Reach-owned titles were responsible for 19 out of the 45 fully or partially upheld IPSO Editors’ Code breach complaints made in 2024, according to publishers’ own data for last year, as revealed in IPSO’s annual report.
Although Reach took the wooden spoon for publishers, the prize for individual newspaper with the most breaches upheld against it went to the DMG-owned Daily Mail/Mail Online, with five breaches reported and upheld over the year.
This metric shifts slightly when looking at IPSOs own figures, due to the fact that IPSO dates complaints by the date they were entered onto its system, whereas publishers date them by when they were resolved. Using IPSO’s own figures, the Reach-owned Daily Express topped the table with seven total complaints upheld – six of these were fully upheld complaints and one partially upheld.
Looking more locally, Reach’s Manchester Evening News and National World’s Sheffield Star both made the IPSO list with a fully upheld complaint against the Star and a partially upheld one for the MEN.
Switching to the publishers’ list, we can also add Reach titles the Liverpool Echo, liverpoolecho.co.uk and Lincolnshire Live to the mix, with a single complaint against each. DC Thompson’s The Courier also attracted a single complaint, while the MEN doubles its tally to two complaints under the publishers’ dating system.
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The most complained about title overall – although it should be noted that most complaints do not result in a breach ruling – was News UK’s The Sun, by some distance, attracting a total of 1,198 complaints. The Daily Mail was a distant second with 830 complaints, although it did impressively outperform The Sun in terms of the number of individual articles complained about – 440 to The Sun’s paltry 48.
The Sheffield Star and MEN both made the top 20 here too. The Star was in 10th spot with 116 complaints made over three articles, while the MEN squeezed into 20th place with 45 complaints about a total of 11 articles.
A total 4,879 complaints received by IPSO in 2024 were rejected because they were outside its remit or resolved without the need for its involvement. Another 307 were investigated, or just over six per cent of the total, of which 134 were resolved directly between the complainant and the publisher, 72 of the remaining complaints were not upheld, and 43 were.
For context, with Reach, DMG and News UK between them controlling about 90% of both the UK’s daily and Sunday newspaper market, according to 2020 Press Gazette analysis, we probably shouldn’t be too surprised to find them featuring heavily in the complaints statistics – Reach alone publishes over 150 print and online titles, from national dailies like the Mirror and Express to numerous local websites, equating to an average of around 0.1 complaint upheld per title, while DMG and News UK can between them claim two of the UK’s biggest selling titles in the Mail and Sun respectively – DMG also publishes the widely available daily freesheet the Metro.
A Reach spokesperson told Prolific North that in the specific case of the Daily Express, a significant number of the complaints made could be attributed to a single individual who appears to have undertaken an ongoing campaign of complaints against the paper. Citing 2025 figures to date, the publisher added that so far this year it has received notification from IPSO of 138 rejected complaints about express.co.uk from the same individual, where IPSO did not take the matter further. That’s in addition to 19 complaints that the regulator did take on, of which two have been Upheld, one Upheld SRA, seven resolved directly and two Not Upheld. The remaining seven are still ongoing.
Of further note, the total number of complaints made to IPSO in 2024 continued on a downwards trend on previous years, with 4,879 complaints in 2024, compared to 8,045 in 2023 and 38,658 in 2022.
Lord Faulks, Chair of IPSO, said: “IPSO’s Annual Report 2024 is a chance to look back at ten years of our history. It provides a snapshot of our key achievements and shows how IPSO is alive to the challenges of press regulation.
“Over the decade, IPSO has, applied the terms of the Editors’ Code in a way that is consistent yet also takes into account the changing social, technological and financial context in which journalism is being done – meeting the challenge set by Sir Brian Leveson in his 2012 report.”
