Mr. Jeremy Godfrey:

In a way, as the Senator says, where you read the news, whether you read it on an inky piece of paper or on a screen is much less important than the quality of the news you are reading and its reliability. One issue for us is the role of public service media. The Future of Media Commission very much said not to talk about public service broadcasters but to talk about public service media organisations. It is where they deploy their news content so it is important they are present online and on social media. If that is where the audience is, they need to be present there. Therefore, when we think about the funding of public service media and about some of the journalism schemes that Coimisiún na Meán is being asked to roll out, we definitely need to be thinking not just about how that journalism is deployed through traditional channels but how it is deployed through those other channels. Then to come to the Senator's point about the deprioritisation of news, one of the things in the Digital Services Act is that the large platforms have to do risk assessments. That includes risks to public civic discourse, to elections, to public order and public health. For all of those there is a risk as a result of disinformation or misinformation about those topics and that risk can always be mitigated by making sure it is good quality journalism that gets due prominence. One of the things we need to get the European Commission to do, because this is their competence not ours, is to make sure the mitigation measures that the big platforms put in place, include giving due prominence to trusted sources of news.