Crime reporters have welcomed updated police media guidelines for England and Wales which could draw to a close 15 years of frosty relations between officers and journalists.
Since the Leveson Inquiry in 2011 police have tended to see journalists as a corruption risk. For three years to 2025 the College of Policingbracketed journalists with criminalsas individuals with whom staff had to disclose any association.
A number of UK journalists have beenarrested and detained whilst trying to cover protests in recent years.
And police refusal to provide off-the-record guidance to the media fuelled a wave of misinformationduring the disappearance of Nicola Bulley in Lancashire in 2023andfollowing the murder of three children by a man with a knife in Southport in 2024.
Thenew standards for communications from the College of Policingencourage police officers to interact with journalists at all levels, allow for off-the-record briefings, and explicitly protect the right of journalists to cover public incidents without interference
Chair of the Crime Reporters Association Rebecca Camber, who is crime editor for the Daily Mail, said: “This guidance has the potential to fundamentally transform the relationship between police forces and the media which remains essential to public confidence and policing legitimacy in the UK.
“For the first time engagement between officers of all ranks and the media is being encouraged and police forces face new obligations to release information and respond at pace in major investigations.”
Officers ‘encouraged’ to engage with media:
“Engagement between police and the media is encouraged for officers and staff of all ranks and roles, providing the person is responsible for communicating about the issue at hand and there is a clear policing purpose in doing so.
“The foundation for all conversations between journalists and police, including communications officers, should be mutual respect, professional courtesy and cooperation.”
Source: Press Gazette
