Muslim news site 5Pillars has left press regulator Impress after having a second discrimination ruling upheld against it within a year.

5Pillars, which has been under Impress regulation since 2018, said the body “is run by what we perceive to be liberals whose values are not compatible with Islamic norms”.

Impress ruled on Thursday that a May episode of 5Pillar’s podcast Blood Brothers breached its standards code because the host had allowed a guest, the former deputy leader of Britain First, to “espouse antisemitic conspiracy theories without pushback or challenge”.

The guest, Jayda Fransen, had made claims including that “Jews” were “behind the abortion industry” and “the LGBTQPZ plus agenda”.

5Pillars defended itself by saying that Fransen was notorious among Muslims for what they called anti-Islam rhetoric and that they did not endorse her views or dispute allegations she is an anti-Semite.

The regulator summed up 5Pillars’ position saying it “interviewed her due to her relevance to British Muslims and because it believes in engaging with and challenging those it disagrees with, which it says is important in a democracy that values free speech”.

The regulator’s decision follows another ruling in May this year that saw Impress order 5Pillars to alter or remove a Blood Brothers episode which it said encouraged “hatred and abuse” towards Jewish and LGBT people.

In that case the interviewee had been Mark Collett, the leader of a far-right group and who Impress said had also been met with “insufficient challenge from the interviewer”.

In June, following that ruling, 5Pillars gave Impress notice that it would leave its regulatory scheme.

Impress nonetheless carried out its investigation and ruled — the day after 5Pillars formally announced its departure — that the site should remove or amend the interview. The episode, titled “Britain First, Christian nationalism, and the Zionist agenda”, remains online at time of writing.

5Pillars editor envisions advent of an Islamic press regulator

Impress is one of two UK press regulators. Impress, which was designed on principles laid down by the Leveson Inquiry, predominantly oversees newer, digital-native outlets such as Novara Media, Journo Resources, Desmog and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as some print titles such as Prospect magazine.

The other regulator, IPSO, covers most national and regional newspaper and magazine titles. A handful of national titles — The Guardian and Observer, The Independent and the Financial Times — have opted to self-regulate.

Announcing its departure, 5Pillars editor Roshan Muhammed Salih said the title was leaving Impress because “we do not want non-Muslims who do not share our values to have editorial control over our content”.

The publisher signed up in the first place, he wrote, “because we wanted our readers and viewers to know that we were serious about adhering to professional editorial guidelines”.

However it was rapped by Impress in 2021 over a social media post that described homosexual sex as a “crime against God”, after which “complaints about 5Pillars kept coming in, especially from our detractors in the pro-Israel and pro-LGBT lobby…

“It became clear to us that our enemies were trying to utilise Impress to bog us down with numerous complaints.”

He wrote that 5Pillars would continue to adhere “to the majority of the professional guidelines set out in the Impress Standards Code”.

Salih said he hoped to eventually see “the emergence of an external regulator – but a Muslim one that will judge us according to the Quran and Sunnah…

“An independent Muslim media regulator – which 5Pillars and other Muslim media could join – would send a strong signal to the community (as well as non-Muslims) that Muslims take journalism seriously.”

Responding to the departure of 5Pillars, Impress said: “We are of course disappointed that 5Pillars came to the decision to leave Impress earlier this year.

“It is our strong belief that it is better for both publishers and the public that recognised independent regulation is taken up as widely as possible to preserve journalistic integrity across the sector.

“Unfortunately, until there are genuine incentives put in place by Government and the industry for that to happen, publications will continue to be free to do as they please, including discriminating against protected groups with no recourse or consequence.”

[Read more: IPSO v Impress — Ten years after Leveson, how are the press ‘watchmen’ faring?]

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Three well-known online publishers – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Open Democracy and The Bristol Cable – have signed up to independent press regulator Impress.

They join more than 200 other – mostly small, online and either local or specialist – member publications to Impress, which is the Royal Charter-recognised press regulator.

Rival regulator the Independent Press Standards Organisation represents most newspaper and magazine publishers in the UK including all the nationals except for The Guardian, The Observer, Financial Times and The Independent which are not signed up to any regulator.

Of the new arrivals, Impress chief executive Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana said: “As Impress reaches the end of its first decade, it is incredibly heartening to see these prestigious platforms eager to join the membership.

“With plummeting trust in journalism and increased threats to freedom of speech, the importance of Impress and the protection we offer public interest journalism has never been more apparent.

