Power to the People? Protection of Citizen Journalists vs the Institutional Press in the Online Safety Act 2023

The Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA) aims to create a safer place for people to exist online. One facet of this is the attempt to tackle mis- and disinformation, through the requirement to remove illegal content, and Category 1 platforms needing to remove certain other disinformation, dependent on the platform’s terms of service. This paper focuses on the lack of protection for citizen journalists and how this may be improved.
Firstly, this paper is concerned with the duties to protect journalistic content in section 19 OSA, namely for a service to use proportionate processes to ensure the free expression of journalistic content in deciding whether to remove it from their platforms or restrict user access to it, and for its terms of service to state what shall be identified as journalistic content. The paper argues that it is problematic to allow online services to regulate content in both of these ways.
Section 18 will provide additional protections for ‘news publisher content’: when a platform wishes to restrict access to or remove such content, the news publisher must be notified of this, giving reasons for the action, of the process leading to the decision, and to allow and consider any representations made by the publisher in response. This applies to ‘recognised news publishers’, of which this paper focuses on the press. It is argued that citizen journalists should be given more protection, reflecting a need to counterbalance the institutional press’s power.
Finally, the paper considers whether the OSA should protect ethical journalism, rather than content itself, which may have a bigger impact on mis- and disinformation, and on other harms done to the public.
This analysis has implications for the enacting of section 18 and further legislation or Ofcom guidance on regulating journalistic content.