| Sumario: | This paper examines how provisions in the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA), designed to protect journalism, may unintentionally create challenges to media freedom by enhancing platform power. By granting protections to news publisher content and journalistic content, the legislation requires platforms to determine who qualifies for these privileges, thereby making them gatekeepers of journalistic status. While news entities advocated for these provisions to protect themselves from content takedowns, we argue the OSA exemplifies what Tambini terms the 'privilege paradox' – where protecting journalism necessitates defining its boundaries, creating new 'vectors of control'. Unlike jurisdictions such as Australia and Canada, which have established alternative mechanisms for determining what qualifies as journalism, the UK law places this power primarily with platforms. This approach, combined with questions about the enforceability of the OSA's duty of care framework, may inadvertently strengthen the gatekeeping role of platforms over journalism rather than rebalancing power relations as intended.
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