“So I welcome TBIJ, Open Democracy and The Bristol Cable and applaud them for their leadership in adopting truly independent self-regulation and hope others will follow.”

It means the three publishers will adhere to the Standards Code set by Impress and they get access to advice from experts and alternative dispute resolution services, which Impress said could help them against legal intimidation from people trying to stop stories getting out.

TBIJ chief executive and editor-in-chief Rozina Breen told Press Gazette earlier this year that the non-profit publisher has been forced to spend an increasing amount on fighting legal threats. Breen has repeatedly been part of calls for legislation to crack down on the use of gratuitous lawsuits designed only to silence public interest journalism.

TBIJ recently celebrated a victory after a two-year libel battle was dropped against it. Open Democracy, also a non-profit publisher, settled a similar claim.

Open Democracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi said: “Open Democracy’s journalists around the world pride themselves on adhering to the highest standards of ethical journalism.

“Joining Impress is part of this commitment to reporting with honesty, accountability and rigour.”

The Bristol Cable’s strategic lead, Eliz Mizon, said: “Our decision to be regulated by Impress is not only beneficial to the Cable itself, due to the support available for us in the event of bad actors seeking to derail our work.

“It’s also beneficial for our readers, members and those who appear in our reporting, who can better understand the ways our work conforms to codes of conduct, and how to seek redress if they feel it necessary.”

The Bristol Cable is member-owned and last month hit a major target to boost its membership revenue by 50% in a year – a campaign for which it was just highly commended at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Awards.

Impress chair Richard Ayre described the three publishers as “three of the most innovative publishers this country has to offer”.

“By providing serious, enquiring, groundbreaking news to local, national and international audiences, these are tomorrow’s media. By joining Impress they’ve made a public commitment to integrity: confident journalists happy to be publicly accountable for their conduct as well as their content.”

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Press regulator Impress has opened its media-focused legal dispute resolution service to all publishers, members of the public and charities as an alternative to costly court cases.

Impress has already resolved claims against its member publishers via arbitration, and says it is now seeking to expand the service “in an effort to redress harms arising in the media and the power imbalance caused by the cost of the British court system”.

Rival press regulator IPSO also offers an arbitration service for settling claims against its member publishers.

The commercial expansion of Impress comes less than two months after the passage of the Media Bill repealed Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which would have made membership of Royal Charter-backed press regulators such as Impress highly beneficial for publishers.

Courts have ‘simply become too expensive’

Impress said in a release on Wednesday: “By opting out of the court process, you can still get a legally binding outcome by seeking alternative dispute resolution. The only difference is that you’ll get a result much faster and for less money.”

It told Press Gazette the scheme “will be handling typical media disputes such as defamation and libel, but also cases involving freedom of speech and SLAPPs [strategic lawsuits against public participation], data, privacy and information law (including GDPR) and commercial disputes for media, civil society and non-profit organisations. We will also be establishing our expertise in disputes with online platforms, such as IP and copyright infringement, and terms of service claims.”

The Impress website lists prices for remote and in-person mediation services as well as arbitration services. Mediation involves a third-party helping two parties come to an agreement, whereas in arbitration the third-party is effectively a judge, hearing arguments from each party before issuing a legally-binding decision.

Impress’ remote mediation services cost £100 per hour per party and in-person mediation costs £500 per party for each slot of four hours. Arbitration costs vary depending on the value of the dispute and the turnover of the organisations involved, but start at £1,750 per party and run up to £3,750 per party.

Impress-regulated publishers will continue to have access to these services at no extra cost. As well as the above one-off services, the regulator has launched a dispute resolution service membership that costs to up to £31,200 per year for organisations at the highest risk of getting into disputes.

Cordella Bart-Stewart, a solicitor and Impress board member, said alternative dispute resolution “is an alternative pathway to justice. It is often recommended by judges that parties be sent away to at least try it, and in some cases there can be financial penalties if a party has refused to consider ADR before issuing court proceedings”.

Impress chief executive Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana (pictured above) said that courts had “simply become too expensive”.

“Ordinary people are effectively powerless if they are unfairly targeted by a well-resourced platform, media group or corporation while the likes of independent publishers, content creators, activists and charities have no option but to cave in when met with a legal threat from those in positions of power designed to intimidate and silence them.

“Now, thanks to Impress’ tried and tested out-of-court procedures, everyone can get affordable and binding resolution, leaving them free to hold power to account and safe in the knowledge that they can access justice when they are wronged.”

What was Section 40?

