The Future of News (HL Paper 39, 2024–25)

The House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee's inquiry examines disinformation's impact on the UK news ecosystem and foreign interference as a structural threat to independent media, arguing that strengthening the economic and institutional sustainability of independent journalism is the most durable counter to disinformation. Evidence includes testimony from Professor Ciaran Martin (former NCSC CEO).

The media sustainability framing is analytically important and underweighted in the counter-disinformation literature. When local and national journalism is financially unviable, it creates information voids that disinformation fills. This systemic argument — that counter-disinformation requires media ecosystem health, not just detection and debunking — is one of the most important in the current grey literature.