New opinion polling reveals strong support for rules on broadcast impartiality but raises questions about the scrutiny paid to political parties
Over recent months, debates about the impartiality of UK broadcasters have intensified. From anger about the reporting of conflicts in the Middle East, to concerns about the partisanship of the news channel, GB News, and widespread complaints about how much airtime political parties receive, particularly Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. At the same time, support for the UK’s two main parties – Labour and Conservative – has collapsed, creating a new challenge for broadcasters to decide how far they should weight political coverage to, for example, reflect the latest trends in public opinion or represent the number of MPs each party has sitting in Parliament.
According to opinion polls tracking voting intention, Reform UK has consistently been the most popular party since April 2025. In the latest regional and local elections, Reform UK won 10 councils and two mayoralties, securing more votes than any other party in England. Farage’s party also won a Parliamentary by-election in Runcorn and Helsby. Our recent research, examining TV news bulletins from January to July 2025, revealed that broadcasters have reflected this shift in electoral support by increasing their coverage of Reform UK, despite the party having only four MPs. We found that Nigel Farage and his party were featured far more prominently than the Liberal Democrats and their leader, Ed Davey, despite the party having 72 MPs elected at the last general election. There has also been criticism of broadcasters for the level of scrutiny paid to Reform UK’s policies. Critics have alleged that Farage can make grand claims and promises without being sufficiently challenged by broadcasters about the credibility of the plans, especially with regard to policy proposals aimed at controlling immigration levels.
Against this backdrop, our new AHRC-funded project commissioned YouGov to conduct one of the most comprehensive surveys to date of people’s attitudes towards broadcast impartiality in the UK. This included examining people’s news consumption habits, how well they think broadcasters scrutinise each of the main political parties, and their knowledge about one of the most high-profile policy debates over recent months – levels of net migration into the UK – including whether they think it has increased or decreased. All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,153 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 5th - 6th October 2025. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+), with a margin of error of +/- 2%. Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding.
In due course, we will publish a complete account of all the responses, but for now, we focus on the key findings of the survey.
Support for the principle of due impartiality
Almost seven in ten people – 68% - think broadcasters in the UK should be regulated for their impartiality in news and current affairs programming, while 14% think they should not. A further 18% are unsure. If ‘don’t knows’ are excluded, 83% think broadcasters should be regulated for their impartiality in news and current affairs programming whereas 17% do not.
76% of people between the ages of 50 and 64 and 72% older than 65 think broadcasters in the UK should be regulated for news and current affairs programming, whereas 57% do for those aged between 18 and 24.
The platforms most trusted for news are TV (49%) and radio (49%) – both subject to impartiality regulation – followed by online news (28%), print newspapers (28%), podcasts (11%) and social media (7%).
The broadcasters most trusted for news are the BBC (48%) followed by ITV (45%), Channel 4 (42%), Sky (33%), Channel 5 (27%) and GB News (18%).
Against relaxing rules on impartiality
Just under six in ten people - 58% - would oppose relaxing the rules on due impartiality to allow broadcasters to become more politically opinionated, compared to 22% who would support this shift in regulation. A further fifth said they don’t know. If ‘don’t knows’ are excluded, 73% of people oppose relaxing impartiality guidelines to allow broadcasters to become more politically opinionated, whereas 27% would support it.
Ofcom’s rules currently allow current politicians to present current affairs programmes on TV and radio. But 51% think they should not be allowed while 29% agree they should and 19% said they don’t know. If those unsure are excluded, almost thirds of people - 64% - do not agree with Ofcom’s rules that allow current politicians to present current affairs programming on TV and radio, while 36% think they should.
People who would vote for Reform UK if an election was held tomorrow are the only group of party-political voters who support (44%) more than oppose (39%) politicians presenting current affairs programming in broadcast media, while 17% said they don’t know. Meanwhile, 58% of frequent or very frequent GB News consumers agree that politicians should be allowed to present current affairs programming on TV and radio – the highest level of support among audiences of a major broadcaster – while 29% said they should not, and 13% said they don’t know.
Broadcasters not complying with impartiality
More people think the UK’s major broadcasters are complying badly (41%) than well (33%) with the due impartiality guidelines, while 26% said they don’t know. If ‘don’t knows’ are excluded, over half – 54% - do not think broadcasters are complying well with the impartiality rules, whereas 46% believe they are.
Ofcom has only found GB News to have breached rules on impartiality five times in recent years, while the BBC has been found guilty once in a radio news item and an online item. Yet when we asked about how often Ofcom upheld complaints against all the major broadcasters breaking rules of impartiality many people overestimated how many times the regulator had found channels had breached the guidelines. We told respondents that Ofcom had received over 25,000 complaints from the public about the impartiality of BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky News and GB News since June 2021. We then asked roughly what proportion, if any, of these complaints did they think led to the regulator finding each of these broadcasters had broken the rules on impartiality.
In the case of the BBC, over a third said they don’t know (36%) and 5% none, while just over a fifth (22%) thought it was a few – which is broadly accurate given just two cases were upheld by Ofcom. However, the remaining 36% significantly overestimated the number of breaches, with 14% thinking it was a quarter, 10% a half, while 5% thought it was three quarters or almost all, and a final 2% said all. For ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky and GB News, many people also overestimated the number of times Ofcom found the channels to have breached rules on impartiality, but there were also a lot of unsure responses (between 40% and 48%).
