UK national and regional newspaper publishers have said the BBC’s digital news operation needs to make space to allow commercial players to compete.

The News Media Association is a trade body for the UK newspaper industry, which represents all major newspaper publishers, excluding only the Express group and the Financial Times. The chairman is Mike Darcey, former chief executive of News UK.

The NMA published a 69-page report, outlining changes they deem necessary for the BBC’s digital news in order to support local newspapers. This follows the BBC’s claim in January that the BBC’s expansion is necessary due to local press facing a bleak future.

Nationally, the BBC is growing its service by including more editorial content, lifestyle features and celebrity columnists, which the report argues is beyond its core news remit. The report says, “This is key issue related to the broadening of the BBC’s online editorial scope in that it blurs the distinction between public service and commercial content. Today, it can be argued that the growth of BBC Online is pushing the BBC into more competition with the commercially funded news sector, both with traditional print businesses going online and with new start-ups who find the BBC increasingly colonizing areas of opportunity such as short-form ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ news via its apps and platform partnerships (e.g. Facebook Instant Articles).”

Internationally, the BBC has been given full funding responsibility for the BBC World Service. The report comments, “The BBC’s drive to grow its commercial revenues through its international commercial news operations is likely to impact on other UK news providers who are looking to international markets to sustain and grow their core UK business, [such as] the Guardian and the Daily Mail”.

The report is also skeptical of the BBC actively making changes to help, and suggest involvement from a “public service oversight body”.

The BBC have responded with, “We’re doing more than ever to work with local and regional news and will set out our plans to strengthen this new partnership shortly. Our users click on BBC News links to other websites around 8.6 million times each month”.