Beyond clickbait and commerce

Jonathan
Heawood
journalism might be produced. For this reason, the case of the
Independent Press Regulation Trust (IPRT) is of considerable interest.
The Independent Press Regulation Trust
The IPRT was established by a Declaration of Trust dated 8
November 2013 to promote ‘high standards of ethical conduct and
best practice in journalism and the editing and publication of news
in the print and other media, having regard to the need to act
within the law and to protect both the privacy of individuals and
freedom of expression’ (cited in Vernor-Miles, Flackett and Rees-
Pulley v Charity Commission for England & Wales 2015: 2). The
Declaration of Trust expects that the IPRT will advance this object
by activities including ‘the provision of financial assistance towards
the establishment and support of an independent press regulator
or independent press regulators to be established and conducted
for the whole or any part of the United Kingdom in accordance
with the recommendations and principles set out in the Leveson
Report’ (ibid).
The Leveson Report, published in 2012, recommended a new
regulatory regime for the press, to be independent of control by either
the newspaper industry or government (Leveson 2012). A regulator
designed in accordance with the Leveson recommendations would,
to paraphrase the comments cited above, formalise and uphold
ethical standards of journalism. This would not only help to regulate
major national and regional news publishers; it would also satisfy
the need of charitable news organisations for ‘robust operating
guidelines and a system of enforcing them’ (Westminster 2014:
7), thereby demonstrating to the Charity Commission that such
organisations were likely to be of benefit to the public.
The IMPRESS Project was launched in November 2013 to develop
plans for such a regulator. 1 That regulator was launched, as IMPRESS:
The Independent Monitor for the Press (‘IMPRESS’), in 2015 and will
commence operations in 2016. IMPRESS is constitutionally separate
from the IPRT, although the two entities have similar purposes. In
2014, the IPRT proposed to provide financial assistance to IMPRESS.
This proposal was concluded in 2015 in the form of a four-year
funding agreement.
The IPRT’s application for charitable status was twice rejected by
the Charity Commission, first on 7 May 2014, and again, after an
internal review, on 16 October 2014. At this point, the trustees
of the IPRT took their case to the first-tier tribunal (charity) (‘the
tribunal’), where the case was eventually heard on 12 May 2015.
Whilst the tribunal did not consider arguments relating directly
to the charitable nature or otherwise of journalism, their decision
indicates a possible way forward for news organisations which
aspire to charitable status.
90 Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016