Impress was designed as the first UK press regulator to be compliant with the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry. However because it was backed up by law it was seen by many publishers as government intrusion on the free press, prompting them to sign up to rival regulator IPSO, which is not Leveson-compliant and is ultimately run by the publishers themselves.

The 2010 to 2015 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government attempted to induce publishers to sign up to Impress by passing Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which made publishers who were not signed up to a Leveson-compliant regulator liable for both sides’ costs in the event of legal action, even if they won.

The flip side of this bargain was that publishers signed up to Impress would be protected, through the Impress dispute resolution services, from strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs. But Section 40, although passed, was not enacted, and was widely seen by major publishers as a threatening “sword of Damocles” hanging over the industry.

Impress oversees around 200 largely smaller, digital-native publications including The Ferret, Desmog, Novara Media and, more recently, Prospect magazine.

Previous Impress chief executive Ed Procter told Press Gazette in 2022 that the organisation was investigating “expanding our commercial services” in a bid to diversify its funding, a large part of which ultimately originated from a trust set up by privacy campaigner Max Mosley.

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Media regulator Impress has ordered Muslim news site 5Pillars to either remove or significantly alter an episode of its podcast which the regulator says encouraged “hatred and abuse” towards Jewish and LGBT people.

The February podcast, which is still accessible at time of writing, is a two-hour interview with Mark Collett, the leader of far-right political party Patriotic Alternative and a former British National Party spokesperson.

Impress said that the interview — in which Collett said “Jewish influence” was being “wielded in such a way that they have a negative impact on the white population”, and that gay and transgender people were “poison” and “degenerate” — breached the discrimination clause of the Impress Standards Code.

Impress finds 5Pillars interview had ‘cumulative effect’ of encouraging hatred

Collett attracted notoriety in the past as the focus of the 2002 Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, “Young, Nazi and Proud”. His current party says it wants to offer British citizens “of immigrant descent… generous financial incentives in order to return to their ancestral homelands”.

5Pillars’ podcast and accompanying video of the interview were published to alternative streaming platform Rumble, rather than Youtube, “due to the controversial nature of the guest”, according to 5Pillars. The audio of the episode is available on mainstream podcast providers Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

5Pillars told Impress the decision to interview Collett had been “a difficult one that it considered carefully” because the activist was “notorious in the Muslim community due to his anti-Islam rhetoric”. It proceeded, however, because Collett gave 5Pillars full editorial control and the publisher “decided that most of its viewers would be interested in what he had to say”.

The website told Impress it “does not endorse Mr Collett in any way”, that it is “against racism and anti-Semitism” and that it edited out some of Collett’s comments from the podcast that were “blatantly anti-Semitic”.

The Impress regulatory committee said Collett’s remarks “had a cumulative effect of encouraging hatred and abuse towards Jewish people” and were met with only “insufficient challenge from the interviewer”, 5Pillars deputy editor Dilly Hussain.

Impress highlighted Collett comments such as “Zionist control of British politics is at an unprecedented level” and that “Jewish supremacists… walk amongst us and they look like us. It’s people like [Labour MP] Margaret Hodge in Barking and Dagenham, people think she’s just a normal white lady. Well, she’s not”.

Impress said the latter comment in particular had been “clearly dehumanising, constituting an explicit encouragement of hatred or abuse against Jewish people” and that it “was not challenged by the interviewer”.

At one point in the interview Collett likened Labour and Conservative Party leaders Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak to two hand puppets controlled by a single person, which prompted Hussain to interject asking: “By who — Jews?”

Although 5Pillars said this represented “his attempt at seeking clarification” on who Collett thought was controlling the political system, Impress said it had appeared “invitational” and that “a more appropriate question would have been to ask who this ‘man behind the scenes’ was”.

At various points in the interview Hussain noted that Collett’s views would be regarded by many as anti-Semitic, but the regulatory committee said this approach “did not go far enough”.

“While some of the excerpts in isolation may not have reached the threshold for a breach of Clause 4.3, together they had a cumulative effect of encouraging hatred and abuse towards Jewish people,” Impress said.

“Insufficient challenge from the interviewer had created an impression that a platform had effectively been provided for the antisemitic views of the interviewee, however strongly the publisher might disagree with some of the interviewee’s other inflammatory opinions.”

5Pillars podcast ‘perpetuated narrative of prejudice that could encourage hatred’ toward LGBT people

Impress also rebuked 5Pillars over two portions of the interview focusing on LGBT people.

