The New Economics of Trust
This industry consultation explores whether journalism can transform its challenges of credibility into economic opportunity by treating trust as a tangible business asset.
As synthetic content becomes ubiquitous and indistinguishable from institutional journalism, can authentication create sustainable competitive advantage? The crisis is measurable – trust in news has fallen 16 points in the UK and 15 points in Germany since 2015, whilst only 18% of consumers in wealthy countries pay for online news. Generative AI has accelerated disinformation exponentially, enabling industrial-scale manipulation at near-zero marginal cost.
Learning From Other Industries
Drawing on industries that have successfully monetised accountability – from organic food and Fair Trade certification commanding substantial price premiums, to pharmaceutical verification creating billions in value – we propose that embedded authentication can unlock new revenue streams whilst defending existing ones.
Consultation
The consultation addresses critical questions facing the industry, including:
- How publishers can protect against regulatory liability and revenue erosion;
- How authentication can enable premium positioning with both subscribers and advertisers in fragmenting markets;
- How publishers can move beyond defensive licensing agreements and litigation, to form new, value-adding partnerships with the AI industry;
- Opportunities for monetisation strategies for “news in the wild”, focusing on the major social media platforms and search engines;
- How to retrieve and reengage younger audiences – tomorrow’s subscribers and advertising audiences – to protect and grow future revenues.
An Open Investigation
We are engaging leading publishers, technology providers, advertisers, and policymakers to stress-test these propositions. The goal is clarity – understanding whether authentication represents essential infrastructure for journalism’s future, or merely incremental improvement to existing verification methods.