François Nel speaking at our Newsrewired conference in May 2024

Every May 3, we mark World Press Freedom Day — a date that rightly draws attention to journalists threatened by censorship, surveillance, and violence. But this year, my mind turns to another, quieter threat to press freedom: exclusion by paycheque.

A new Reuters Institute report, to which I contributed a chapter on the employment conditions of journalists, indicates that the median after-tax salary for journalists in the UK is between £37,501 and £45,000. Meanwhile, the country’s best-paid media executive — at a business intelligence publisher — made £6.2 million last year, according to UK Media Rich List 2025.

At ITV, which bills itself as "the largest commercial broadcaster and streamer in the UK," the chief executive Carolyn McCall took home over £4 million last year, while the recently departed head of Reach Plc, the country’s largest news publisher and owner of The Mirror, took home over £1.2 million.

Even at the Guardian — long regarded as a beacon of values-driven journalism and owned by the Scott Trust — chief executive Anna Bateson earned £700,000 last year, a 75 per cent increase year-on-year, according to Press Gazette. That's roughly 16 times the estimated median salary at the organisation and equivalent to the revenue from 58,000 monthly all-access digital subscriptions, currently priced at

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