Clause 10 - Function of promoting media literacy
Communications Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)
I echo the points made by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East about the role of community media. The duties set out in subsection (1) relate to encouraging and enabling the public to understand how the media works, and how material is put together and edited. Quite simply, the best way to understand that process is to do it. There are some good examples of that. The best way to educate people is to give them a taste of the subject.
In my city of Sheffield, the BBC local radio station, Radio Sheffield, has on its ground floor an active community media centre, where people learn how to use the internet and create community websites that form part of the BBC website, which is the most popular website in the country and an important part of the media. Up the road, in what was the National Centre for Popular Music, a lottery-funded project that opened and then shut down rather rapidly, the ground floor is being put to good use by Sheffield Community Radio, which brings people in and shows them how radio works. It is particularly exciting that that radio station will no longer have to go off air when its temporary licence expires, because it continues broadcasting using real media across the internet. There are now good opportunities for community media, and that is by far the best way to promote media literacy.