In the first, Collett lauded what he described as a social benefit of Islam in the UK, saying that for young boys the only way to find a support network was “if you are gay, transgender, come to school in a dress, adopt all that weakness, madness and poison…the only other viable option to Islam is the degenerate madness”.

He also said later in the podcast: “If there is some flamboyant, homosexual drag queen that wants to advocate for sex with children, I don’t think they should have the right to sit in libraries and speak to children.”

Impress said that “likening homosexuality and transgenderism to ‘degenerate madness’ would have caused widespread offence and was dehumanising” but the statements were nonetheless not challenged by Hussain.

The second comment, the regulator said, implied that there are “documented cases of homosexual drag queens, who advocate for having sex with children, and attend libraries and talk to children”, for which it said there is no evidence.

“An appropriate response from the interviewer would have been to challenge the basis of this claim and ask Mr Collett why he was singling out this case without presenting any evidence that sexuality or gender identity was a disproportionate factor in the incidence of child sex abuse.

“The committee considered that this lack of challenge to the interviewee’s statement served to perpetuate a narrative of prejudice that could encourage hatred or abuse towards LGBT people.”

Ultimately Impress determined that Hussain “would have been well aware both of the issues to be discussed and of the likely responses of the interviewee, which might present a high risk of breaching the Code”.

This “placed a burden on the publisher interviewer to prepare robust and effective questions and challenges for use throughout the interview… and for the publisher to be prepared to sufficiently edit the content prior to publication”.

Failure to do so, Impress said, “risked leaving the audience with the impression that the interviewee’s statements were endorsed by the publisher”.

As well as the removal or alteration of the podcast, Impress said 5Pillars should display a notice of adjudication with a link to the full ruling next to the podcast permanently and on the 5Pillars homepage for 48 hours.

Tuesday’s ruling is not the first time Impress has rapped 5Pillars for anti-LGBT discrimination. Following a standards review in 2021 Impress sanctioned the site over a video that described homosexuality as a crime, making 5Pillars the first publisher to be rebuked as part of an overall standards review by either Impress or the UK’s other press regulator IPSO.

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Impress, UK’s only independent press self-regulator, sets high standards for ethics and accountability by working closely with journalists, news organisations, the public, civil society and industry experts to develop guidelines and best practices that foster responsible reporting.

We strive to foster a society bound by a collective commitment to truth by safeguarding the highest standards of news and empowering individuals to be informed.

Impress will deliver on this mission through the following actions:

• Championing trusted sources of news and information
• Raising public awareness so that they can make informed choices
• Promoting accountability and redress where necessary
• Delivering news education initiatives
• Ensuring viability of news that can be trusted

With our purpose-driven approach at Impress, we aspire to make a lasting impact on the ways news is made and published. We are committed to creating a more informed, transparent, and trustworthy information environment that benefits everyone.

Why news providers should join Impress:

• Protection from legal costs through our arbitration scheme.
• Support to publish high quality content with our progressive journalism Standards Code and complaints-handling service.
• Personalised advice and guidance on business practice, ethics and Impress standards from our specialist staff.
• The ability to display the Impress trustmark on your regulated print media, websites and social media accounts.
• Connect with our growing network of 100+ independent providers, all committed to publishing with integrity.
• Access to our member’s area, where you’ll find exclusive resources, guidance and details of member-only events and training opportunities.

Impress membership is open to UK-based news providers, publishers, freelancers and content creators.

Join our network of around 100 publishers and 200 publications across the country, as an Impress member supported by our expert team and Standards Code.

Impress members include:

• Plant Based News
• Climate Change News
• QueerAF
• Prospect Magazine
• Nursing Notes
• The Lincolnite
• Arts Professional

Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana: “Impress operates a recognised scheme of independent self-regulation for the press that works in the public interest to protect both the freedom of expression of journalists and publishers and individual tights and public safety. Journal and publishers that join Impress subscribe to our progressive Standards Code, created in consultation with industry stakeholders and the public. This supports publishers to be both professional and ethical and shows their readers that they are accountable and trustworthy.”

If you are interested in the work done by Impress and want to hear more from the leading experts in our board and members, subscribe to our newsletter at www.impressorg.com.

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Press regulator Impress has been forced to correct a statement about its funding sources made in its latest accounts filed to Companies House.

Impress has apologised for “any confusion caused” by suggesting it had a funding agreement with the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the year to 31 March.

Impress is the only Leveson-compliant press regulator backed by Royal Charter but mainly regulates smaller new media outlets.

