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The findings of the Cairncross Review (“the Review”), chaired by Dame Frances Cairncross were published on 12 February 2019; it made nine recommendations for addressing two primary issues: (i) is the market in which publishers operate a fair one or has the growth of large online platforms, such as Google and Facebook, created distortions that justify government intervention? (ii) how should society continue to support the monitoring of, and reporting on, the activities of public bodies - not just central government, but also local councils, courts and inquests. The Review referred to this type...

On 25 February 2019, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) ruled that commercial radio station Talk Radio presenter James Whale had breached the Ofcom Broadcasting Code over an “insensitive” interview with a victim of sexual assault. Earlier in July 2018, James Whale and his co-presenter Asher Gould interviewed a journalist and invited her to comment on remarks made by author Jilly Cooper that the #MeToo movement, which was launched following the multiple sexual misconduct accusations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, had changed the way in which people interact. In particular, Mr Whale asked...

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has rejected a collective complaint from ten pro-Brexit politicians that BBC coverage had breached the rules of due impartiality in the Communications Act and in the Broadcasting Code. The complaints concerned sets of broadcasts on BBC Radio Four. These were: coverage of the fifth round of Brexit negotiations in the flagship ‘Today’ programme; Series 3 of ‘Brexit: A Guide for the Perplexed’; and a special day of broadcasts on ‘Britain at the Crossroads’. They were broadcast between 9 October 2017 and 29 March 2018. The complainants claimed that pro-Brexit...

On 28 January 2019 the High Court of Justice in England ruled that cockpit footage from the Shoreham Airshow crash cannot be released to the press, after it had been played to a jury. The background to this trial began on 22 August 2015, when a Hawker Hunter fighter jet crashed during a display at the Shoreham Airshow at Shoreham Airport, England, after failing to complete an aerobatic manoeuvre. Eleven people died in the resulting fireball. In 2018 former Royal Air Force pilot Andy Hill was charged with eleven counts of manslaughter by gross negligence and one count of endangering an aircraft....

On 7 March 2019, the European Commission adopted a decision accepting commitments made by a number of well-known film studios and the broadcaster Sky UK to address the Commission’s concerns regarding clauses in the studios' licensing contracts for pay-TV with Sky UK. The film studios are Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros., and according to the Commission, the clauses at issue “prevented Sky UK from allowing EU consumers outside the United Kingdom and Ireland to subscribe to Sky UK's pay-TV services to access films via satellite or online”, and also required NBCUniversal, Sony...