Exeter Observer is now regulated by IMPRESS, the independent monitor for the press. We have adopted the IMPRESS Standards Code and a new complaints policy, which includes a whistleblowing policy to which all employees and contributors are required to adhere. These new arrangements can be viewed on our corrections and complaints page.
IMPRESS was created in response to the findings of the 2011-2012 Leveson Inquiry, a judicial public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press which was established in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal.
The Leveson Report recommended that a new independent press regulation body be established to replace the Press Complaints Commission, which closed in 2014. The regulatory body was to be recognised in law but Prime Minister David Cameron, under whose direction the inquiry had been established, declined to enact the requisite legislation.
The PCC was replaced by the virtually indistinguishable, and also voluntary, Independent Press Standards Organisation which is owned and controlled by the very newspapers it is supposed to regulate. Campaign group Hacked Off, which did much to expose the phone hacking scandal, says IPSO is “not fit for purpose” and the National Union of Journalists has called it a “pointless so-called regulator”.
Several broadsheet newspapers including the Financial Times, The Independent and The Guardian declined to take part in IPSO and established their own independent complaints systems instead.
The Press Recognition Panel was nevertheless created in 2014 by the Royal Charter on self-regulation of the press to recognise press regulators. In 2016 IMPRESS became the UK’s first press regulator recognised this way, and has remained the only body so far approved by the PRP. Its recognition was supported by the National Union of Journalists.