Are social media 'influencers' given too much credibility by the mainstream media?

The lopsided figure — 116 votes to 28 — is less the story than the silence beneath it: a chamber this decisive on "Rights" usually attracts at least a rearguard defence of influencers' place in the conversation, and none came. What the floor left instead was a stack of Yes arguments, unusually unanimous in tone even as respect for them stayed thin.

The case, such as it was, rested on a distinction between visibility and authority. The most-respected line put the charge plainly: "Mainstream media shouldn't quote influencers without applying journalistic standards. If they don't, they are lazy and unethical." Others sharpened the same point into economics rather than ethics — one voter argued influencers operate on "cash for clicks," with "profitisation before honesty" as their guiding mantra, while another, invoking Andrew Tate by name, warned that "people can be popular and totally wrong," and that in the scramble for engagement "expertise and science is becoming the casualty."

There was no organised No case on the page to set against this — no defence of influencers as a democratising force, no pushback on what "journalistic standards" even means in an algorithmic age. The lopsidedness of the debate itself, five opinions and all from one side, mirrors the lopsidedness of the vote, suggesting the 28 No voters simply didn't feel moved to argue back.

The result sits squarely on a familiar fault line — trust in institutions versus trust in personality, credentialism versus the algorithm's verdict on what people actually want to hear — the same argument that trails Ofcom's rulings, GB News panels, and every op-ed asking who gets to be believed.

For a chamber this decisive, the debate was strikingly one-note: everyone who spoke agreed, and nobody spoke for the other side at all.