It is primarily financially supported by the Independent Press Regulation Trust (IPRT), which itself is mainly funded by the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust set up by press critic and former F1 boss Max Mosley in memory of his eldest son.

The error was made in the regulator’s financial statement for the year to 31 March 2023, filed with Companies House on 7 November.

The paragraph in question stated: “Impress secured funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council – UKRI – with the University of Leeds and University of Derby to deliver a national research programme including a survey of 3044 members of the public and follow up focus groups. We produced a National Literacy report based on the findings of the research which was launched at a public event with [the] researchers. Impress received national trade press coverage and a significant uptick in website and social media traffic.”

A month after the filing, Impress issued a correction admitting an “error was made”.

Impress did not directly receive funding for its involvement in the research programme. Instead it provided “in-kind support” and £5,000 towards the cost of the survey.

The funding bodies that contributed to the study were the University of Leeds’s ESRC Impact Acceleration Account and the University of Derby’s SURE Impact Accelerator Fund.

Impress said: “We are also aware this statement may have created the impression that Impress entered into a funding agreement with AHRC or received funding from any other external bodies. We would like to clarify that this is not the case, and apologise for any confusion caused.

“Impress now is working with its external auditor Sayer Vincent to correct the record.”

The accounts on Companies House also directly refer to the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a “funder” and stakeholder of the regulator.

The researchers on the study, Professor Julie Firmstone of the University of Leeds and Professor John Steel of the University of Derby, added: “The purpose of the project was to consult and engage the public in debates about standards and ethics in journalism.

“Impress’s contribution to the project as an external partner enabled us to ensure that our research included questions of relevance to a diverse range of news publishers and news audiences, and we valued their input.”

Impress accounts: IPRT remains main funder

Impress said in its accounts it “remain[s] grateful for the support” of its main grant funder the IPRT “which has enabled us to invest in our ongoing development”. Impress reports bi-annually to the IPRT.

Impress, which employs ten people including two directors, reported income – almost entirely through grants – of £1.14m in the year to 31 March, up from £964,267 in the year before.

It made a loss for the year of £49,447, compared to a surplus of £40,384 in the year to March 2022.

Impress was set up in 2016 and now has more than 120 publishers with over 200 publications signed up as members – mostly smaller, independent titles.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which is not Royal Charter recognised as many major publishers thought it would put them too close to the state, has most of the UK’s national newspaper and large magazine publishers signed up to be regulated.

A small number of major publishers are regulated by neither organisation, with The Guardian, Financial Times, Independent and Evening Standard all choosing to self-regulate.

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The newly-unveiled Media Bill will repeal Section 40, the Leveson-inspired clause that would require most news publishers to pay both sides’ legal costs in a lawsuit.

The long–awaited bill also empowers telecoms regulator Ofcom to create a standards code for video streamers, who are currently outside the remit of the Broadcasting Code.

Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 was implemented to induce news publishers to sign up to a regulator that accords with the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry.

The clause makes any publisher not signed up to a Leveson-compliant regulator liable to pay both sides’ legal costs if they are sued, even if they win the case.

At present the only Leveson-compliant regulator is Impress, which mostly regulates smaller new media outlets. Many of the national newspapers that were the focus of the Leveson inquiry accused Impress of being too close to the state and opted to instead set up another regulator, IPSO.

[Read more: IPSO v Impress – Ten years after Leveson, how are the press ‘watchmen’ faring?]

Although Section 40 is in law, it has not been activated and has thus never been enforced. Its repeal has been promised by successive Conservative governments and called for by major industry groups including the Society of Editors and the News Media Association.

Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford referred to the legislation in 2019 as a “sword of Damocles over the news industry”.

Damian Green MP said the DCMS Committee, of which he is acting chairman, will carefully scrutinise the draft bill, seek views from interested parties and report back by the summer “to help ensure the legislation meets the needs of industry and viewers”.

A call for evidence on the bill is set to launch in April.

Society of Editors executive director Dawn Alford said: “For the best part of a decade, the threat of Section 40 has been wielded over publishers in a bid to force them to join a government-backed press regulator.

“Not only does Section 40 fundamentally go against the principle that justice must be fair, but it would also have a devastating impact on investigative journalism as well as impose crippling costs on publishers simply for telling the truth.”

Similarly, News Media Association chief executive Owen Meredith said: “The repeal of this pernicious piece of legislation will be a welcome step forward for press freedom in this country.”