Lack of scrutiny of political parties and understanding of net migration
More people believe that UK broadcasters do not scrutinise the policies of the main political parties well, compared to those who think they do. This was most strikingly the case for Reform UK, where 40% of people believe broadcasters are not scrutinising the party well, 24% believe they did, while a further 35% are unsure.
For Labour, 33% think broadcasters are not scrutinising the party well, whereas 31% thought they are, and 36% said they don’t know. For the Conservatives, 36% think broadcasters are not scrutinising the party well, 27% thought they were, while 38% said they don’t know. For the Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru, the number of people who are unsure was even higher, making it difficult to draw clear conclusions.
Almost two-thirds of people - 63% - wrongly think net migration to the UK (people moving into the country vs. people leaving the country) has gone up compared to the previous year, according to the latest figures, as did another 18% who wrongly believe it had roughly stayed the same, while 12% said are unsure. Just 8% correctly identified that net migration has decreased. According to the ONS, for the year ending December 2024, net migration was almost halved compared to the previous year – 431,000 – representing a significant fall.
The highest proportion of people who think net migration has increased are frequent consumers of GB News (84%), as opposed to frequent consumers of BBC (62%), ITV (71%), Channel 4 (51%), Channel 5 (69%), or Sky News (68%).
Analysis of key findings
Despite the numerous headlines and social media posts alleging that broadcasters routinely break Ofcom’s rules on impartiality, our survey showed that a comfortable majority of people in the UK continue to have faith in the principle of maintaining impartiality in TV and radio programming. However, the survey also revealed that people who think impartiality should be regulated was lowest among those aged between 18 and 24 (57% compared to 72% of those aged 65 and over). This suggests that future generations will need more convincing of the importance of broadcast impartiality in the coming years.
Although many people can now access a wide range of online, social media and print content that is politically partisan, almost three quarters of people (73%) would oppose relaxing the rules on due impartiality to allow broadcasters to become more politically opinionated, if those unsure are excluded. Once again, it is the younger generation – those under 49 years old – who show the weakest level of support for opposing a rule change by Ofcom. Since these age groups increasingly rely on online and social media that is politically opinionated, future generations may become more accepting of partisanship in TV and radio programming.
A narrow majority also opposed Ofcom’s current rules, which allow current politicians to present current affairs programmes on TV and radio,. Unsurprisingly, people who would vote for Reform UK if an election was held tomorrow were the only group of political voters who thought politicians should present programming (44%) more than they who did not (39%). However, the fact that 51% of people opposed this rule, which rises to 64% if we exclude respondents who were unsure, challenges Ofcom’s conclusions in its focus group research, which found that there was no public opposition to politicians presenting programming. There is currently a consultation – now closed and under review by Ofcom - about a rule change related to allowing politicians not to present news programming. However, our survey provides new evidence that reveals, in a representative public opinion survey rather than a selective set of focus groups, that 51% also oppose current politicians presenting TV and radio current affairs programming – i.e. shows that see them debating news stories with guests - as well as formal news bulletins.
When further questioned about media regulation, we found that more people than not, thought UK broadcasters were failing to comply with due impartiality guidelines. This finding increased to a majority of people if we excluded unsure responses. We further discovered that many people overestimated the number of times broadcasters had been found guilty of breaking Ofcom’s rules on impartiality, which, of the major news organisations, was just twice for the BBC over the last few years, and five times for GB News had been (although these were later overturned in a legal case). Once again, however, a large minority of people said they did not know the answer to the question. Notwithstanding the lack of knowledge or confidence in answering questions about media regulation, our survey suggests that the public does not hold much faith in the impartiality of broadcasters and wrongly believes that they regularly fall foul of Ofcom’s rules on impartiality.
While a large majority believed broadcasters should be regulated for news and current affairs programming, the survey revealed that many people also thought UK broadcasters failed to scrutinise sufficiently the policies of the main political parties, compared to those who believed they did. This was most strikingly the case for Reform UK, where 40% of people thought broadcasters did not scrutinise the party well, 24% believed they did, while the remaining 35% said they didn’t know. For Labour, a third of people thought broadcasters were not scrutinising the party well compared to 36% for the Conservatives. This was a higher proportion than those who believed that the parties were being well scrutinised, although a significant minority said, ‘don’t know’.
For the Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP, and Plaid Cymru, the number of unsure responses was far higher in questions about the scrutiny paid to each party. This perhaps reflected the limited media coverage these parties often receive, as well as people’s lack of knowledge about them.
Finally, when we examined public knowledge of one of the most reported issues over recent months – net migration into the UK – we found almost two-thirds of people wrongly believed it had gone up according to the latest figures, when ONS data reveals it has significantly gone down. We further discovered that a high proportion of people who consumed GB News were substantially more likely to believe that net migration had increased than regular consumers of other major broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, and Sky News. Needless to say, the public relies on a far wider range of news sources than impartial broadcasters, including largely unregulated news and information across online and social media networks. Many broadcasters have also reported the fall in net migration in 2025 – sometimes at length and in detail. Moving forward, the challenge for broadcasters – particularly those with public service media obligations – will be to raise public awareness about net migration when scrutinising the plans of different political parties, helping people reach an informed judgement about the merits of competing policies on this issue.