Australian Press Council names Richard Bean as CEO

The Australian Press Council (APC) has appointed Richard Bean as chief executive officer and executive director. He starts on 2 November 2026.

Bean was executive director of Ad Standards from 2020 to 2024, where he led the system for handling complaints about advertising and marketing content, including its Community Panel. He is currently a general member of the Administrative Review Tribunal.

He was deputy chair of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) from 2010 to 2016, and acting chair from 2016 to 2017. By ministerial appointment, he led the review into the Optus outage of 8 November 2023 and co-led the 2018 efficiency review of the ABC and SBS. He has also been chief executive of the NSW Environment Protection Authority.

Bean started his career as a solicitor in the media and defamation practice of Blake Dawson Waldron (now Ashurst). He then worked as network legal counsel at Network Ten, where he gave the newsroom pre-publication advice on defamation and copyright. He was later general counsel and company secretary of ASX-listed Unwired Group.

Acting Chair Mohamed el Roubi welcomed the appointment. He said: “Richard brings a rare combination of media law expertise, senior regulatory leadership and deep experience in running independent, community-facing complaints systems. He understands both the newsroom, and the public interest.

“I am confident he will lead the Council with integrity as it continues to develop and uphold contemporary standards of media practice and defend the right of Australians to access information of public interest and freedom of expression through the media. On behalf of the Council, I also thank Kaaren Koomen AM, and Paul Nangle for their leadership as Acting Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director during this period of transition.”

Bean said he was honoured to be joining the APC: “A free press and public trust in journalism, so critical to our democracy, depend on the establishment and application of standards that are clear, fair and genuinely independent.

“The Australian Press Council has played a leading role in the regulation of the Australian press for 50 years, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead its work at a time when trust matters more than ever, and technology and artificial intelligence fundamentally change the way information is gathered and communicated.

“I look forward to working with the Council, the Secretariat, publishers and the community to ensure the Council’s standards and complaints process remain robust, reflective of community expectations, and accessible to all Australians.”

He succeeds Yvette Lamont, who led the APC from September 2021 to July 2026. Nangle will continue as acting CEO and executive director until Bean starts.

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