Section 40 is not universally disliked. The Press Recognition Panel, which certifies whether a regulator is Leveson-compliant, in November said the clause “promotes press freedom by giving financial protections to publishers who are members of an approved regulator and removing the chilling effect brought about by the threat of legal action”.

Despite its immediate effect, Section 40 was envisioned as a way of decreasing, not increasing, publishers’ legal costs. Both Impress and IPSO offer arbitration schemes through which aggrieved members of the public can seek redress for defamatory or invasive content (although IPSO’s has not to date been used). Those schemes are free for complainants and result in only small damages awards from the publisher if a claimant is successful.

Impress said it “looks forward to working with Government, policy makers and other stakeholders to consider alternative approaches” to Section 40.

Its new chief executive, Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana, said: “Independent press regulation is essential to trustworthy journalism. We need incentives that encourage and reward independently regulated, high quality, public interest journalism in what is a rapidly evolving media landscape.”

A Broadcasting Code for Netflix: The ‘Video-on-demand Code’

Separately, the Media Bill is set to give Ofcom powers “to draft and enforce a new Video-on-demand Code, similar to the Broadcasting Code”. Guidance published alongside the draft bill said streamers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime would be “subject to similar standards” as traditional broadcasters.

Some of the most significant effects of the Broadcasting Code are to require that television channels be balanced and accurate in their output. No major streamers currently operate own-brand news programmes, although journalistic or quasi-journalistic shows such as Vice News Tonight, The Patriot Act and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver have been exclusive to particular platforms.

The Media Bill also requires those streamers’ smart television offerings to prominently position public service content (for example from the BBC or Channel 4) in their offering. Similarly, voice-enabled devices like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Nest will be required to offer UK radio channels at no cost to the radio providers.

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Press regulator Impress has launched its new Standards Code, adding revisions that hold publishers to stricter standards on discrimination and prepare for the rollout of artificial intelligence in newsrooms.

The new code was published on Thursday morning following a two-year consultation period.

It is the first revision to Impress’ Standards Code. The first code launched in 2017, and distinguished itself from the Editors’ Code – the guidelines upheld by Britain’s other press regulator, IPSO – with stronger rules on identity-based discrimination.

Thursday’s revision strengthens those rules further by lowering the threshold for what Impress regards as discriminatory coverage.

Previously, point 4.3 of the code said: “Publishers must not incite hatred against any group… [on any] characteristic that makes that group vulnerable to discrimination.”

In the new code, the same point reads: “Publishers must not encourage hatred or abuse against any group” based on those characteristics.

Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana, Impress’ deputy chief executive (and, starting in April, its chief executive), said: “The previous threshold was that a publisher would be in breach of the Code if they incited hatred.

“And inciting someone to commit hatred or violence against someone else because they’re different is, obviously, an incredibly important thing to be preventing. It’s the legal standard – although it’s not a very well enforced legal standard, particularly not online.

“And if we think about the fact that the narrative that the media spins and the stories, how they’re presented, how that’s incredibly important to shaping people’s kind of interactions with others – we saw that journalists should bear responsibility for an appropriate and significant weight of that effect.”

The new discrimination standard in the code, Kirkconnell-Kawana said, “accounts for prejudice that could be more insidious and be more cumulative or more thematic, and not a direct call to action or violence against a group of people – because that’s an incredibly high threshold, and it’s not often how news is carried. You don’t see headlines saying, you know, ‘Take up arms against x group’.”

Kirkconnell-Kawana said Impress’ new standard was the result of feedback the regulator had received during its consultation period, which ran from 2020 to 2022.

“Every single community that we talked to about the news narrative told us they feel like, now more than ever, the news narrative is really problematic.

“We were told words to describe how communities felt about how they were represented and what we got back was feedback like ‘it’s toxic’, ‘it’s hateful’, ‘it’s polarising’.

“And so we have to be really alive to that and what the effect is not just on the communities, but on society as a whole. And we know that there’s significant alienation going on right now, because of that toxic news environment.”

IPSO’s most recent Editors’ Code review, last conducted in 2020, ultimately rejected calls to add a clause explicitly banning discriminatory content. IPSO regulates much of the more established UK press – for example the Mail newspapers, Reach plc’s outlets and the News UK titles – whereas Impress’ publishers tend to be newer, digitally-focused publishers such as Bellingcat, Gal-dem and The Canary.

