Rishi Sunak’s ascension to prime minister of the UK has seen some speculation on potential changes to UK communications policy. Sunak has reportedly been non-committal on the Online Safety Bill’s proposal to regulate legal but harmful content, such as misinformation. On the other hand, he has flagged the privatisation of Channel 4 and indicated that he would pursue legislation to formalise the role of the Digital Markets Unit, which, in the UK’s answer to Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, has been assessing the need for a code of conduct to govern commercial relationships between digital platforms and news media businesses.
The UK is not the only country following Australia’s lead here, and this week Sacha Molitorisz examines the latest developments in Canada, where Facebook recently threatened to pull news content in response to the Online News Bill.
With this edition falling in budget week, CMT co-director Monica Attard gives a rundown of new funding for the media, including some long-awaited joy for the ABC. There’s also some money for regional newspapers – a welcome boon given the reduced newsgathering capacity in regional areas identified in CMT’s forthcoming regional news media report. CMT research assistant Travis Radford reflects on these findings in the context of his recent appearance representing UTS at a conference on regional, remote and rural education.
In a time of constrained spending, this new funding may not quite be a flood of money. But there’s been plenty of real flooding in the regions, especially in Victoria. Stevie Zhang reports on the misinformation fuelling climate-change denialism on social media.
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Michael Davis, CMT Research Fellow