Politics & media · Media ownership & influence

Orientation, impartiality and trust

Three different things that get called bias. This page keeps them apart, and publishes no rating.

View shareable visual summariesMedia sectionWhat papers backedWhat Ofcom requires

Why there is no bias rating on this site

The obvious product here is a scale — BBC −2, Telegraph +4, Guardian −4 — and it would be popular. This site does not publish one, and the reason is not squeamishness.

There is no methodology that turns “how biased is this outlet” into a number reproducible by someone who disagrees with the person who built it. Every published attempt encodes the analyst’s own midpoint as objective zero, so the scale measures distance from the author as much as anything about the outlet. A number that cannot survive that test is an opinion wearing a decimal point.

1

Editorial orientation

What an outlet said it wanted, in its own leader column, on a dated occasion. An endorsement is a fact.

2

Regulatory findings

What Ofcom decided, in a published adjudication, about a broadcaster’s due impartiality. A breach is a fact.

3

Audience trust

What surveyed readers and viewers say. A fact about opinion, reported as such.

None of the three is “bias”. Together they are what can honestly be said.

What the national papers actually backed

Two documented decisions per title: the position taken at the 2016 referendum, as classified by King’s College London’s content analysis, and the endorsement given at the 2024 general election. Front-page counts are referendum lead stories over the 10-week campaign.

  • The Daily Telegraph / Sunday Telegraph

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: ConservativeReferendum front-page leads: 41

    Published more referendum front-page leads than any other title in the KCL study.

  • Daily Express / Sunday Express

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: ConservativeReferendum front-page leads: 33

  • Daily Mail

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: ConservativeReferendum front-page leads: 25

    The Daily Mail backed Leave while its Sunday sister title backed Remain — under the same owner, the same week.

  • The Mail on Sunday

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: Conservative

  • The Sun / The Sun on Sunday

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: LabourReferendum front-page leads: 22

    Switched to Labour on 3 July 2024, its first Labour endorsement since 2005.

  • The Sunday Times

    2016 referendum: Leave2024 election: Labour

    Backed Leave in 2016 and Labour in 2024 — the same publisher as The Times, which did neither.

  • The Times

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: No endorsementReferendum front-page leads: 18

  • The Guardian / The Observer

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: LabourReferendum front-page leads: 24

    The only Remain-backing title to publish more than four immigration front-page leads during the campaign.

  • Financial Times

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: LabourReferendum front-page leads: 16

    Its 2024 endorsement was its first for Labour since 2005.

  • Daily Mirror / Sunday Mirror

    2016 referendum: Remain2024 election: LabourReferendum front-page leads: 5

    Published five referendum front pages to the Sun’s 22 — the starkest asymmetry in the study.

  • The i Paper

    2016 referendum: No position2024 election: No endorsement

    Has a standing policy of never endorsing a party. Now owned by DMGT, which also publishes the Daily Mail.

2016 positions and front-page counts: Moore, M. and Ramsay, G., UK media coverage of the 2016 EU Referendum campaign ↗. The study excluded the Independent, the Daily Star and the Sunday People — see its own inclusion rules. 2024 endorsements: each paper’s own leader column, compiled by Press Gazette ↗.

Reading the endorsement table

Three things in that table that break the standard story

The Daily Mail backed Leave while the Mail on Sunday backed Remain — same owner, same week. Reach plc owns both the Mirror, which backed Remain, and the Express, which backed Leave. And in 2024 most of Fleet Street, including the Sun, endorsed Labour. Positions move; ownership mostly does not. Any theory in which proprietors dictate a house line has to account for all three.

Newspapers may campaign. Broadcasters may not.

This is a legal distinction, not an editorial judgement, and it is the single most-ignored fact in arguments about UK media bias. Everything in the endorsement table above is entirely lawful.

Newspapers

No impartiality duty

No legal impartiality obligation of any kind. A newspaper may endorse a party, campaign for an outcome, and select which stories to run on that basis. Accuracy codes apply; political neutrality does not.

Regulator: IPSO or Impress, both voluntary; most nationals belong to IPSO. The Guardian and FT belong to neither and run their own systems.

Broadcasters

Impartiality required

Bound by Section Five of the Broadcasting Code. News must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality, and due impartiality must be preserved on matters of political or industrial controversy.

Regulator: Ofcom, statutory

Platforms and search

No impartiality duty

Not covered by the media ownership rules and not subject to any impartiality duty, despite being used for news by six in ten UK adults. The Online Safety Act gave Ofcom powers over harm, not over the plurality of what people see.

Regulator: Ofcom, but only for online safety duties — not for plurality or impartiality

The misconception this settles

“Due impartiality does not mean an equal division of time has to be given to every view, or that every argument and every facet of every argument has to be represented.”

Ofcom Broadcasting Code, Section Five — read the section ↗

“Due” means adequate or appropriate to the subject and the nature of the programme. A documentary on the safety of a licensed medicine does not have to give equal time to the view that it is poison, and a news bulletin does not have to balance every government statement with an opposition one within the same item. Complaints that a broadcaster gave "more airtime to one side" therefore very often fail — not because the regulator is captured, but because equal airtime was never the test.

The rules that actually apply

  • Rule 5.1

    News, in whatever form, must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality.

  • Rule 5.5

    Due impartiality on matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy must be preserved — this may be achieved within a programme or over a series of programmes taken as a whole.

  • Rule 5.7

    Views and facts must not be misrepresented. Views must also be presented with due weight over appropriate timeframes.

  • Rule 5.9

    Presenters may express their own views on matters of political or industrial controversy, provided alternative viewpoints are adequately represented.

  • Rule 5.11

    In dealing with major matters of political or industrial controversy, an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes.

What the regulatory record shows

Ofcom has recorded due impartiality breaches against broadcasters across the political spectrum, including both the BBC and GB News. Any account of broadcast impartiality that finds fault in only one direction is not describing the regulatory record.

And ignore the complaint totals. Complaint volumes are not a measure of bias. They are not adjusted for hours broadcast, and one organised campaign can add thousands of complaints about a single programme without changing whether a rule was broken. What carries information is the adjudication.

Read Ofcom’s published broadcast standards decisions ↗

What audiences actually think

30%

trust news overall

Down 5 points in a year; the global average is 37%.

73%

distrust news on social media

The platform most used for news by under-35s.

10%

pay for online news

One in ten. The business model problem behind most of this section.

12pp

fall in TV news use since 2021

The largest structural change in the UK news market this decade.

Most trusted UK news brands

  • BBC News
  • ITV News
  • Channel 4 News
  • Financial Times

The four brands UK respondents trust most are three public service broadcasters and a Japanese-owned financial paper. None of them is the most-used source of news among under-35s. Reach, trust and influence point in three different directions, and any argument that needs them to point the same way is an argument in trouble.

Trust in news overall fell five points in a year, to 30% — below the 37% global average. But the Reuters Institute notes that trust in individual news brands barely moved. People are not turning against the outlets they use; they are turning against "the news" as a category. Those are different problems with different fixes, and a headline that reports only the first will be read as the second.

Source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 — United Kingdom ↗. An online survey of news consumers — independent analysis, not an official statistic.

Coverage is not persuasion

The limit on everything above

The KCL study measured how much was published, how prominently, and how issues were framed. It did not measure whether any of it changed a single vote, and it does not claim to. Anyone citing it as proof that the press delivered Brexit is citing it for a finding it does not contain.

Next: the referendum case study, where the coverage was measured in detail, and who funds the parties.