[Read more: IPSO declines call to launch first standards investigation into Jewish Chronicle]

The other major change to the code, for Kirkconnell-Kawana, altered Impress’ transparency requirements, particularly as they pertained to AI-generated content.

“We’ve all probably been spending this last winter messing around with AI art generators and ChatGPT in the last couple of months,” she said, “and recognising that those technology advances are really fun and they may unlock creativity and efficiency for newsrooms.

“They can also have those downsides, which are that new innovation, new tech, typically doesn’t incorporate ethics and design.

“These are businesses creating tools and they have a function – so the ethics really need to be retrofitted to them and applied to them by the users, the human agents using them.”

Impress’ guidance on the Standards Code’s accuracy requirements now says publishers need to “be aware of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology to create and circulate false content (for example, deepfakes), and exercise human editorial oversight to reduce the risk of publishing such content”.

The advice comes shortly after technology site CNET was found to have inadvertently repeatedly published false information after allowing AI to write articles.

Kirkconnell-Kawana said Impress’ guidance on AI reflected less on how AI is currently used in newsrooms, and more the working assumption that it will soon be much more widely rolled out.

“We all know that as these tools become more accessible, newsrooms are just going to naturally acquire them…

“So it’s making sure that we’re being really future-focused, that we’re being proactive, we’re looking at what’s coming down the line in terms of evolving content practices, and that, again, those first principles still apply: editorial responsibility, oversight and accountability.”

[Read more: IPSO v Impress – Ten years after Leveson, how are the press ‘watchmen’ faring?]

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Press regulator Impress has announced its head of regulation, Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana, will take over as chief executive on 1 April 2023.

Kirkconnell-Kawana will succeed current chief executive Ed Procter, who has led the organisation since 2020 and first joined as chief operating officer in 2016.

Procter told Press Gazette he will take a short career break, during which he will complete an MA in coaching and mentoring and do some part-time non-executive and consultancy work.

Kirkconnell-Kawana is qualified as a barrister in her native New Zealand and previously worked in the investigations team in the country’s Advertising Standards Authority. She starts as deputy chief executive effective immediately to work with Procter until this departure.

Impress chairman Richard Ayre said: “We were thrilled at the range and calibre of the competitors for this post, but in the end Lexie’s forensic knowledge of media regulation and her vision for the way Impress can rebuild public confidence in news media made her a compelling choice to lead the Impress team.”

Kirkconnell-Kawana said: “Having built a strong foundation with our wide membership, Impress is preparing to roll out a raft of exciting products and services for all kinds of news innovators, to continue to build public trust in news in the UK now and in the future.”

In July Press Gazette covered an appearance by Kirkconnell-Kawana at the IPPR Oxford Media Convention, at which she discussed the extent to which freedom of expression can be privileged over other rights.

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Ten years on from publication of the Leveson report most agree that tabloid journalists have become better behaved compared to the years preceding the inquiry.

The use of phone-hacking and other illegal information-gathering methods, widespread on Fleet Street before Leveson, is no more.

Arguably the biggest scandals that have come to light post-Leveson have involved the BBC, not the printed press: the Jimmy Savile and Martin Bashir cover-ups.

But has the improvement in press behaviour been due to the strengthened system of press regulation that Leveson inspired, or the threat of criminal sanction and the increasing power of lawyers over the news media?

• Leveson Report ten years on: News Corp still top for prime minister meetings
• Agency boss: Journalists face ‘endless legals and daily abuse’ post-Leveson
• Hacked Off: Have press standards improved ten years on from Leveson? Not if you ask the public

Leveson’s main legacy was press regulator IPSO, which has two significant powers that are not used: a low-cost privacy and libel mediation service and the ability to levy fines and independent investigations.

Meanwhile, lawyers are increasingly using the threat of litigation to stifle public interest stories. The Daily Mail and Guardian were at polar opposites in the debate over press regulation, with the result that The Guardian remains a press regulation refusenik. But the editors of both titles last week backed a call for the government to tackle bullying SLAPP legal cases against publishers.

Founder of the gossip email newsletter Popbitch Camilla Wright has been chronicling tabloid misdeeds for more than 20 years.

Asked for her assessment on whether Fleet Street is better or worse behaved since Leveson she said: “A tabloid media culture that had started to act beyond its remit, beyond the laws and beyond public acceptance needed a reckoning. And for that, the pause and restart Leveson provided should be applauded as a good thing. But beyond this headline summary the reality has been a little underwhelming, and even counter-productive.

