Take Action! 

“It is a no brainer!” says deputy general secretary of the STUC! 

Simple actions that Trade Union members can take to help pass the Media Freedom Act and to free UK democracy from billionaire-owned media (BOM) capture:

Are YOU or someone you know a Trade Union Member?

The Media Freedom Act is looking for local trade union branch members to submit the Media Freedom Act to their local branches for endorsement and submission to their Regional and National Trade Union and regional TUC Conferences.

Take Action Today!

  1. Contact your trade-union branch secretary to submit the Media Freedom Act motion below for endorsement by your local branch and get them to submit it to your regional TUC and national trade union conference.

  2. Please join our Facebook Supporters page to keep up with all the news from the campaign
    https://www.facebook.com/groups/1072509248669449

  3. Join our mailing list.


Media Freedom Act Motion for Trade Union local branches:

This XXXX Trade Union Branch Notes That:

  1. Ownership of the United Kingdom’s national news media (press, broadcast and online) is concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of individuals and corporations, most of them based outside the UK, giving them enormous unaccountable power to dominate and control our politics.

  2. Parliament has taken a very modest step to bar foreign states from controlling more than 15% of a UK newspaper company, but no equivalent rule applies to individuals or companies not resident in the UK.

  3. The loss of local newspapers has left much of the country without reporting of its courts, councils and communities, as advertising revenue has moved to a small number of offshore technology corporations, leading to a seriously destructive democratic deficit. 

  4. The use of dark-money funded think-tanks allows billionaires and foreign corporations to anonymously and unaccountably impact British government policymaking. 

  5. The UK’s billionaire and corporate owned media have refused to join the post-Leveson complaints authority, which is independent of government and media owners. 

We believe:

  1. For Britain to have a genuinely free press and a free and fair democracy, our media ownership must be free from capture and domination by a tiny billionaire minority and that the  remedy for concentrated power is to disperse it.

  2. Plurality of ownership, rather than control of content, is the solution to billionaire media domination of our politics. No one should be told what to publish.

  3. That our current billionaire and corporate media monopolies restrict our press freedom almost as much as a state press monopoly would.

We therefore endorse the Media Freedom Act that contains the following 5 measures:

  1. Requires the owners of national media organisations to  be legal UK residents.

  2. Frees media ownership from domination by billionaires and corporations:

    1. Maximum ownership share of a national media outlet for one individual or family shall be 20%.

    2. Companies can only own one national media outlet.

  3. Distributes the power of media ownership across society via a  levy on social media billionaires to fund local, independent and cooperatively owned media.

  4. Obliges the media to be members of a Leveson-compliant press-abuse complaints authority, independent of government and owners.

  5. Requires think-tanks covered by the media to disclose donations in real time.

    We request that the branch secretary submit the endorsed motion to our regional TUC, for their endorsement and to ask them to request all other trade unions who are members of our regional TUC be requested to also endorse the Media Freedom Act  and also to submit it to our trade union’s national  conference for endorsement by them.

    Please email caspar@mediafreedomact.org when you have submitted the motion and let us know the result of the vote.