The heads of five major UK media companies have signed an open letter to other global media organisations calling on them to join a coalition to protect original journalism.
Tim Davie, BBC Director-General; Jon Slade, CEO, Financial Times; Anna Bateson, CEO, The Guardian; David Rhodes, Executive Chairman, Sky News and Anna Jones, CEO, Telegraph Media Group are the original members of SPUR – the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition.
The coalition is calling for “shared technical standards and responsible licensing frameworks” for AI developers as “across the industry, our reporting, our archives, our original content, have become foundational training material for AI systems. This material has been scraped, copied and reused with no common standards to enable permission or payment, weakening the economic model that supports journalism.”
The open letter says:
We invite you – global leaders across publishing, broadcasting, media and news – to join us as founding members of a new coalition: SPUR – the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition.
Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how content is created, distributed, discovered and monetised. We believe we need to come together to protect original journalism and secure the long-term sustainability of our industry.
AI brings opportunities for publishers and our audience. Our organisations are already at the forefront of using AI in responsible ways to benefit our audiences. But AI also raises urgent questions about fairness, consent, attribution, transparency and trust.
Across the industry, our reporting, our archives, our original content, have become foundational training material for AI systems. This material has been scraped, copied and reused with no common standards to enable permission or payment, weakening the economic model that supports journalism. The lack of transparency about how AI answers are created risks eroding public trust in both the news and the technologies used to access it.
SPUR’s mission is clear: to establish shared technical standards and responsible licensing frameworks that ensure AI developers can access high quality, reliable journalism in legitimate, responsible and convenient ways, while guaranteeing that publishers retain practical control of their content and receive fair value when it is used.
The coalition will:
Develop shared industry standards, creating responsible ways for original journalism to be used sustainably
Reduce friction in licensing and bridge the gap between publishers and AI developers
Identify gaps in the technical tools needed to protect intellectual property, and support their creation
Ensure high value content can be accessed through rights cleared, accountable channels
Evaluate existing industry infrastructure and assess where new technologies or approaches are needed
Enable transparent, scalable use of journalistic content
For more than two centuries, media organisations have invested in journalism and newsgathering that underpin informed, connected societies. Our work strengthens democracy, empowers citizens, and holds those in power to account. This contribution rests not only on our reach, but on the standards that sustain it: editorial accuracy, accountability and trust. Trust earned over decades.
This is a global challenge, and SPUR’s ambition is to be a global coalition. Working across the industry, we can build systems that respect original reporting, uphold public trust, and enable both journalism and AI to thrive. Together, we will work with tech companies to adopt responsible, rights-cleared pathways to journalistic content, and with policymakers to build a modern regulatory framework that protects publisher rights and sets clear expectations for responsible AI development.
Our goal is to help shape a market that rewards original reporting and supports responsible AI innovation.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Jon Creamer
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