Recommendation 37

The Government should focus more on strengthening long- term resilience. We suggest four priorities. (1) First is recognising more explicitly the value of a financially sustainable news sector: this is the best way to maintain a shared understanding of facts. (2) Second, the Government could engage further with media organisations about protocols for responding to major foreign interference efforts, particularly around elections. (3) Third, the Government should adopt a more muscular deterrence posture to impose greater costs on adversaries , for example using responsible cyber power to degrade adversary infrastructure . This could feature in the Strategic Defence Review currently underway . (4) Fourth is media literacy. We are not yet convinced that the Government has a good plan. More resources and effort are needed to scale ‘what works’ in media literacy, and avoid a tangle of short-term fragmented projects. Ofcom is already taking on major burdens: we hope it is not left to be the main lead for such a complex policy issue. The Government needs its own strategy. DSIT should set out its future plans for media literacy and timeline for evaluating its current activities in response to this report. The Department for Education should use the opportunity of the Curriculum and Assessment Review to ensure that media literacy is given more time and prominence in schools.