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Regulated Without Representation, chapter 5: Who decides what you read?

Who decides what you read? Britain’s plan to put a minister in your feed

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This is chapter 5 of Regulated Without Representation, a series by internet law solicitor Yair Cohen on how Britain regulates the internet and who pays for it. New here? Start with the introduction. The previous chapter is here.

Imagine the White House announced tomorrow that Google, YouTube and TikTok must put CNN and NBC at the top of every American’s feed whenever they look for news. Imagine it said this was needed to fight misinformation, and that it would decide later which outlets counted as trustworthy.

You would not need the argument explained to you. Why CNN? Because.

That plan is not American. It is British. It was published on 23 June 2026, it is called Watch this Space, and this is what it says: “We will explore legislative options to require social media to make news content from PSM providers, and potentially also national and local news publishers, prominent and easily discoverable.”

PSM means public service media: the BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and S4C. The Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, says the aim is to make sure “our regulated public service media is seen and heard in the fierce battle against mis and disinformation“. A minister gave the real reason in Parliament in September: in December 2025, for the first time, more people watched YouTube than the BBC. The broadcasters are losing the audience. The Government proposes to legislate it back.

The consultation closed on 31 August. A response is promised “relatively shortly”. The Government says it would prefer a voluntary deal with the platforms, and that it will legislate if the deal does not go far enough.

Here is what is wrong with it.

A minister where you used to be

Today, you decide what you read and whom you believe. Your feed learns from what you click, follow and ignore. It is not perfect, but it is yours. Under this plan, a list drawn up by the Government sits on top of your choices. Whatever you have chosen to follow, the approved outlets come first.

Ms Nandy told the Commons that “to somehow claim that this is about the Government controlling what people see is absolute nonsense“. But that is exactly what it is. Nobody is deleting anything. The Government is deciding the order. On a phone, the order is everything. The green paper even asks whether users should be allowed to switch the measures off, which tells you the default it has in mind.

“Trustworthy” means whatever the Government says it means

The plan rests on one word and the green paper admits nobody has defined it: “We have not yet determined what criteria we will use.” Its starting point is the test for a “recognised news publisher” in section 56 of the Online Safety Act. That test does not measure accuracy. It measures status. You qualify if you hold an Ofcom broadcasting licence, or if you are a UK-registered publisher with more than one writer, a complaints procedure and a standards code, which you may write yourself. A lone journalist, a YouTuber, or any foreign outlet without a British address does not qualify.

Consider what status has meant in practice. RT, the Kremlin’s channel, held an Ofcom licence until March 2022. CGTN, China’s state broadcaster, held one until February 2021. Al Jazeera, funded by the state of Qatar, broadcasts in Britain under Ofcom’s rules today. So under this plan a minister, or a body answering to a minister, would decide whether Al Jazeera is trustworthy, and therefore whether it sits above or below the fold on your phone. Whatever answer you would give, the question is not the state’s to ask. Sir Oliver Dowden, a former Deputy Prime Minister, put it in one line: “one person’s ‘trustworthy news’ is someone else’s propaganda.”

I know this from my own community. I am Jewish. 77 per cent of British Jews polled think the BBC’s coverage of Israel is biased against it. Ofcom found the BBC’s Gaza documentary “materially misleading“. The BBC’s own chairman called that “a dagger to the heart of the BBC’s claim to be impartial and trustworthy”. A law that puts the BBC first for a British Jew searching for news about Israel has taken a side in an argument about trust that the state has no business settling. Whichever way you think the BBC leans, the law would lock it in and put the Government’s stamp on it.

Everyone not on the list goes down

Every slot at the top comes from somewhere. If the BBC and Channel 4 are lifted, somebody is pushed down, and I know who, because many of them are my clients.

They are the people who built something from nothing on these platforms. The woman who left a salaried job to explain consumer law on YouTube and now feeds her family from it. The two brothers who review cars from a lock-up in Leeds. The retired engineer who reads planning applications so his town does not have to. The student filming her campus protest because nobody from a newsroom turned up. The small firm whose entire marketing budget is the videos its owner films on a Sunday afternoon. None of them has a registered office, a standards code or a complaints procedure. None of them has a licence fee. What they have is an audience they earned one viewer at a time, by being worth watching, and a living that depends on it.

Under this plan, that audience is taken from them and handed to broadcasters whose income the state already guarantees. Not by deleting them. By moving them down. On a phone, down is gone. YouTube said as much to its British creators: the plan would require it “to put some channels above others” and “could severely limit your channel’s ability to grow“. Sir John Whittingdale, a former Culture Secretary, said in Parliament that “some people will get less prominence. Those are the creators, start-ups and user-generated content.” The journalists’ union warned that prominence “must not become de-ranking by another name for journalists who challenge those in power”.

She did nothing wrong

Think about what that means to a self-employed creator whose income is her view count. She has done nothing wrong. She has broken no rule. She is simply not the BBC. And for that, a Government department proposes to place her below Channel 4 whenever someone in Britain goes looking for the very thing she does best. Nobody will write to tell her. Her numbers will just start falling, and she will spend months wondering what she did. She did nothing. The state changed the rules of the market she works in, to help the side that was losing.

That is not a fight against misinformation. It is the Government picking winners, and the winners were chosen before the race began. The independent creator is the new British press: the reporter with a phone, the engineer, the student, the small business owner. Nobody would censor them. They would simply be made harder to find. For anyone who lives on being found, that is the same thing.

Who the trusted answer to

Ask one more question about the outlets that would be lifted: who pays them? The BBC’s licence fee is set by the Government, and its Royal Charter is up for renewal next year. Channel 4 is publicly owned. Local newspapers were offered a £12 million fund allocated by the Culture Department in March 2026. Prominence would be one more gift from the state, and the Press Recognition Panel said so: it “is a public and commercial benefit“. An outlet whose audience depends on a minister’s list will be careful with ministers. Even the newspaper industry’s own trade body, which stands to gain, called the plan “press regulation by the back door“.

Washington has noticed

On 2 September 2026 the United States Government filed a formal response to the consultation. It said that boosting “government-preferred media” would have an effect on everyone else “not meaningfully different than outright removal”, and asked Britain to “withdraw any plans to mandate that platforms algorithmically amplify government-preferred media”. So far as I can find, it is the first time the United States has intervened in a British media consultation on free speech grounds.

My final thoughts

If people want trusted news, let them choose it. Google is already testing a “Preferred Sources” setting where the user picks the outlets she wants more of. Make any prominence tool opt-in. Make platforms publish how they rank news. And keep the state, any state, out of the business of deciding which journalism is true.

Why the BBC? Because. That is the whole of the Government’s argument, and it is not good enough.

For the serious reader
If you run a platform: the plan would require you to alter your ranking for British users in favour of a Government-designated list, on conditions the Government sets. The US submission notes that “the large majority” of affected platforms are American. Watch for the Government’s response and for the “voluntary agreement” that may come first; what is agreed voluntarily tends to become what the law later requires.
If you are British: the consultation has closed, the response has not been published, and your Member of Parliament can still be written to.
If you are an independent journalist or creator: you are not a “recognised news publisher” unless you have a UK address, a standards code, a complaints process and more than one author. That is the line between the top of the feed and the bottom.

Next: Chapter 6, When the Americans say no. Tariffs, visa restrictions, the sites already gone and the ones weighing it up, and what I think should happen before the Americans either shout or leave.

Sources for this chapter

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