October 17, 2016

As reported in N2K, in February 2016, it was announced that Sir Joseph Pilling had been appointed to conduct an external review of the independence and effectiveness of IPSO.

IPSO said that the Review would report on how IPSO was fulfilling its role as regulator of the UK newspaper and magazine industries.  It would examine the effectiveness of IPSO’s functions, and the extent to which it operates independently.  The Review has now been published.

The Review is divided into nine chapters, and a section on findings and recommendations.  Chapter 1 covers how IPSO was established and a brief background. The second chapter looks at IPSO’s structure.  Chapter 3 concerns IPSO’s independence more generally.  The fourth chapter is the largest and deals with what amounts to the bulk of IPSO’s work: handling complaints about members.  The fifth chapter looks at standards and chapter 6 examines IPSO’s arbitration pilot scheme, which is currently in its very early stages.  Chapter 7 deals with public awareness and the eighth chapter concerns IPSO’s membership, which in short looks at how much of the print media is covered by IPSO.  Chapter 9 looks at the future of regulation of the print industry.

Sir Joseph finds that, although IPSO is in its early stages as a regulator, “already there are some important achievements”.  He makes various recommendations, but says that they are “not an attempt to save a failing organisation, rather they are intended to help a new regulator, which demonstrates early achievement, promise and commitment, to develop into a trusted, experienced regulator”.

On the question of independence, Sir Joseph says “I have seen no evidence of IPSO’s decision-taking being improperly influenced by the industry”, and he notes that “it is an uphill task for IPSO to prove that it deserves to be trusted as independent regulator”, especially as it was established and is funded by the industry.  IPSO’s funding comes from the Regulatory Funding Company (RFC), a company limited by guarantee whose members are the same members as IPSO.  Sir Joseph recommends an obligation to reach full-term funding agreements be included in IPSO’s articles of association and in the RFC’s articles of association.

Sir Joseph also recommends that IPSO consider revising its articles of association to define independent, for example, to exclude anyone who has been employed in the industry in the previous 20 years.

As for complaints, Sir Joseph says that he has seen the correspondence between IPSO and complainants and “in large part it is of a very high standard”.  However, the “brusque nature” of the letters “stands out even more in comparison to the engaging one-off correspondence I have seen and revisions should be considered”.

Sir Joseph also recommends that IPSO and the industry should also monitor how long on average it takes for newspapers to deal with complaints and, depending on the facts, should consider revising the 28-day period to allow for a shorter period of time, either 14 days or 21 days.

IPSO should also start work on producing its own guidance on the application of the Editors’ Code and produce guidelines on its application of “due prominence” in connection with publication by newspapers of adjudications or corrections.  That guidance should include case studies and explain why in those cases IPSO believed that the adjudication or correction was given due prominence.  For a link to the Review, click here.