Critics might say that Lord Richard Allan is failing upward, at least where issues of free speech and responsibility in that context governing are concerned: this member of UK’s communications regulator Ofcom Board has now been appointed to head the new Disinformation and Misinformation Advisory Committee.
The government-approved Office of Communications (Ofcom) says that this committee will serve to offer advice regarding “misinformation” and “disinformation” in the way these are “specified” by the country’s sweeping controversial censorship law, Online Safety Act.
Allan has spent his career spanning several decades bouncing between government and corporate jobs. His revolving door career has included working for the NHS, then Cisco, a stint as British MP, and most recently as Facebook (Meta) VP Public Policy.
Now, Allen is overseeing the work of the nascent committee, which has set out its tasks to include the way providers of regulated services “should deal with disinformation and misinformation;” Ofcom’s requiring information from said services “relating” to disinformation and misinformation, and, Ofcom promoting “media literacy” – specifically in the context of misinformation, etc.
“Media literacy” is often code for reinforcing “fact-checking” and collaboration with legacy media in order to prop-up their credibility; and sure enough, describing the committee’s duties, Ofcom states that it will advise on “development of policy in relation to the program of work on media we trust and value.”
This is accompanied by reports detailing Ofcom’s (and Allan’s) message around the UK’s general election held earlier this year.
According to articles detailing an Ofcom survey, the regulator chooses to interpret the reality in this way: misinformation – seems – to have surged immediately ahead of the vote.
So, had it “surged” – or had it not?
The Ofcom survey is not one of those “approve/disapprove of,” but based on interviewing people and their subjective impressions. And in that setup, 43% said they encountered disinformation on TV, compared with 21% who claimed the same regarding newspapers and their sites/apps.
More people are skeptical, though. 44% agree that “the more a story is edited, the less likely it is to be true” – while a similar percentage think that “important stories are deliberately covered up by traditional news sources (42%).”
That leaves the door open to the question of what the prime target of the new committee’s (and Ofcom’s) will turn out to be – misinformation, or repairing the rising mistrust in legacy media.
