By Kathryn Cearns OBE, Chair of the Press Recognition Panel
The Government’s renewed focus on supporting local journalism raises an important question: what kind of press should public funding sustain?
In her speech last week at the Society of Editors’ Future of News conference, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy focused on trust, standards, and accountability. She spoke about growing public demand for reliable news at a time when trust in information is under pressure and public debate feels increasingly polarised.
A question of accountability
Identifying media regulation as one of the areas where the public most expects action, the Culture Secretary pointed to the different ways the media is regulated: broadcast journalism is independently regulated through a statutory framework, while much of the press remains self-regulated through industry-led systems.
In comments reported alongside the speech, she went further, raising concerns about whether current arrangements for the press are delivering effective accountability in practice, including questioning whether very low uphold rates for complaints to IPSO suggest the system may need to be more robust.
That points to a deeper structural problem. As highlighted in our 10th Annual Report on the Recognition System, the regulatory landscape remains fragmented and uneven, despite a clear public expectation that the press should meet high standards and be properly accountable. As a result, press harm continues to arise in today’s news environment, often emerging through patterns of coverage, affecting individuals and communities, and causing real and lasting damage.
Our recent reports examining IPSO’s complaints handling, rulings, and approach to press standards point to recurring systemic weaknesses, including limited remedies for serious breaches, a lack of effective deterrence, and failures to address harms. These outcomes reflect underlying structural issues. The standards IPSO applies are drawn from the Editors’ Code of Practice, written by editors and overseen by a committee with a continuing editorial majority. While it has the power to impose substantial fines, it has never done so, and it has never carried out a standards investigation.
An independently assessed system that works
By contrast, the Recognition System, established by Royal Charter following the £5.4m Leveson Inquiry, provides a framework under which regulators are independently assessed against clear standards. As with the BBC, the Royal Charter framework is designed to provide stability and underpin public trust. In the case of the press, it goes further, including a central safeguard of independence from both government and the industry.
Where publishers use it, it delivers effective oversight, protecting the public and providing no means for the state to prevent publishers from exercising free speech. Impress, the only regulator currently recognised under the system, demonstrates that regulation independent of the Government and the press is operating successfully in practice without compromising press freedom. The difficulty is that participation remains limited.
As things stand, accountability and access to redress still depend on who publishes a story. For many, access to justice is only available through the courts, but given the costs involved, that is not a realistic option for most people. Crucially, the Recognition System requires regulators to provide low-cost arbitration, offering a more accessible route to redress.
The Royal Charter framework was designed to ensure that those being regulated, including serving editors, do not have a decisive influence over the standards against which they are judged, and to equip regulators with the independence and powers needed to investigate serious or systemic breaches where they arise. That goes to the heart of what independent self-regulation is meant to do.
What should public funding support?
If public funding is intended to support a strong and trusted press, it cannot be neutral on these issues. It should reinforce systems that deliver robust standards and meaningful accountability, rather than sustaining arrangements that do not.
In practice, that means directing public support towards publishers that meet independently assessed standards of accountability and provide access to fair, accessible, independent complaints processes. There is no need to design anything new. The framework already exists and is operational. The Recognition System is voluntary, independent of both government and the press, and provides effective oversight where it is used.
The real gap is in participation, and in the incentives that would encourage it.
Access to public funding is a privilege. It should be aligned with the high standards and genuinely independent press regulation that the public has long been calling for.
