumers and businesses, will help “rebalance the relationship”.
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In June a report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that the proportion of people selectively avoiding the news was 10 percentage points higher than it was seven years ago, reaching a new high of 39% across 20 key markets. It was the highest level of news avoidance recorded since the institute’s Digital News Report began in 2012.
Starmer wrote that with more than 900 local and national titles in the UK, the British news industry still reached more than 80% of the population. “For all the prophecies of doom about the future of news, that represents an extraordinary strength,” he said.
He praised “determined, incisive and irrepressible members of the fourth estate” who had “robustly” held him and the former prime minister Rishi Sunak to account during the election campaign. “Neither myself or the now leader of the opposition complained about this. Neither of us turned our partisan supporters against the media. We went about our business, just as all our predecessors have, accepting that this is democracy in action,” he wrote.
“And yet this is not a given. All around the world journalists put themselves at risk in defence of those values,” he added, paying tribute to journalists such as the Ukrainian Victoria Roshchyna, who died in Russian detention after being captured by Moscow while reporting from occupied east Ukraine, and the “hundreds of journalists killed reporting the unimaginable suffering in Gaza”.
There was concern in the summer when Labour delayed proposals to tackle Slapps – spurious lawsuits brought by oligarchs and others aimed at intimidating journalists, academics and campaigners. Frederick Ponsonby, a Labour justice minister in the House of Lords, said he could not commit to bringing forward standalone legislation on strategic lawsuits against public participation or set out a timetable for tackling the issue, though he promised the government would conduct a review.
But Starmer, in his defence of press freedom, said the government would “tackle the use of Slapps to protect investigative journalism, alongside access to justice”.