The Government cannot build a system for trusted news while continuing to ignore the one part of the news industry that still marks its own homework
The Press Recognition Panel (PRP), the independent body established under Royal Charter to oversee the system of independent press self-regulation in the UK known as the Recognition System, welcomes the Government’s decision to consult on how trustworthy news can be made more visible and easier to find online.
The Recognition System was created following the Leveson Inquiry to protect both press freedom and the public interest. More than a decade later, it remains the only established framework for independently assessing whether press self-regulation meets the standards set out in the Royal Charter, while remaining free from both government and industry control.
The Green Paper correctly identifies a crisis of trust, misinformation and algorithmic amplification. However, it largely treats these as problems of platforms and broadcasters. It does not sufficiently address the equivalent challenge in the press, where most major newspaper publishers remain outside independently assessed regulation.
In particular, the Green Paper raises important questions about how “trustworthy” news providers should be defined, and whether prominence should be linked to responsibilities such as transparency, effective complaints processes, standards on AI use and media literacy.
Press accountability cannot remain an outlier
Broadcast news is externally regulated by Ofcom. By contrast, many press and online news publishers remain subject only to industry-controlled or internal complaints arrangements. At a time when the boundaries between broadcasters, newspapers, podcasters, influencers, and online publishers are blurring, any future regime for trusted news must address the accountability of press publishers as well as platforms and broadcasters.
The Green Paper is right to focus on platforms, algorithms and online discoverability, but these issues cannot be separated from press accountability. Traditional news publishers now reach large parts of their audiences through social media, search, video-sharing platforms, newsletters, podcasts and other online channels. Their journalism is no longer encountered only through a newspaper, homepage, or app, but also through headlines, snippets, posts, push alerts, platform recommendations, and AI-generated summaries.
Where press content is distributed and amplified in this way, weak accountability can have wider and faster consequences for public trust, social cohesion and individual or collective harm.
Due to the failure of successive Governments to fully implement the Recognition System, the press regulatory landscape is fractured and fails to protect the public effectively. The lack of emphasis on news publishers in the Green Paper threatens to increase the risk to public protection by widening the gap between the regulation of broadcast news and news produced by the press industry. Any serious attempt to promote trusted news should address that disparity.
Examples of press harm are not confined to history. If phone hacking is a thing of the past, discriminatory reporting targeting minorities and vulnerable groups is happening now, and the consequences of weak accountability continue to be felt. If social cohesion is a policy objective, any intervention that stops at the gates of Fleet Street is unlikely to succeed.
Complaints handling is not effective regulation
Efforts to strengthen trustworthiness in news will struggle to succeed while most major newspaper publishers continue to operate outside genuinely independent oversight. This concern has been raised publicly by the Culture Secretary, who questioned the low proportion of complaints upheld by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and the fact that no publisher has ever been fined.
IPSO is not an Approved Regulator under the Recognition System and has not been independently assessed against the Royal Charter criteria. The PRP’s May 2026 review found that, in 2023, 2024 and 2025, fewer than 1% of all complaints recorded by IPSO resulted in an upheld decision at a hearing. IPSO has still never launched a standards investigation or imposed a fine. The evidence suggests a system focused on complaint filtering and administration rather than meaningful regulatory accountability or deterrence.
The PRP welcomes the Green Paper’s consultation on how to define “trusted news”. The most obvious starting point already exists.
Parliament should revisit the definition of a “recognised news publisher” across legislation, including the Online Safety Act 2023, so that special legal privileges and future platform benefits, including prominence, are linked to participation in genuinely independent press regulation within the Recognition System.
The suggestion that compliance with the Editors’ Code of Practice could be used as a proxy for “trusted news” is concerning. The Code contains significant gaps, including the absence of protection against discrimination directed at groups rather than individuals. At a time when the Government is rightly concerned about social cohesion, misinformation and harmful online narratives, reliance on a code that does not adequately address collective harms would represent a significant weakness.
Nor should membership of an industry complaints body, or the existence of an in-house complaints process, be treated as sufficient unless those arrangements have been independently assessed against the Royal Charter criteria.
The Recognition System should be central to any trust-based benefit
The Recognition System already provides the independent framework needed for press and online news publishers.
This is not about the Government deciding which publishers are trustworthy. It is the opposite. The Recognition System was designed to keep both the Government and the press industry at arm’s length, while giving the public access to effective, independent redress.
The Green Paper recognises that public service broadcasters receive benefits in return for meeting public obligations. It is unclear why equivalent privileges for news publishers should not be linked to demonstrably independent standards and accountability.
Prominence is not simply a question of visibility. It is a public and commercial benefit. If press and online news publishers are to receive enhanced discoverability or other advantages in the digital information environment, those benefits should be matched by meaningful responsibilities.
Trust in journalism cannot be built solely through prominence and media literacy. It also depends on the public having access to effective redress when publishers cause harm. The infrastructure already exists. The question is whether the Government is prepared to use it.
The PRP will scrutinise the Green Paper in detail and intends to respond formally to the consultation. In the meantime, it encourages stakeholders who share these concerns to consider how any future prominence regime can be anchored in independent, transparent, and effective accountability.
Press Recognition Panel
26 June 2026
