All posts tagged: Guardian News and Media

Social media overtakes newsbrands as MPs’ primary news source

Social media overtakes newsbrands as MPs’ primary news source

Published by Sam Flores

The Houses of Parliament building in Westminster, London, UK. Picture: Nigel J Harris/Shutterstock Social media has overtaken newsbrands as the primary source of news for MPs, according to a new survey conducted by Yougov. Some 83% of a representative sample of 105 MPs cited social media as their primary source, up from 61% at the start of 2025. This means social media overtook news websites (on 77%) for the first time. But 96% of MPs still said they visit newspaper websites at least once a week, with 89% visiting daily and 60% visiting multiple times a day. Among national newspaper websites, The Guardian (read by 67% of MPs) has risen by seven percentage points in a year to overtake The Times (on 63%). This increase for The Guardian came across all parties although it remains read much more widely among Labour and Lib Dem MPs (both 80%) versus 23% of Conservatives. The strongest growth was at The Telegraph, up from 19% to 30% readership in a year, followed by the Financial Times (rising from 35% …

Guardian to appeal ruling which said ‘alt right’ description is defamatory

Guardian to appeal ruling which said ‘alt right’ description is defamatory

Published by Sam Flores

Book by Andy Ngo who is suing Guardian News and Media. Picture: Shutterstock/Dylanhatfield.com Guardian News and Media has been granted permission to appeal a pre-trial libel judgment that found it was defamatory to call an influencer an “‘alt-right agitator”. The Court of Appeal found it was “properly arguable” that attributing “far-right” beliefs to Andy Ngo “would not have a substantial adverse effect” on the way he would be treated by “right-thinking people. Ngo, an American influencer who lives in London, is suing GNM over a phrase in a brief music review published in The Observer and on The Guardian website in March last year, shortly before Tortoise Media took ownership of the Sunday title. The review of the Mumford and Sons album Rushmere said: “In the wake of the 2021 exit of banjo player (and son and co-founder of GB News) Winston Marshall, Mumford and Sons have reverted to a trio for their fifth album. “Marshall’s departure followed an outcry after he praised ‘alt-right’ agitator Andy Ngo. Yet listening to Rushmere, one wonders whether the world …

Biggest subscription news websites 2026: Exclusive ranking

Biggest subscription news websites 2026: Exclusive ranking

Published by Sam Flores

Digital subscriptions pages or homepages for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Zealand Herald, Mail+ and Apple News+, all screenshotted on 5 March 2026 New entrants on Press Gazette’s 100k Club ranking of the biggest subscription news websites in the world include in 2026 include The Irish Times Group, Goalhanger and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Press Gazette’s 100k Club ranks English-language publishers with at least 100,000 paying digital subscribers. Fifty-nine news and magazine publishers from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India appear on the list. Scroll down or click here for the full ranking. This compares with just 24 titles making the grade as members of the 100k Club when Press Gazette launched this ranking in 2020. The New York Times (12.21 million digital subscribers, up 13% year on year – but some are only non-news products) makes up 23% of the subscriptions on the entire list of 59 publishers. Substack now has more than five million paying subscribers to publications on its platform (from whom it …

Top 50 UK news media companies ranking for 2026

Top 50 UK news media companies ranking for 2026

Published by Sam Flores

Top four media companies in UK by revenue. RELX Group (picture: Igor Golovniov, Shutterstock), BBC (Chris Dorney, Shutterstock), Informa (Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images), ITV (Piotr Swat, Shutterstock). The top three news media companies in the UK by revenue saw turnover increase in their latest full-year accounts, Press Gazette’s latest top 50 ranking shows. Collectively the top 50 increased their revenue by £1.1bn compared with last year, representing a 3.1% increase reporting £37.5bn versus £36.3bn. Most of the top UK media companies (29 out of 50) grew their revenue in their most recent accounts, while 17 saw decline and four remained stagnant. RELX, the BBC and Informa topped the list with highest revenues, all posting more than £3.5bn. Most of the accounts (30) cover the 2024 financial year, a period which saw inflation average 2.5% while gross domestic product (GDP, a key measure of the economy) grew by 0.4%. Our ranking is based on the most recent full-year revenue reported by each business. Because not all companies break out their different revenue streams the …

UK news giants form ‘NATO for news’ group to control AI scraping

UK news giants form ‘NATO for news’ group to control AI scraping

Published by Sam Flores

Clockwise from top left: BBC director general Tim Davie (picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire), Guardian News and Media chief executive Anna Bateson, Financial Times CEO Jon Slade, Telegraph CEO Anna Jones, and Sky News executive chairman David Rhodes. All pictures except for Davie courtesy of respective media organisations. Five major UK news organisations have banded together with the aim of developing shared AI licensing standards. Financial Times CEO Jon Slade called for the formation of a “NATO for news” at an industry conference last year. Now the FT, The Guardian, The Telegraph, BBC and Sky News have founded SPUR: the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition. They started discussions in response to concerns over unlicensed scraping of content by AI companies, deciding they should work together on potential solutions. They aim to develop shared industry standards on ways journalism can be used sustainably for AI tools, ensuring this is “transparent and scalable” and protects publishers’ intellectual property. Guardian chief executive Anna Bateson, FT CEO Jon Slade, Telegraph CEO Anna Jones, BBC director general Tim Davie and …

