Beyond clickbait and commerce

press in a democracy to campaign, lobby and seek to influence both
public opinion and public policy’ (Leveson 2012: Part I, Chapter 1,
1.12).
As commercial entities, news publishers do not exist to pursue
objects such as community development but to generate financial
rewards for their owners and shareholders. The vast majority of
traditional news publishers could not possibly become charities
under the current legal framework, and it is not the purpose of
this article to argue that they should. The nature of the public good
which is provided by journalism in general is quite different from
the nature of the public good which may be provided by certain
forms of journalism in particular. When I refer to this latter form of
journalism as ‘charitable journalism’, I mean journalism which has
the potential to demonstrate its charitable nature in the legal sense
upheld by the Charity Commission for England and Wales (‘the
commission’). This is not possible for all journalism, by any stretch
of the imagination. But it is possible for some forms of journalism.
DISCUSSION
PAPER
The commission has accepted that, in principle, some journalism
may well be charitable in the narrow legal sense (letter from Alice
Holt to Andrew Phillips, 3 December 2010, cited in Heawood et al.
2012: 11). However, the commission has suggested that, before
registering a news organisation as a charity, it would need to see
concrete evidence that its journalistic activities are directed towards
and reflect a charitable purpose; that this purpose will, in fact, be
achieved; and that this purpose will benefit the entire public, or
a sufficient section of the public (ibid). In effect, the commission
wants to understand the ethical standards under which charitable
journalism is produced. This concern was echoed by participants
at a seminar about charitable initiatives in journalism, at which the
Charity Commission was represented, when it was suggested that
any charitable news organisation would require ‘robust operating
guidelines and a system of enforcing them’ and that there could be
‘a need for formalising standards of conduct and decision making
process … through an independent body’ (Westminster 2014:
7). Thus, in order to be capable of demonstrating a charitable
purpose and public benefit, charitable journalism must be able to
demonstrate that it is produced according to high ethical standards,
formalised and upheld by an independent body.
Whilst the United States Inland Revenue Service (IRS) has granted
numerous non-profit news organisations the equivalent of
charitable status (see Hermes 2012: passim), the comparatively
cautious Charity Commission has so far recognised very few, of
which perhaps only one, the Maidenhead Advertiser, has all the
characteristics of a traditional newspaper (see Townend 2016: 63-
64). There is, therefore, little case law in this area, and consequently
almost no guidance on the ethical standards under which charitable
Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016 89