Seen in Journalism’s Cath Leng sits down with community-media pioneer Rob Watson, founder of Decentered Media, to unpack one of the most urgent questions in British journalism today: who actually regulates what we read, hear, and watch - and are they doing their job?
From Ofcom’s broadcast code to IPSO’s newspaper oversight, Rob traces how our media watchdogs have become tangled in bureaucracy, jargon, and ideology. Once designed to protect the public interest, these systems now seem to protect institutions from public scrutiny. What happens when “due impartiality” becomes so elastic that accuracy itself is negotiable?
Rob brings decades of experience training community reporters to understand the broadcast code, and he contrasts that hands-on civic accountability with the sealed bubbles of big media and government. Together, he and Cath explore how Ofcom’s internal culture, its reliance on outdated research, and the dominance of “kindness” narratives have created a regulatory fog - one where accuracy, the most basic principle of journalism, is quietly sidelined.
They talk through the Supreme Court’s recent ruling affirming that sex means biological sex under the Equality Act, and ask why, months later, public broadcasters still hesitate to apply that clarity in their own reporting. What’s holding them back? Institutional inertia, fear of reputational harm, or a deeper cultural reluctance to admit error?
The conversation also ranges wider: the collapse of local news, the hollowing-out of the middle ground between social media chaos and corporate consolidation, and why rebuilding public trust may depend on reviving community-led outlets that value accuracy before kindness.
At heart, this episode is about the moral foundations of journalism - what it means to tell the truth when truth itself has become contested. It’s challenging, thoughtful, and full of practical insight for anyone who still believes in civic-minded media.
“If you’re scared to walk the street because there’s a reported rapist in the area, you have to know it’s a man.
Kindness can follow - but accuracy must come first.”
Get full access to SEENinJournalism’s Substack at