News subscriptions prices and offers tracked in 2026

News subscriptions prices and offers tracked in 2026

Published by Sam Flores

Subscriptions pages for the Financial Times, The Telegraph, The Scotsman and Bloomberg Media on 23 January 2026 Digital news subscriptions prices have increased by an average of 3% in the UK for the second year running, according to Press Gazette analysis. However many publications were offering discounts in January of up to 89%, indicating that many consumers may be able to avoid paying the full price. Of 23 publications included in Press Gazette’s dataset both in January 2025 and January 2026, ten increased their annual digital subscription prices in the past year. Six saw no change in annual price and seven reduced the cost of their digital subscription. As a result the average percentage change among these 23 digital news subscriptions was 3%, close to the UK inflation rate of 3.6% (2.7% in the US) over the past 12 months. This contrasts to UK national newspaper cover prices, which were up by an average of 10% in the past year as publishers look to make up for falling newsstand sales and advertising. From January 2024 …

Newspaper cover prices rising fast in 2026

Newspaper cover prices rising fast in 2026

Published by Sam Flores

UK newsstand. Picture: Shutterstock UK national newspaper cover prices have increased by an average of 10.2% compared to January 2024, nearly three times the rate of other consumer prices. Daily newspapers’ weekday editions saw prices rise by an average of 11.2% compared to a year ago, while Saturday editions increased by 8.4% and Sunday editions were up by 11.2% Consumer price inflation was reported as 3.6% in the year to December 2025, with food and non-alcoholic beverages up 4.5% and alcohol and tobacco up 4%. Inflation did not rise above 3.8% throughout the year. Six editions kept their cover prices the same throughout the year, including The Times’ Saturday edition, The Sunday Times, all editions of The Daily Telegraph and The Financial Times. FT Weekend, which remains the most expensive title among UK-wide national papers, increased its price in the past year by 5.9%, after it kept its price level from January 2024 to January 2025. It has overtaken the average cost of a 175ml glass of wine in the UK since last year. (Press …

AI chatbots cite ‘narrow range’ of top newsbrands

AI chatbots cite ‘narrow range’ of top newsbrands

Published by Sam Flores

ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, and Perplexity app icons are seen on the screen of an iPhone. Picture: Shutterstock/Tada Images AI answers from OpenAI, Google and Perplexity draw on a “narrow range” of the biggest publishers when responding to news queries, according to new research from UK thinktank IPPR. Looking at Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity, the research found that on average 34% of journalistic citations on each tool go to only one newsbrand. On average the most-cited news source on each platform was four times more prominent than the next highest outlet by source links. The IPPR “AI’s Got News For You” report said: “AI creates new winners and losers, with each AI tool prioritising news brands in different ways, in each case foregrounding a distinct selection of news outlets compared with those that are currently most popular across the UK.” On Google’s AI Overviews some 41% of news links cited the BBC, its top source. The BBC was also the most-cited news source on Perplexity, where it made up 31% …

National newspaper editors unite to demand anti-SLAPP law

National newspaper editors unite to demand anti-SLAPP law

Published by Sam Flores

The Houses of Parliament building in Westminster, London, UK. Picture: Nigel J Harris/Shutterstock National newspaper editors from across the political spectrum have come together to call for the next King’s Speech to include provisions against intimidating legal tactics, known as SLAPPs. SLAPPs, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, are lawsuits targeting journalists, news organisations, whistleblowers or other groups publishing information in the public interest that are widely regarded as meritless, abusive and aimed at bullying them into silence. Some 127 media and legal figures have now signed an open letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and Justice Secretary David Lammy urging “universal anti-SLAPP provisions” to be included in the next King’s Speech to be held in May. The letter noted that in the five years since the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition was founded, “SLAPPs have been documented against journalists, tax transparency experts, online reviewers, patients, environmental campaigners, local residents, sexual violence survivors, whistleblowers, academics, tenants, victims groups and advocates, and social media users, to name a few. “In these cases, wealthy and …

Record opposition to climate action in UK newspapers in 2025

Record opposition to climate action in UK newspapers in 2025

Published by Sam Flores

A newspaper headline featuring the words ‘climate change’ Picture: Shutterstock/Arda Savasciogullari The UK’s national press published more articles in 2025 opposing action to mitigate climate change than supporting it for the first time since analysis began. Nearly 100 UK newspaper editorials opposed an increase in climate action, more than double the number that supported it, according to analysis shared with Press Gazette by climate science website Carbon Brief. This marks the first time newspaper editorials opposing climate action have overtaken those supporting it in the 15 years since Carbon Brief began its analysis, and was also the highest recorded level of anti-action articles. Some 166 editorials – articles considered to represent the newspaper’s formal “voice” – that discussed potential action to mitigate the impact of human-caused climate change were analysed in 2025. Of the nine newspapers Carbon Brief analysed, it classified five of the newspapers as right-leaning (The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, The Times and the Daily Express and their Sunday counterparts), three as left-leaning (The Guardian, The Observer and The Independent) …