The UK’s public media landscape is under intense pressure. In the face of declining public trust, financial instability, political interference, and a polarised media culture, the question must be asked: what kind of media system can support a pluralistic, democratic, and inclusive public sphere?
To answer this, we must move beyond the binary of market versus state. William Beveridge’s work offers an overlooked but timely third way. While best known for the 1942 Beveridge Report that underpinned the UK welfare state, Beveridge also championed the role of civil society—a space between state bureaucracy (civitas) and unregulated individualism (market)—as essential to democratic wellbeing. His 1948 report Voluntary Action outlined the necessity of independent, community-based institutions for sustaining innovation, participation, and social solidarity.
In the context of media reform, this model offers a principled foundation for thinking about editorial autonomy, governance diversity, and distributed civic participation. It also provides an alternative to the increasingly ineffective mix of commercial consolidation and institutional centralisation that characterises current UK media policy.
The Limits of the Media Act 2024: Centralisation Masquerading as Reform
The Media Act 2024 was presented as a modernising framework to liberalise the UK’s broadcasting and digital communications sectors. However, many observers now regard the Act as a protection racket—intended less to foster diversity or innovation and more to reinforce the dominance of incumbent interests. Instead of catalysing a media renaissance, the Act has deepened structural inequalities, accelerated the concentration of media ownership, and pushed content creation into a narrower commercial mould.
In practical terms, the Act has facilitated further market consolidation, allowing fewer corporations to dominate content provision. This consolidation has led to a homogenisation of output, where regional and cultural specificities are diluted in favour of standardised formats that appeal to advertiser-driven agendas. Local and culturally distinct provision has become economically unviable, and experimental or participatory approaches that fall outside these frameworks are increasingly marginalised.
This has profound consequences. Without genuine diversity in the media ecosystem, cultural fragmentation becomes more likely, as audiences turn away from centrally-produced content that does not reflect their experiences. A homogenised media culture is also more vulnerable to misinformation, especially from global bad actors who exploit gaps in trust and representation. Moreover, the marginalisation of community and civic voices erodes the capacity for democratic engagement and public scrutiny. A top-down media model that centralises control and limits participation not only narrows the range of stories being told, it weakens the social bonds that media can foster, leading to a pervasive and enduring mistrust in media institutions.
Civil Society as a Space for Media Innovation and Sustainability
Beveridge’s civil society model presents a compelling alternative to both the market and the state. It highlights a relational, place-based approach to media that values plurality over uniformity and embeddedness over abstraction. In civil society, media is not just a conduit for content delivery but a means of community-building, collective expression, and social participation.
When media is rooted in civil society, editorial independence is not a regulatory abstraction but a lived reality grounded in local needs. Accountability becomes a mutual process between producers and audiences, not a compliance requirement monitored from afar. Importantly, decentralisation in this context is not just a technical fix but a democratic imperative. A media system that allows for local agency and representation is one that recognises the uneven textures of social life and provides the means for communities to speak in their own voice.
If such civic media structures are not fostered and protected, the consequences will be severe. Communities that lack the tools to represent themselves will either fall silent or become easy targets for misinformation and manipulation. The absence of decentralised media structures leaves a vacuum often filled by foreign-controlled digital platforms and disinformation networks, further destabilising social cohesion and eroding trust in public life. Civil society media, when adequately supported, not only counters these risks but enriches the public sphere with stories that are grounded in real relationships and shared experiences.
Reforming the BBC: The State’s Obligation to Support Independent Civic Media
The BBC is an enduring institution within the UK’s media ecosystem, but its dominance has created a dependency that has suppressed the development of a more diverse and participatory civic media sphere. Successive policy frameworks have presumed that the BBC can fulfil the role of public service media for the entire nation. However, this assumption has had the unintended effect of marginalising independent and community-based media providers who lack the resources or institutional legitimacy to compete within the BBC’s orbit.
To move beyond this narrow configuration, it is essential that the Government and Ofcom take up their responsibility to foster a separate and viable civic media system. This model must be established independently of the BBC and must be recognised as a distinct contributor to the public service media landscape. Civic media should not be viewed as a subordinate or complementary function to the BBC, but as a parallel and equally valid system of provision.
For this to succeed, civic media must be structurally independent from the BBC. Its funding, governance, and strategic priorities must not be derived from or constrained by the BBC’s institutional culture or corporate objectives. Instead, the Government and Ofcom should develop a dedicated framework of support for civic media, including guaranteed funding mechanisms that are insulated from political interference and large-scale institutional priorities. Without such protections, civic media will remain peripheral, under-resourced, and vulnerable to co-option.
The upcoming Charter Review provides an opportunity to clarify the BBC’s public service remit. However, it is vital that this remit is defined strictly in relation to the BBC’s own obligations and not as a proxy for the entire public media sector. Independent providers must be free to define their own missions, allocate their own resources, and set their own editorial standards according to the needs of the communities they serve. Their legitimacy should not depend on alignment with BBC goals or access to BBC platforms but should arise from the democratic value they generate through participatory and locally-responsive practices.
It is also critical that civic media is shielded from the commercial imperatives and global market orientation that increasingly shape the BBC’s strategy. A civic media sector grounded in civil society should not be required to chase international audiences, monetise brand assets, or compete in transnational content markets. Its focus must remain on providing culturally relevant, inclusive, and democratically accountable media for people in the UK, especially those whose needs are not met by market-driven or centrally planned services.
