Occupy Fleet Street: How to Democratise the British Media

This was an interesting and enlightening talk regarding the failings of the British media and ways to democratise their processes. Featured speakers were Tom Mills, Laura Basu, Leo Watkins, Dan Hind, Angela Phillips and Wendy Liu.

• The way in which we are managed online is shaped by the private sector. Encourages quick turnaround in news.
• Regulation of massive monopolies? EU trying this but break up would be more beneficial yet harder to enact.
• Public service search engine should be a radical possibility - one not based on data-mining & advertising. 
• Good journalism declined before the advent of the internet due to its commercialisation but it compounded the problem.
• Daily Mail monetises grief.
• 'Journalism vouchers' - an investment in democratic media.
• The wealthiest people in our society are the most 'attractive' audience to private-business-interest media so it's not enough to just get rid f the millionaire owners of newspapers if such things are still privately run.
• Vouchers system actually more beneficial for journalists: they can write what the want without being beholden to tax-exile owners and the editors who serve them.
• BBC originally undemocratic, has always been close to the state and the ruling class.
• It became more close to markets in the 1980s onwards. BBC reported 2008 crash in a way which allowed the Conservatives to take political advantage.
• Remove all areas of government control on the BBC. Should have decentralisation and elections.
• Take away the top-down state-run structure of the BBC.
• Politics usually reports to a public sphere that it shapes and defines. 
• Commercial platforms thrive on sensation and confrontation. Public platforms could change this.
• Freedom needed to spur a creative movement in media. 
• Daily Mail muckraking so successful because it picks on people who don't have the financial means to defend themselves. Other sources do less real investigative journalism due to the possibility of financial intimidation. 
• Alternative media e.g. New Internationalist in danger of failing as they have limited monetary interest without using advertising and with the death of print journalism (subscriptions).