Adverse media screening searches structured news databases, national and international publications, trade journals, legal filings, and official records for coverage linking a candidate to financial crime, fraud, regulatory violations, or other serious reputational concerns. The sources are authoritative and the focus is on documented events.

‍Social media screening reviews a candidate's own public activity across platforms like LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and TikTok, looking at whether their posts, interactions, or associations raise concerns about conduct, values, or reputational risk. Adverse media tells you what credible external sources have reported about a candidate. Social media screening tells you what the candidate has publicly said and done themselves.

For senior hires, running both gives you the most complete picture. If you’re running checks at a financial services firm, this combination helps you identify non-financial misconduct, including bullying, harassment, or discriminatory behaviour, in line with FCA fitness and propriety assessments under SMCR.

Adverse media screening is most relevant for senior executive and board-level hires, where a candidate's public profile and past conduct directly affects organisational reputation. In financial services, it forms part of responsible due diligence for SMCR roles where fitness and propriety is being formally assessed.

For roles with public procurement authority, significant external-facing responsibility, or access to sensitive client relationships, it adds assurance that criminal and reference checks alone can't provide.

The FCA introduced annual open-source internet searches as a Good Practice recommendation for regulated firms in 2018. The December 2025 SMCR Non-Financial Misconduct guidance, in effect from September 2026, makes this type of screening increasingly expected. Adverse media checking is also relevant under BS7858 vetting for security-sensitive roles.

Learn more about FCA, CQC, or Ofsted regulatory requirements.

Zinc's adverse media checks run through the Entrust Watchlist, the same infrastructure used for PEP checks, scanning negative news coverage and media mentions from a periodically updated database. The check uses a fuzzy name matching algorithm to identify potential matches and account for name variations.

Content is categorised by risk type, including media relating to accusations, criminal activity, arrest, trial, and exoneration, and any results linked to the candidate's name are flagged in your dashboard for review. Results typically come back in approximately one minute.

Yes. For senior hires, regulated roles, or any position with significant reputational or financial risk, running all three together is best practice.

Each check covers a different type of risk the others don't fully address. Sanctions identifies legal prohibitions. PEP identifies political influence risk. Adverse media surfaces documented public concerns not captured in structured databases. Together, they give you the most complete pre-hire due diligence picture available. In Zinc, all three are included in a single package, run on the same identity data, and return to the same dashboard view. There's no additional candidate friction and no extra configuration for your team.

Zinc’s name matching algorithm errs on the side of caution, casting a wider net to make sure genuine matches aren't missed. This means candidates with common names can generate potential matches that relate to different individuals. The check flags these for your team's review rather than treating them as confirmed findings. You’ll have the ability to leave comments on the result for audit purposes if you choose to either reject the candidate, or mark the results as all clear.

Your team reviews each flagged result against the candidate's confirmed identity details before factoring it into a hiring decision. Running adverse media alongside PEP and sanctions screening helps with this, too. A concern appearing across multiple checks is more likely to represent a genuine match than something appearing in a single channel only.

Adverse media checks through Zinc return results in approximately one minute on average. The check runs automatically once identity verification is complete, and there’s no extra input needed from your team or the candidate. Results appear in your Zinc dashboard straight away alongside all other screening data.

Adverse media checks are typically run as part of a combined due diligence package with PEP and sanctions screening. Because all three use the same identity data from onboarding, the combined package adds minimal time to the overall process while significantly increasing the depth of your pre-hire risk assessment.