The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is reviewing the BBC’s Royal Charter, which expires at the end of 2027. DCMS has set out a Green Paper and ran a consultation, ending on 10 March, to inform the changes that the government is considering making to the Charter, to futureproof the BBC and help it continue serving the public. The Green Paper considers proposals and questions on the BBC’s role in support of promoting a healthy information environment, tackling mis/disinformation and fostering media literacy.
On 23 February, MILA, in association with Demos, organised an online meeting to reflect on the proposals relating to media literacy specifically and to discuss the relative opportunities and risks. Please click on the link below for a summary of the discussion that took place at the event. This was also sent to DCMS.
Discussion summary
The summary is an anonymised synthesis that sets out the broad range of views of the c.30 meeting participants. We are grateful to Hannah Perry, from Demos, for having written this up. It is a record of what was covered in the discussion, but it does not endorse a particular stance or opinion on the contents of the Green Paper – MILA, along with others, has submitted its own response to the consultation (see below).
The consultation included a specific question relating most closely to media literacy: “Thinking about the next Charter period, what role, if any, do you think the BBC should have in ensuring UK citizens can recognise and access trusted and accurate information?”
MILA’s submitted response (necessarily short because of the word limit that DCMS placed in their questionnaire) was as follows:
The BBC plays a crucial role in the UK’s information ecosystem and already undertakes a wide range of media literacy (ML)-related activity. While this is welcome, MILA and the wider media and information literacy (MIL) community have differing views about the benefits and risks of formalising these responsibilities via the Charter and of codifying them through a revision to the Corporation’s public purposes, as evidenced by the discussions at a meeting organised by Demos and MILA on 23 February. MILA has concerns about narrowly defining ML within the public purposes as merely “countering misinformation” or fact-checking. This approach ignores the need for (i) critical understanding of the entire media ecosystem, including the BBC itself, (ii) a focus on the positive, creative aspects of ML and (iii) recognising the importance of critical thinking. We also see challenges in establishing what metrics might be used to monitor the success of any regulated ML role and would argue against measures linked to trust in or engagement with specific news brands. The BBC could use its scale and reach to act more fully as catalyst for the wider MIL sector and we would encourage it to increase its engagement with ML experts.