Britain is losing faith in its press. And that should worry all of us.

Trust in British newspapers is collapsing - people can see, every day, a press that sensationalises, distorts, and destroys for clicks and sales. A press that treats truth as optional and ordinary people as collateral damage.

This isn't just about newspapers. It's about who truly runs this country. The policies that shape our lives, the viewpoints, conversations and interpretations we have - all filtered through a press that answers to no one but itself.  

A free press is vital to democracy. But a press without real accountability isn't a free press - it's a dangerous one. So why, in 2026, are we still letting the press regulate itself?

My name is Tulisa Contostavlos. I've been in the public eye for nearly 20 years, and I've seen what an unaccountable press does up close - I've lived it.

In 2013, The Sun on Sunday's undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood manipulated me into a situation that led to my arrest on suspicion of supplying Class A drugs. I was facing years in prison. The case collapsed when the judge found he had lied in his own evidence. Mahmood was later convicted of perverting the course of justice.

I lost my career, my contracts, and very nearly my life. The press walked away. No fine. No real consequence. Just on to the next story.

I tell you this not for sympathy but because I survived it -  and because I think of my dear friend Caroline Flack, who didn't.

This isn't only about celebrities. The press goes after ordinary people too -  people with no platform, no lawyers, no way to fight back.

• Journalists at the News of the World hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler while she was still missing. When it emerged, the outrage shut the paper down.
  
  
• The Hillsborough families spent 27 years fighting a lie The Sun printed. It took fresh inquests to finally clear the names of the 97 who died.
  
  
• Mandy Garner complained to IPSO after the Mail published CCTV footage of the moments before her daughter died, under a lurid clickbait headline — an intrusion into grief at its most raw. Her complaint was dismissed.

The pattern of press abuse and intrusion does not stop on its own. It never has. And it will keep happening to someone else's daughter, someone else's family, someone else's life — unless something changes.

IPSO, which is supposed to regulate the media, was created and funded by the newspapers themselves. It is not independent. In over ten years, it has never fined a single newspaper, and fewer than 1% of complaints result in IPSO finding that its Editors' Code had been breached. That is not regulation. That is the press marking its own homework.

Banks are regulated. Broadcasters are regulated. Even our food safety is regulated. So why isn't the press?

Don’t read the newspapers? Doesn’t matter. A story runs in one paper - it gets picked up by TV panels, repeated on the radio, pushed through your social media feed. By the time it reaches you, it doesn’t look like a headline anymore. It looks like “what everyone’s saying”. 

Sign this petition and demand the UK government implement the Leveson recommendations: a truly independent press regulator — one the press does not control, fund, or appoint — with real power to investigate, fine, and protect people before their lives are destroyed.

We deserve a press that is fair and true. Regulation is overdue. 

A democracy needs a press it can trust. Right now, we don't have one. Help us build one.