Between perception and practice: Audience understandings of journalistic impartiality and broadcast regulation

This article examines public complaints about impartiality in the UK and audience (mis)understandings of how the regulator, Ofcom, enforces it. We explore an issue often neglected in studies of media governance: how closely do public expectations of impartial journalism align with how it is applied by a regulator? We adopt a comprehensive mixed-methods approach by drawing on a nationally representative survey of 2,153 UK adults, a systematic analysis of complaints to Ofcom in 2025 ( n = 47,457 complaints), and four focus groups. Our analysis of complaints to Ofcom revealed audience concerns were concentrated on a small number of high-profile cases, while formal findings against broadcasters, particularly for impartiality, were exceptionally rare. The audience findings revealed a substantial gap between public expectations and regulatory practice, with most people overestimating how often broadcasters breached impartiality rules and expressing confusion around why regulation was not more robust. The article argues that public concern about journalistic bias is shaped less by regulatory outcomes than by experiential judgements about news coverage. More broadly, the study makes an original contribution to debates about a growing mistrust in news media by revealing that misunderstandings of regulation are undermining public confidence and faith in impartial journalism.