The UK’s news organisations are owned by media companies; there is no significant ownership by powerful organisations, by political parties or movements, or by religious groups. While some “diagonal” or lateral cross-ownership has taken place in the wider media industries (for example, telecommunications infrastructure provider BT moving into subscription sports coverage), this has not been the case in news provision.
Ownership of UK news providers (see Indicators E1 & E2 – Media ownership concentration national and regional levels) is summarised by the Media Reform Coalition’s media ownership reports (Media Reform Coalition, 2019). While some news publishers are ultimately owned by overseas companies, in all cases, these are primarily news and media companies: Channel 5 is owned by Viacom; regional publisher Newsquest by Gannett; and The Financial Times by Nikkei Inc. One anomaly is the ownership of The Independent and London Evening Standard by Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev; The Independent has also received significant investment from Saudi Arabia, prompting an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport closed the investigation in September 2019, noting that there was greater need for clarity over the ultimate ownership of a 30 per cent stake in The Independent’s parent company (DCMS, 2019b).
While Rupert Murdoch, ultimate owner of the publishers of The Times and The Sun national newspapers as well as – historically – various worldwide media interests, has been relatively open about his influence within his newsrooms (see Indicator F5 – Company rules against internal influence on newsroom/editorial staff), there is little direct evidence of owners or shareholders doing so systematically in other media organisations.
There is no formal party press in the UK, and while partisanship is relatively open at the organisational level, with the majority of newspapers tending to favour the Conservative Party but some high-profile changes of allegiances in the past, journalists (engaged in reporting, distinct from columnists engaging in punditry) rarely articulate their political leanings or loyalties. Broadcast journalists are prohibited from doing so in their work by the Ofcom Broadcasting Code; the impartiality guidelines implicit in the Code’s sections about news programming also mitigate against political influence in broadcast news. Broadcasting legislation and the BBC Royal Charter are designed to ensure arm’s-length separation of the state and public service broadcasters, although there have been a number of recent cases where governments have been able to exert indirect pressure on the BBC and have threatened intervention in other PSBs (see also Indicator F6 – Company rules against external influence on newsroom/editorial staff).
