Schedule 3: Timing of providers’ assessments User-to-user services likely to be accessed by children Section 19: Duties to protect journalistic content
This section sets out the duties on providers of Category 1 services with regard to protecting journalistic content on those services.
	Subsection (2) places a duty on providers of Category 1 services to take into account the importance of free expression when designing proportionate systems and processes for taking decisions about journalistic content, or about users who post such content. This includes decisions about whether to take the content down, to restrict access to the content or to take action against a user of the service. For example, providers of Category 1 services could adopt procedures to identify journalistic content and ensure users have access to this, even where it might otherwise be voluntarily removed (i.e. for non-compliance with the providers own terms of service, rather than as otherwise required by the Act’s safety duties).
	Subsection (3) and (4) require providers of Category 1 services to create a dedicated complaints procedure available to users who generate, upload or share journalistic content on the service and to creators of journalistic content. The procedure must allow users and creators (as defined in subsections (12) and (13)) to challenge decisions to take down or restrict access to journalistic content or to take action against a user because of journalistic content shared, uploaded or generated by the user. The complaints procedure must be expedited. Under subsection (5), if a complaint is upheld, the content must be swiftly reinstated or the action against the user swiftly reversed. These subsections also make clear that providers are not required to make this complaints procedure available to a recognised news publisher in relation to any decision the provider has taken when complying with their duties set out in section 18.
	Subsection (8) requires that the terms of service about journalistic content are clear and consistently applied. The intention is that the terms of service should be easily understandable for users and that similar decisions are taken about the treatment of similar pieces of content.
	Subsection (10) defines "journalistic content" for the purposes of Part 3 of the Act as covering both news publisher content and regulated user-generated content, defined in section 55, that is generated for the purposes of journalism, and which is "UK-linked". This includes, but is not limited to, content generated by news publishers, freelance journalists and citizen journalists. Subsection (11) defines the term "UK-linked".