Andrew Neil and senior executives at Tortoise, Joe Media and Spiked to give evidence on future of the news

The Committee will take evidence in two sessions on from 2:30pm on Tuesday 23 April in in Committee Room 4 of the House of Lords.

Giving evidence to the Committee will be:

2:30pm

• Andrew Neil, Chairman, The Spectator

3:30pm

• James Harding, Co-founder and Editor, Tortoise
• John Quinlan, CEO, Joe Media Group
• Tom Slater, Editor, Spiked.

In the first session the Committee will question Andrew Neil on how well mainstream broadcasters are serving audiences; the impact of new entrants such as GB News and TalkTV on the media landscape; and how interventionist governments should be in the coming years to support the news sector. The Committee will also ask about the long-term sustainability of high quality journalism and how it should be funded; and whether there are risks of a ‘two tier’ news environment developing (where a small number of people pay to subscribe to high quality news while most rely on free but increasingly poor quality information).

The second session will focus on what smaller and alternative news providers offer to differentiate themselves; barriers to financial sustainability (including challenges in the advertising market, relationships with tech platforms, and regulation); and how far the the contribution of smaller news providers is represented in government policy thinking.