Ministers Withhold Ofcom Report on Telegraph Bid
Is the government safeguarding journalistic integrity or shielding a Gulf autocracy from scrutiny?
Story
Above: Copies of The Telegraph in London, U.K., on Nov. 14, 2025. Image credit: Richard A. Brooks/AFP/Getty Images
The Facts
- U.K. Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy again delayed publishing an Ofcom report on Monday about RedBird IMI's failed attempt to take over the British newspaper The Telegraph.
- The department received Ofcom's report in March 2024 after then-Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer issued Public Interest Intervention Notices requiring the media regulator to investigate the proposed RedBird IMI acquisition of The Telegraph.
- Under Section 107(3) of the Enterprise Act 2002, the culture secretary must publish any Ofcom report produced under Section 44A of the Act. Despite this, the department has not released any details about Ofcom's findings.
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The Spin
Pro-government narrative
The government will publish the Ofcom report on RedBird IMI's Telegraph bid in due course. In the meantime, concerns that the government may not have the public interest at heart are nonsensical. Throughout this long process, this government has put principles of journalistic integrity first at every turn, and will continue to do so.
Government-critical narrative
Sitting on a regulator's findings for two and a half years, when the law requires publication, looks like protecting a Gulf autocracy from embarrassment instead of serving the public. Evidence of a foreign state's appetite to lean on a British newspaper belongs in the open, not buried behind vague promises of "shortly" that only erode trust.