If these structural reforms are not implemented, the consequences will include further alienation of underrepresented communities, a persistent lack of trust in public media, and the continued erosion of democratic deliberation. A pluralistic public media environment cannot be built from within the BBC alone. It must be cultivated through the intentional development of a decentralised, autonomous, and participatory civic media infrastructure. This is not duplication. It is a necessary renewal of the democratic media commons.
Community and Independent Media: The Embodiment of Communitas
Across the UK, community and independent media organisations are already providing a real-world demonstration of what Beveridge called voluntary action. These organisations operate with limited resources but deliver disproportionate social value through inclusive storytelling, local engagement, and participatory practice. Their value lies not only in the content they produce but in the relationships they build and sustain.
Editorial autonomy is a hallmark of this model. Because these organisations are not beholden to commercial advertisers or centralised editorial policies, they are free to explore diverse narratives and perspectives that resonate locally. This capacity to reflect and shape local culture strengthens community identity, encourages dialogue, and builds trust. When such editorial freedom is suppressed, communities can feel voiceless, leading to a loss of cultural agency and greater susceptibility to disengagement or radicalisation.
Furthermore, the accountability structures of independent media are inherently democratic. Many operate on cooperative principles, with boards or management structures that include volunteers, contributors, and local citizens. This ensures that content decisions are made transparently and with direct relevance to community needs. Ignoring the democratic potential of such models risks perpetuating a model of top-down media provision that treats citizens as consumers rather than participants.
The ability of community media to adapt formats and content to suit the languages, traditions, and lived experiences of local people offers a meaningful counterpoint to the cultural flattening that occurs in national or global commercial media. Yet this flexibility is only possible when funding and institutional support are sufficient to sustain operational independence. Without this, community media risks being reduced to sporadic or tokenistic activity, rather than a sustainable civic infrastructure.
If the UK fails to properly support and institutionalise community and independent media, it will continue to see the erosion of trust in national media, the weakening of civic engagement, and the rise of hyper-fragmented, algorithm-driven echo chambers. Supporting communitas in media is not about nostalgia or idealism—it is a practical investment in the social cohesion and cultural vitality of the nation.
Technology and the Conditions for Decentralisation
The technological tools now available make it entirely possible to decentralise media production and distribution in a way that would have been unthinkable in Beveridge’s time. Yet these tools remain underutilised in public service planning and policy. Platforms based on federated and open protocols—such as Mastodon, PeerTube, or the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)—allow content to be distributed across autonomous, locally governed networks. These systems offer resilience, editorial freedom, and structural resistance to monopoly control.
By using peer-to-peer networks and decentralised content hosting, communities can maintain control over their archives, ensure access without censorship, and reduce dependence on commercial platforms that extract value and sell user data. Moreover, open-source content creation and collaboration tools such as WordPress or Kdenlive allow non-professional media practitioners to participate meaningfully in public communication without excessive cost or technical overhead.
Despite this potential, media policy in the UK continues to rely on legacy systems of centralised broadcast and proprietary digital infrastructure. This leaves the public media sphere vulnerable to market capture and algorithmic manipulation, and it disempowers communities from taking control of their own media futures. It also sustains an extractive relationship between audiences and content platforms, where engagement is measured in clicks and monetised attention rather than democratic participation.
If we do not invest in and promote decentralised technological systems for civic media, the risk is that corporate and geopolitical actors will continue to shape the architecture of public discourse. This threatens not only editorial freedom but democratic sovereignty itself. A distributed technological model is essential to ensuring that media power does not become concentrated in the hands of a few, but is instead shared across the many.
Building from the Middle: A Foundational Approach to Media Policy
The gap in UK media policy lies not at the extremes of state or market but in the neglected middle ground—the civic and foundational level where public culture is actually lived and reproduced. Media policy has either pursued state-scale institutionalism or deferred to market-driven innovation. Both approaches have failed to nurture the slow, relational work of building and sustaining community-rooted public communication.
A foundational approach recognises that media is not simply a sector, but a form of civic infrastructure. Like libraries, parks, or schools, community media offers a space for learning, exchange, and public participation. It enables social imagination, intergenerational dialogue, and a sense of belonging that transcends commercial or bureaucratic categories. It should therefore be publicly supported with the same seriousness and commitment.
This also requires new institutional mechanisms—networks, federations, peer learning systems—that can offer support without imposing uniformity. These cooperative institutions would help local media organisations to share resources, establish ethical frameworks, and gain legitimacy without losing autonomy. Without such intermediate structures, small media organisations are isolated, forced to constantly fight for survival, and vulnerable to collapse.
If we continue to ignore the middle ground of foundational media, the result will be a continued fragmentation of the public sphere, increasing polarisation, and a deepening sense of democratic fatigue. Rebuilding trust, agency, and participation in public life depends on our willingness to invest in the everyday civic infrastructure of media.
A New Civic Covenant for Public Media
Reforming UK media will not be achieved by defending the BBC as it is, nor by allowing markets to dictate public value. We need a new civic covenant: one that shifts power away from gatekeeping institutions and extractive platforms, and toward participatory, community-rooted, and democratically governed media ecosystems.
The answer is not more control, but more trust—trust in people to tell their own stories, set their own agendas, and build shared meaning through dialogue. In Beveridge’s terms, we must trust civil society to do what neither the market nor the state can: to foster belonging, imagination, and mutual care through communication.
We must build from the middle—with a flotilla of small boats, not a single flagship.