“The reality is that it has been getting harder and harder for reporters to get important and legitimate stories out as publishers and executives have run increasingly scared of the legal threats pushed at them by the rich and famous. Threats and tactics that got refined by lawyers and reputation management specialists in the celebrity superinjunction era are now used by those facing serious allegations of corporate, sexual, financial and criminal misdeeds.

“And it’s not just that potentially big stories are going unpublished. Privacy law, regulatory threats and expensive lawyers – plus the post-hacking feeling that public opinion is not on the side of journalistic revelations – means that a lot of the minutiae of day-to-day reporting (we could even say gossip) has been lost.

“In its place is a sort of vacuum through which rumours, conspiracy theories and fake news thrive. While media outlets have reined in their coverage of the private lives of those with public profiles largely for good reason (Leveson effect) it has helped to facilitate a myriad of less trustworthy, less regulated sources moving into the space.

“This has helped to lead to a public perception that there are things that can’t be printed or won’t be printed.. i.e. that the media are covering things up. An open culture of news reporting – whether for entertainment or more serious – provides a loud, rambunctious open space for discussion, where people can gain knowledge they can trust. When this is neutered it’s easy for bad actors to step in. Loud voices on social platforms only seem more compelling and authoritative than media sources as we have allowed them to be so.

“The tech platforms that distribute news have way more power than the news sources they distribute, though – unbelievably – are still not regulated as the media publishers they undoubtedly are and always have been.

“Individuals/influencers across multiple channels have reached way beyond that of the legacy media brands. Personal data is stolen, misused and sold in ways that noughties tabloid execs couldn’t even dream of. In some ways, it’s hard to think Leveson was only ten years since many of the things the inquiry was so exercised about – like showbiz columns, tabloid stings, voicemail recordings and the Sun cover story – seem to belong to an entirely bygone era.”

Lawyer Mark Lewis played a key role in prompting the Leveson report with his representation of the first News of the World hacking litigants and the family of Milly Dowler.

He said that lawyers do hold the press in check, but only because that is the only effective route available.

He said: “It might be that there have been certain improvements in the press but ultimately the only way is to continue to use libel, privacy, data protection and other civil laws to get redress for those affected. The only difference between IPSO and the old Press Complaints Commission is that IPSO does not pretend to be a regulator.

“Impress does not have the members to adjudicate on and Hacked Off is out of fashion as the political will seems more intent on ignoring it than listening to it. Regrettably, agenda politics has taken over the proper issue of preventing the press from some very serious abuses.”

Tamsin Allen, another lawyer who was involved in the Leveson Inquiry and who has represented many phone-hacking victims, also agreed press behaviour has improved.

She said: “There has certainly been an improvement in some areas – for example in police providing information to journalists for publication about people under investigation, and in publishing salacious stories about private sexual life.

“But what is striking is that these are mainly the result of litigation; newspapers, like politicians, do not change poor behaviour without sanction. We still have no independent regulation of the press and so it is left to the courts to provide that sanction.”

IPSO chief executive Charlotte Dewar takes a different view on the effectiveness of her body, which oversees standards at the majority of UK newspaper and magazine titles in print and online.

She said: “In the ten years since Lord Leveson’s report, publishers have demonstrated real progress and seriousness in engaging with regulation.

“The past ten years have been transformational for UK news organisations. Since IPSO was established eight years ago, we have worked to balance the interests of people with justified complaints and of a free, vigorous and accountable press.

“Publishers have engaged with us constructively – taking complaints seriously and complying with our rulings and adjudications when required to do so. They have overhauled their in-house editorial compliance processes to ensure they are meeting the standards that IPSO places on dealing with complaints properly and promptly.

“Research by the University of Sheffield’s Centre for Freedom of the Media found that the UK media got better at handling complaints and correcting inaccuracies under IPSO regulation.

“The benefits of accountability and trust were starkly illustrated during the Covid-19 pandemic when from March 2020 to April 2021 when Coronavirus dominated news media. Only ten per cent of 31,953 complaints received by IPSO were related to the coverage of the pandemic. IPSO’s Covid Report showed how editorial standards evolved over the pandemic as editors adapted in response to challenge from IPSO and their readers.

“As we look to the future, the high-quality journalism that this country can be rightly proud of faces significant challenge from online competition. Most urgently, the threat to the economic viability of our news industry must be tackled urgently.

“Trust in news offers real benefits both to readers and the publications we regulate. Over the next ten years IPSO will continue to raise editorial standards to protect the public and freedom of expression.”

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