Tulisa: ‘I’m standing here saying something isn’t right with the UK press’
In 2013, former X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos faced jail time after she was tricked by a Sun newspaper journalist into passing on a potential drug deal contact. Now, she’s campaigning for improved press regulation to make sure people like her have more protection.
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What’s the story?
A string of hits with N-Dubz. A solo No.1 single. A judge on The X Factor. In 2011 Tulisa Contostavlos was one of the biggest names in UK pop.
But that came crashing down two years later when she was targeted by a £300,000 sting by The Sun newspaper in which she was pressed to put a reporter, posing as a Hollywood producer offering her a £3 million movie role, in touch with someone who could buy him drugs.
Tulisa says the situation, and court case that followed, cost her her career, home and mental health.
Now, she's campaigning for more accountability in UK journalism, and launched her Fix The Press campaign in July 2026 with the aim of preventing what she experienced happening to anyone else, and wants changes in the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).
“Half of the IPSO panel is made up of ex-editors, so they're essentially marking the homework of their old friends in journalism. Something's not right here,” Tulisa says.
“I don't pretend to be someone that is particularly into politics or understands the way the government works, I'm someone that's had a terrible experience and wanted to educate myself and know more.
“I’m basically standing here saying something isn't right in my eyes.”
What happened to Tulisa?
The Sun sting on Tulisa, she says lasted six months. She was flown first class to America, picked up in limousines and taken for dinner and events with Mazher Mahmood (known during his career as 'The Fake Sheikh') and his team.
The role she believed was on offer was for a "rough around the edges, ghetto girl", and told by one of his assistants (also a journalist) to play up her background and suitability for this role.
This led to the conversations about drugs, which she was asked to procure for Mahmood.
"She'd pull me in the toilet when we're doing our makeup and say, 'trust me. Listen to me. Do as I say.'" Tulisa says.
"She told me I had to go out there and up the ante."
"You hear in one of the recordings, I go from saying that I used to smoke a bit of weed, and was a bit rough around the edges to saying I used to be in gangs, all my friends have guns, and I know every drug dealer in England."
She says she was asked on multiple occasions about drug contacts.
"At the time, I'm thinking, well, if I am this ghetto girl and I've said all of this, then I should be able to get them some," she says.
"I myself at the time was getting frustrated like, What do I do? I don't bloody know anyone. And eventually, down the line, and after months and months, they did end up getting it."
Tulisa was in her early 20s at the time, and was never once suspicious, saying she would never have believed a sting like this was ever legal.
“When I found out, I was just so bamboozled that this was legal,” she adds.
“I didn't think that was even a possibility.”
She faced time in prison after £800 of class-A drugs were ordered through the contact she provided, but escaped a sentence after a man working as Mahmood's driver with a "guilty conscience" spoke to the police about what really happened.
Mahmood was eventually jailed for 15 months.
Why Tulisa believes this could happen again
Tulisa's story took place more than a decade ago, and tabloid journalism has changed in that time, and since the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack, whose family blamed her suicide on hounding by the press.
But she believes stings, and attacks on vulnerable women remain a threat in the British media.
“I feel like it doesn't happen again until it does,” she says.
“Maybe right now in this moment it wouldn't happen, but you can find a few years pass down the line and before you know it, it gets done in a different way.
“It's like music, it gets recycled.”
She has spoken with Mandy Garner, the London mum whose daughter was killed in a road traffic accident in 2020, video footage of which was published as an "exclusive" by the Daily Mail before family members were informed of the incident.
“Her daughter died in a horrific accident, her last moments were put across the Daily Mail,” Tulisa says.
“She put in a complaint with IPSO and was told there was no negligence there. It's everyday people. It's much bigger than just entrapment.”
“My biggest issue, more than the Leveson Inquiry, is the clash between independent press regulation and how it is funded by the press.
She says being both funded by the press, and staffed by former editors is an unacceptable conflict of interest.
The first part of the Leveson Inquiry, set up by David Cameron after the News International phone hacking scandal was concluded in 2021. The second part was scrapped by former culture secretary Matt Hancock.
Tulisa has previously met with Angela Rayner and MP Josh Newbury to speak about her campaign to change IPSO and improve the British press.
"The press has upped its game, and is now being a bit more deviant," she adds.
"It's clear as day that it's not right. Something's not working.”
What Tulisa wants changed
The former singer, responsible for mentoring UK girl group Little Mix on the X Factor, has now begun a campaign, Fix The Press, to make changes in IPSO, and how press complaints are dealt with.
She says it's not the corporations that are necessarily to blame, but more likely ruthless individuals working within them.
“It's about the 1%, those certain individuals that are in power, and just like in every big corporation in this world, there are some people that aren't very nice, that have malicious intent,” she adds.
“They will step on whoever and whatever to get where they want, or earn whatever they want to earn.
“What I would like is regulation making sure those individuals don't have the power and freedom to just do whatever the hell they want and hurt people in the process.”
In a statement given to The News Agents, IPSO says: “The 2012 Leveson report endorsed the idea of continued self-regulation of the press, including funding by the industry. IPSO launched in 2014 with new safeguards in place to protect our independence and new powers to tackle serious and systemic editorial standards failures.”