As vice-chairman of the UK's respected National Association of Press Agencies, I have spent more than three decades employing journalists producing everything from award-winning investigations to viral stories that travelled the world. Across roughly 200,000 stories produced in that time, one basic principle remained the same: if anything used by a media organisation is found to have benefitted from our journalism, payment is expected.

That principle has steadily been eroded as the internet economy normalised a different model. Under the US notice-and-takedown system, social media platforms could host vast quantities of third-party material and generally avoid liability by removing infringing content when challenged, rather than paying the creator for its use. That culture of taking first and avoiding the consequences later has now spread far beyond social media.

I am now fighting to preserve what was standard industry practice for decades, and which is still followed by major UK publishers such as Reach (Mirror/Star/Express) and News UK (Sun/Times), where editorial work supplied by agencies is recognised and paid for when used. In the cases involving MailOnline and The Telegraph, the publishers say they obtained the material from third-party agencies. My case is that those intermediaries or their agents took and repackaged the results of editorial work carried out by my journalists and sold that material on. MailOnline and The Telegraph then published material that ultimately depended on our work and paid those intermediaries, while my agencies received nothing. They have since spent more than £200,000 resisting demands in a UK court for less than £180 relating to three images and one video. If they succeed, it risks giving judicial backing to a model in which the long-established principle of paying for professional journalism when its value is used is no longer an industry standard.

The sums are tiny, but the principle is not. If MailOnline and The Telegraph succeed in overturning or weakening that established proof-of-work principle, it will become far harder for independent journalists and news agencies to demand payment when their work is used, particularly where that work has been rewritten or repackaged with AI. If the principle is upheld in this case, it creates instead the possibility of a model in which journalists can work collaboratively with AI without the original human journalism losing its value or recognition.

At the end of the day, if independent journalists and agencies can insist that the value of their work is recognised through accreditation or payment, then so can Fleet Street titles from the Mail and The Telegraph through to The Guardian, as well as regional and local media across the country. That creates the possibility of a healthier media economy in which original reporting retains real value, publishers can continue to invest in editorial teams, and AI becomes a tool that works alongside journalists rather than a reason to replace them.

The Government is spending another £12m supporting journalism, but this petition argues that there is a simpler starting point it could also pursue: reinforce the principle that was once part of the bedrock of the UK media landscape, where journalism is recognised as professional work and treated like other professional work.

We are calling on the Government to help ensure that when professional editorial work is supplied and used, the people who created it receive proper attribution or payment, or both.