Enders Analysis calls for Government support for news & magazine media

26 March 2020

The letter is free to access by clicking through the title.

Quality news media is a public good, and in the extraordinary circumstances of COVID-19 the sustainability of information and news provision should be ensured at all costs.

COVID-19 has given new urgency to protect the supply of local and national news. News media, perhaps particularly local news media, is a critical information service for a vulnerable population, many of whom are confined at home. In the context of the findings of the Cairncross Review, the pandemic is intensifying rather than abating the sector's decade-long commercial crisis due to a clutch of inter-related structural changes.

Many recent initiatives – including the Cairncross Review itself, the Nesta Future News fund and the Public Interest News Foundation – rightly focused on a framework for developing long-term sustainable models for news media. Government needs to shift the focus to managing an emergency; not just for our country’s health, but our citizen’s provision of quality news and information. Right now, we need to mobilize Government funding to make quality news a public service.

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