All UK legislation relating to the media industries is freely available online, as is company information including annual accounts and details of owners and Board members. Many media organizations publish more detailed annual reports including revenue breakdowns and other information. Overall, data on the industry is generally freely available and suitably detailed for the public to inform themselves about the state of the UK news media.
All companies, regardless of ownership, that operate in the UK are publicly registered with the United Kingdom’s registrar of companies, Companies House. Companies must disclose basic information, including the identities of Board members and other officers. Those companies that do not fulfil the criteria of ‘Small Company’ or ‘Micro-entity (based on a combination of criteria including revenue, number of employees and balance sheet) must also provide full, audited annual accounts. In practice, this covers most national media organizations and the larger local newspaper publishers. Some smaller companies, such as news magazine publishers, local papers and smaller local radio and television stations, fall below the reporting threshold and may only supply abridged annual accounts. This information is publicly available and searchable at the UK government website’s search portal for companies house (Gov.uk, n.d). Publicly-traded corporations, which includes several news publishers such as Reach Plc, also publish detailed annual reports that are also widely available (Reach Plc, 2019).
In broadcasting, the BBC has various obligations to release data on its finances, expenditure, policies and remuneration of high-salaried employees. All the constitutional documents underpinning the BBC are publicly available, and the Corporation publishes the editorial guidelines that underpin its news reporting and other programming. Ofcom conducts several annual and one-off reports and reviews, and makes the resulting reports available online. Ofcom also maintains public lists of all broadcast licence holders in the UK, as well as other information about the communications industry and infrastructure.
